Great War 1914 - Big Battles Terrain - Part 2

Over the Easter break I managed to get further with my small scale 1914 terrain.

The fields, roads and hedges are now complete on all the boards and the town and villages are in progress.

The board is modular and can be rearranged for variety. Getting the fields to line up properly was complicated, but the result hides the regularity of the pattern quite well.

I'm undecided what to do with the edges. Certainly putting the edging strips that came with the mats helps a lot with the look. But should I just leave them as is (i.e. grey), paint them black, flock them or do half and half. I'm unsure... What do you think?

I'm tempted to just leave the edges grey.

The next stage is to add on the woods. After a bit of experimentation I think the best way is to have some black felt pieces coated with my favourite brown acrylic sealant on the upper side. I get a nice texture and the pieces conform to the terrain well.

I will be changing the trees to be just lumps of clump foliage as they are completely out of scale! Also there will be painting and other texturing added to the wood bases, they won't just be brown!

I did try thicker cotton canvas patches, but the edges curled up. The felt does not do this.

I have tried putting the 6mm minis on the boards just to see what they look like. Obviously way bigger than the towns, etc... but I think it'll work...

Since the weekend I've finished off all the town inserts, but this weekend I'm away re-enacting, so progress on the boards will recommence next week.

Great War 1914 - Big Battles Terrain - Part 1

I'm finally working towards being able to use the 6mm WWI 1914 British and German minis I painted last year. This project has been planned for quite a while, but is just starting to come together.

The main goal was to create a set of boards for doing the 1914 Retreat from Mons scenario for Bloody Big Battles. However I wanted the terrain to be usable for more than just that.

Since it's a very large area that is being portrayed on the battlefield I've scaled it up to about the same scale as I have used with the Battle of Britain game, and in fact used the same base for the terrain, EVA foam mats. However this time I'm going to town with the terrain.

I've just completed the first of the six 2ft square boards I'll need for the game.

The total plan for the board consists of 6 of these tiles; modular allowing the battlefield to be varied. To do this the roads have to go off at the same places on the tiles and there are left-hand and right-hand oriented tiles. This is the arrangement for the Mons scenario:

I've now started on the next tiles. The first job was to cut out the rivers, which I did with a soldering iron and some 3d printed templates. Breathing equipment was worn so as to avoid the horrid fumes of the melting foam.

Once that has been done it's a case of cutting out spaces for the towns and river crossings to go in. The roads marked will not be in those locations and are a rough guide. They will need to enter the removable parts in the same locations to allow the different inserts to be moved around as needed.

One of the inserts is for the fortified town of Maubeuge.

Next I fill the river beds and mark the roads using brown acrylic frame sealant, which I use a lot!

I use it so much, that I've run out again... I'll have to pop down to Screwfix again in the morning. 

And here ends this episode...

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I've been painting up the excellent "Medieval Mayhem" miniatures from Hayland Terrain for quite a few years now. I'd only really dipped into the range for a couple of models. When Andy asked me to get a few more for our participation game at the upcoming Hammerhead Wargames Show I finally got the last ones I had painted and then got the bug and put a couple more orders in.

I've now completed all I have and added a few 3d prints in as well to fill in some gaps. I've still not got everything that Hayland sell, but the rest will have to wait.

To celebrate completing all these I've taken a few photos re-enacting some of the scenes from the film... 

Watch out for the bonus shot at the end...

Sir Robin, Sir Galahad, Sir Bedivere, King Arthur, Sir Launcelot, Sir Bors

None shall pass.

Burn her!  Witch!  Witch!  Burn her!

Well, now, uh, Launcelot, Galahad, and I wait until nightfall, and then leap out of the rabbit,
 taking the French by surprise

All right, all right, all right. We'll kill him first and then have tea and biscuits.

We are but eight score young blondes and brunettes, all between sixteen and nineteen and a half,
 cut off in this castle with no one to protect us!

Seek you the Bridge of Death.

We want... a shrubbery!

Well, that's no ordinary rabbit. 
That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on.

It's the legendary Black Beast of aaaargh!  Run away!

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise....
Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency....
Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...
and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope....
Our four...
No... amongst our weapons.... amongst our weaponry...
are such elements as fear, surprise....
I'll come in again.

3D Printed 1/600 Planes for "Wings at War" "Scramble for Britain"

Whilst surfing the various 3D print sites I found a few free plane stls on this Patreon. Whilst they're designed for 1/200 scale I thought I'd try printing them for 1/600 for use with my other WWII planes.

Well the planes printed great and painted up well as well. I've used the same Sunlu High Toughness Resin  I used for my WWI  6mm infantry and it seems to be able to be roughly handled, we'll have to see how the struts on the biplanes manages. 

The new planes are: Ju88, He115, Bristol Blenheim, Gloster Gladiator. They should get used at COGS tomorrow night.

Some more Salamaders for my Kings of War army

A couple more units for my Kings of War army. I painted these back in early December, but forgot to photo them for the blog.

A Horde of Rhinosaurs.

And a second Phoenix with a slightly different colour scheme.

Moonstone - Pirates and more Fairies

With the first Moonstone games of 2025 at COGS taking place tomorrow night I thought it best to get some more models finished. There's some Pirates for Brendan's troupe for the COGS Moonstone campaign and some more fairies for mine.  I have more of each troupe to paint yet...

I absolutely loved painting these, especially the octopus and lobster.

Moonstone - The Enclave

With COGS starting a Moonstone campaign in the New Year, I've been busy painting up some Fairies! Quite a change from the tiny little soldiers and planes I've been mostly painting recently!

I do love these models and have another 3 ready to build to supplement these. Though I think I will be getting more for a second force...