Great War 1914 - Big Battles Terrain - Part 3

It's really starting to come together now.

I completed all the woods (almost) and have laid out all the bits and the troops in their starting positions. A few more machine guns are needed on both sides.

I'm quite pleased with how this has come together.

The first try out of the rules and scenario will be on Monday night!

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...

Our Hammerhead Participation Game

A bit of a late one this, but a few weeks ago we ran our participation game at the Hammerhead Show in Newark.

My extensive terrain collection was brought out and Andy's Bounty Hunting rules were used. We had a load of interest and won the Best Overall Participation Game prize. 

We also featured in a YouTube video of the event.

Here is a selection of photos from the event: 

DBA 3.0 Beyond Rebasing - Part 3 : The City of Troy

 In the earlier Part 1 of the "DBA 3.0 Beyond Rebasing" articles I showed off a camp designed in the style of the ancient city of Troy. This was from a set of 3D prints from here. The set contains the camp and two versions of the city. I've just completed one of those two cities and I like it so much I think I may have to do the other one as well.

Of course I don't actually have the minis for the Trojan Wars, but I think this model will do quite well as a generic ancient city.

It's sized correctly for the DBA 3.0 rules, so I'll have to try it out at our next DBA session.

Also, here are some photos of the armies and terrain I've been making being used at COGS on Monday.

DBA 3.0 Beyond Rebasing - Part 1 : Camps and Hamlets

I've pretty much completed all the straight forward rebasing I can do as I've done all the armies I had. I am currently painting up some additional models to make a Classical Indian army, but in the mean time I've been sorting out a few camps.

I hadn't really ever built any camps before, but I did have some baggage mules and carts for use with DBM. I have put those to good use along with some 3D printed tents, Celtic round-houses and a rather nice model of Troy. I have also added a few camp follower elements to the various armies

I may have gone a little overboard with the number of camps I have available now.

I also found that the middle-eastern buildings fit well onto one of my Blucher town bases, so I've made another of those and added some more round-houses. These will work as Hamlets in the DBA rules and The buildings can moved around and removed to make play through them easy.

I have also printed out a large version of Troy that came with the small camp version. This will be ideal to use as an ancient city in the DBA rules. More on that in a later post, hopefully...

And finally, in order to reduce the amount of flipping through the rule-book required I've made a few army cards. The less dense format of these makes it a lot easier to work out what can and should be in each army that I own, without distraction/confusion with other armies I merely want to own.