How to make a: pond

Greetings everyone,

Hope you are all well.

It's (once more) a tutorial post, this one, of how to make a pond for your wargaming tables, easily and most importantly, cheaply.

The Chinese used to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and for this reason below you will see a photo of the draft sketch,

the materials used for the pond,

and the final result:

You can see the whole 'how-to' video below:

I hope you like it.

Have good Tuesday night everyone! :-)

T.

How to make: Stone Walls

Greetings everyone,

Today I'm going to show you my latest addition to my ever growing collection of terrain pieces (mostly handmade, as most of you that follow this blog already know).

Since I'm a cheap git (my fellow English friends may raise their fingers for my misbehaviour - I heard it in a movie and I liked it), I was trying to come up with a way of making some cheap, durable and respectful (in terms of wargaming feasibility) stone walls for my little men.

I browsed the internet for some ideas, but the answer came through one of my wargaming buddies, Vaggelis, who's trying to entice me into the world of Chain Of Command rules - he didn't try much tbh, since I didn't need much of an effort to indulge myself into something new hobby related thing.

He told me to use PVA, and plastic decorative gravel. Yes, you got that right, some PVA and plastic gravel. Below, you will see how easy it is to make some - good, for the eye at least - stone walls by combining these two, and easy to find materials.

I started from this:

And got into this:

Watch the video and spread the word, spread the word guys, so we can all play!

Have a great Monday evening everyone. :-)

T.

P.S: If you care to see how I made the small barn next to the stone walls, see this post. 

FIW British Infantry marching

Greetings everyone,

Apart from the terrain pieces I have been making during these past couple of weeks, I was also painting some figures for the projects I want to play.

French Indian War, is one of my favourite periods, mainly because it involved soldiers from Europe fighting over foreign soil, having the aid by the Natives that were thinking that the colonists were there to help them. Mad, in'nit? :-)

If you have seen Zvezda's excellent set of figures (7YW Prussian Grenadiers), you would understand that with a small conversion (replacing the grenadiers mitre with a tricorn hat), they could be painted as British infantrymen.

Below you will see the painted results of these conversions. Since many regiments have participated in this war, I decided to go generic, and paint them as 'plain' as possible. Red and yellow would be the recipe for success.

What inspired me to go into 18th century wars, was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Barry Lyndon. The part (as you will see below) with the British Regiment marching on the plain field, was simply astonishing (pay attention to the camera's span).

Anyhoo, on with the photos.

And this my Fife and Drum version.

I hope you liked them.

Have a great Wednesday everyone! :-)

T.

How to make a: Barn

Greetings everyone,

Hope you are all well.

Today I prepared a new video (perhaps it will be my new trend) for a model Barn I made.

It took me a piece of paper to get this:

And prepare this:

As you will see in the video it is somehow versatile, and can be used in various eras, from Middle Ages to WW2.

I hope you like it.

If you have any questions on the method I used for making the model, please do not hesitate to ask.

T.

How to make bases with bombed trees‏

Hi everyone.

If you have read my previous post, you would have noticed the three terrain boards I made for a WW1 project we are preparing on our gaming club.

Today, I'm going to show you, some complementary terrain pieces, made from old cd's, some off-pieces of foam and some twigs.

1st step:

Take some old cd's, glue some scraps of foam on them and then with a hot glue gun, place the twigs on the foam pieces (or the cd's surface if you want to).

2nd step:

Cover the cd's surface with kitchen paper, by using PVA glue, wall filler, and water - the consistency is up to you to decide (not too ''runny'' not too ''bulky''). After the materials application, you let the pieces dry for at least 24 hours, otherwise you risk of ruining your brushes whilst painting afterwards.

3rd step:

After drying, I used the same technique for painting them (Dark Brown, Brick Red drybrush, Brown drybrush and Medium Grey drybrush).

Below, you see how well they blend with the rest of the pieces. I am sure that the attacking forces, will think of them as a light cover, from the menace of the machine guns.

The cost for making these five bases, was about 2 euro - a fair deal wouldn't you say?

Have a nice Monday evening everyone. :-)

T.

How to make: WW1 Trenches

Greetings everyone!

Hope you are all well.
In my previous post, I mentioned that I was preparing some terrain for our wargames club, based on some WW1 Scenarios we are interested to play.

I have managed to prepare some trenches, based on some photos I've collected through the web and my books and also for Sidney's blog that is full of wonderful, wonderful, wonderful models.

Below you will see (through a very basic video I had just prepared) how I begun with this:

And ended up to this:

And this is Youtube's link (It cannot be uploaded through blogger, don't ask me why...) 

I hope you like it!

Have a good Sunday night everyone!
T.

Limber and ammunition wagon

Greetings everyone.

These past few weeks I have been on a modelling project, for the wargaming club I'm a member (a totally new period for me, I can only say that it has to do with the Great War...) and I didn't have much spare time to indulge myself with anything but.

However, below you will see some photos, of one cannon limber and one ammunition wagon, destined to serve my little men, in wars of the 18th century (WSS, GNW, Seven Years', FIW etc etc). They come from Zvezda's set (Zvezda #8058 Russian Artillery of Peter the Great) and even though each has three horses for every limber/wagon, I reckon that they would pass the test in terms of historical accuracy. The painting is somewhat generic, just for this reason (I couldn't paint the horses green, if that's you were thinking).

Anyhoo, I hope you like 'em.

Have a great Monday night everyone.

PS: Stay tuned for the WW1 project that will follow in due course. :-)

American Civil War - Union Infantry

Hi everyone.

If you have visited my blog, you must have seen that my last post, was about some Confederate soldiers, fighting their way to victory through a ploughed field.

To make things even, I've painted some of their opponents, meaning the Blues, and placed them in the same terrain piece.  

The figures are from Imex - (Union Infantry), and some from Italeri (Union Infantry) 

If you care to read about the quality of them, please go to the PSR site, where their details and aspects are being thoroughly explained. They do look the part, if I may say. :-)

Their colours, in addition to their opponents' were, pretty much the same on most of the cases, as relevant photos and bibliography suggest.

I hope you like them.

Have a good Friday night everyone.

T.