Battle in a box 5

More progress on the painting of the terrain, at this stage I've started to create some fields using different kinds of scatter material. I think the over all effect is working well, also glued on some clumps of foliage to stand in as trees.

In the bottom picture top left you can see some additional stands for woods and the start of a small village. Next up will be looking at how to secure the base boards in the wooden case.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle in a box 4

I've painted the two boards with a base coat of black paint, then dry brushed over with my normal terrain colours, using the mid tone to pick put the road network. The 30mm square network of fields can be made out in the photograph above. The next stage after finishing the painting will be to add the vegetation.

As for the troops I've decided to base the two armies on the French & Austrians from the Franco Austrian war/Second Italian War of Independence The driving decider on these forces was the colours of the uniforms, the French in their red hats and trousers and dark blue jackets contrasting nicely with the Austrians white coats and sky blue trousers. Being fought in 1859 the war is also the right side of the 19th century to fit with Bobs rules. 

TTFN

Airhead

Battle in a box 3

A selection of pictures showing the development of the two boards with the road network being high lighted by laying ribbons of PVA glue to create verges once they are covers with sand. The bottom photo also shows the tea leaf vineyards quite well. I'm starting to think about how I can create some villages and farms to go on the boards and also woods, they will all be based on 30mm squares of card, so they can be used anywhere on the boards.

Next stage will be putting some paint on the boards.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle in a box 2

Progress on the Battle in a Box terrain, I marked out in white china-graph pencil the grid lines and also the road network. Then it was a simple process of painting PVA glue onto a selection of squares, to add some variety to the surface, I have used tea leaves on some of the squares and on a couple of these I have scraped the tea leaves into rows while the PVA was still wet. Hopefully creating a cultivated appearance of vin-yards. On the slopes of the hills I have used some small gravel to show broken ground. In the top photograph you can make out small mounds of stones positioned to mark the centre of 4 grid squares that are otherwise blank.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle in a box 2mm scale

I have finally made some progress on my battle in a box project, first mentioned as an objective for this year in my Christmas post from last year. At that time I was looking a using a cigar box to hold the terrain and units in. This idea didn't work out, but as Lady Mary went off to university last September, she had a big clear out, and one of the items she disposed of  was a cheep art box with a selection of paints, pens and other bits. The type of thing you can pick up from The Works for about £5.

I removed the plastic trays from the inside of the box, and then painted the inside matt black. The Battle boards are made from 5mm thick foam core, divided into 30mm squares, 8 by 10 in total. The bottom three pictures above show the basic boards resting on the box, with a copy of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame rules They are second from bottom on the linked page. I have always admired Bobs elegantly simple rules. The only issue that I have with them is an aesthetic one, the use of gridded terrain has always struck me as being to close to a board game from a visual perspective.

My aim with this project is to see if I can create a portable gridded wargame which doesn't look like it is one, if you get what I mean. The top picture is a sketch I made on my iphone, it gives a very rough idea  of how I hope the terrain boards will look.

TTFN

Airhead

Finished Mosque

I started this project last November, so not bad going for me at under 12 months from inception to completion. The bottom three pictures show details from inside the court yard of the Mosque. The ceramic planters with the trees in are made by the simple step of gluing two kid's beads together. We have an old Quality street jar in the garage full of them, very handy. The shrubs/small trees are made from scouring pads cut to shape. The trunks are made from cocktail sticks.

The minaret is not permanently stuck in position, it can be removed. The original idea being to create a bomb damaged version, with the top section blown away. This is still in the pipeline, and hopefully before the full 12 months is out I'll have got it finished.

TTFN

Airhead

Making smoke 2

Finished of the smoke shell markers, with a light spray of cheap Wilkinson grey primer on the outer ends of the smoke trails and then some yellow - orange - red paint to give the impression of an exploding smoke shell. They were then based on 1p coins with some sand pva'd onto the coin and painted up in my usual ground work colours. This is just a quick update, but I've got quite a few pictures in the bag for the next few posts.

Thing on the wargaming blog front have been quite quiet out there over the past few months, myself included, must be a combination of the first true summer for what seems like decades and summer holidays, just my impression of things.

I will put my next posts up over the weekend.

TTFN

Airhead