Trenches for the Quar, Part IX, A shattered woods in No Quar's Land

        Zhodani Commando had asked for some shell-shattered woods as scatter terrain for No Quar's Land, and as I was finally finished with the sandbagging operation I got to work on this. At first I considered using Woodland Scenics tree armatures but they aren't terribly sturdy (train accessories, not wargaming toys) I decided to go with making my own. This also keeps the entire project scratchbuilt. 

 

the first thing I did was cut some bases out of left over Eco-Rug 

this is a tough flexible outdoor rug made from recycled pop bottles

Trenches for the Quar, Part VIII, End of the sandbags (at last!)

 

last we saw this was the extent of the sandbagging effort

        A spate of hot weather forced me to stay inside and work on this project instead of mowing the lawn (well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it). After an arduous two days where I spent almost twenty hours (on top of the fifteen or so I spent on the Great Redoubt board) sticking the horrible little things down I am finished with the sandbagging operation. Some touch-up remains to do on the boards and then there's the barbed-wire, duckboards and shattered woods to conjure up, but I am now closing in on the terminus of this commission. 

1/72 scale Great War tanks; Airfix & Emhar

        Somebody asked on Lead Adventure Forum about Great War tank sizes, specifically the Airfix Mk IV kit. I snapped some pictures  (and as long as I had the collection opened up I took pictures of the Emhar products as well). So here they are:

 

 

Trenches for the Quar, Part VII; Sandbagging it.....

       I don't care for the look of plastic or resin sandbags. To me they look like fluffy pillows, not like a sack of earth weighing sixty to a hundred pounds. Thus I am forced to make my own (what the heck, I'm scratchbuilding everything else in this project so why not go for broke?). This brings us to the the Great Tedium, crafting miniature sandbags from clay.

 

it may not look like it, but there are simply thousands of sandbags in here 

 

Trenches for the Quar, Part VI, Final texture, drybrushing and turf

 

        Last we visited the battlefield it was looking a bit wet (having been freshly painted that was to be expected).  That has come and gone as has another heavy coat of wet paint and some finer texture applied into the wet paint. Once that had set the whole thing was given a two stage drybrushing of lighter shades of the basecoat (the beauty of the modern big-box home improvement store is that you can pick your color and then get smaller jars in lighter shades mixed up a tester pots). Once all that had set all that remained was to add the bit of vegetation that has survived he shelling so far.

Trenches for the Quar, Part V Debris and texture

        As I continue to pound away at this my posts may become less frequent. This is due to the sheer volume of work, the processes used on each panel are the same and I won't waste your time by posting each day as I finish a panel. That being said, I have completed the debris ejected from the shell holes and give the boards a light bit of texture and a coat of paint.

 

last we saw our table it looked like this

Jumping The Shark; or Anton goes and buys a 3-D Printer

I only have one spool attached, everything I make will end up getting painted

       After ten years of talking about it and endless reading of reviews and such I finally broke down and purchased a 3-D printer. Now I can make zillions of things right in my basement (as if I'm not 40,000+ figures behind as it is!). I am now the proud owner of a Bambu A1 mini. This thing is simplicity itself, it was up and running inside of an hour of getting home from  Microcenter. Assembly consisted of attaching a couple of parts and feeding the filament into the machine. After a quick test-print of a manufacturer provided file I purchased an STL file from Wargames Atlantic Digital and it was off to the races! The results you can see below; 

 

gangster vs bison; the bison lost the tip of his tail to me during support clean-up,

I forgot that they have a little tuft of hair on the end of their tail and cut it off

       Soon I will be up to my eyeballs in farm animals for my Vikings to try to pillage

D-Day at Michigan Toy Soldier, a Bolt Action extravaganza

        The good folks at Michigan Toy Soldier celebrated the 80th anniversary of D-Day by running a Bolt Action game spread across three tables and three sessions. To my dismay I was only able to attend for a short while and snap some pictures to the very nice terrain and the lovely miniatures. The scenario was the two US beaches; Utah and Omaha, and the US Paratrooper drop behind the lines to take out German artillery emplacements. The store was packed and everyone was having a grand time playing, I had to squeeze in between turns to get my pictures. So, with no more ado (and a sad lack of commentary to provide context) here are the pictures.

 

the paratrooper table, nasty Germans lurking about in the shrubbery

Trenches For The Quar, Part IV; Tidying up the shell-holes and Revetments for the trenches

       Pushing ahead to get this project completed as quickly as possible the next step is to "soften" the edges of our shell-holes. The Gorilla Glue does a fine job of expanding but often has bubbles that popped and almost always has an overhang at the edge where it joins the surface.  To address these issues I paint over the surface with latex-based wallboard compound. A decent quality stiff bristle angle-tip brush about an inch wide is my weapon of choice (don't spend good money on it as this process absolutely WRECKS the paintbrush). You may have to add a bit of water to your wallboard compound, what you are looking for is the consistency of smooth peanut butter.

 

our battlefield as we last saw it

Trenches for The Quar; Part III Filling in the empty spaces

        Twenty four square feet of table looks pretty blank when there are only trenches in the opposing foot-wide strips at either short end. This table needed some tactical details to make it interesting. To start with I added a mess of shell-holes, the Quar wars are sort of a Great War/Steampunk cross-breed so there would just have to be a spattering of shell-holes across the table. To add a little more interest I placed a small hill in one of the "no-man's land" sections and the shattered remains of a village in the other. Both of these features were offset toward a corner so that by rotating the panels different tactical situations could be portrayed.

 

first step, make a bunch of tiny bricks

second step, laboriously glue them together into the remains of a shelled building

third step, a glass of bourbon and some classical music

Gaming Update, Tom's Place Saturday 15JUN24 at 6:pm

        Tom has graciously offered to host a game at his place this Saturday the 15th of June, 2024 at 6p.m.

We will be playing Fire & Fury

Trenches for The Quar, Part II Blocking -in the trenches

       The handy tool that I had when I made my Great War trench board has long since burned out so I was forced to come at things from a different direction. The design that Zhodani Commando approved was based on 2" squares, so I began by making a bunch of shapes out of green-board in multiples of two; 6"x6", 4"x6", 4"x4" and so on. From there it was a simple matter to start assembling these on the wooden base-boards to match the design on the graph paper. I roughed up the surfaces of the foam with some 60 Grit sandpaper to ensure that the glue got a solid grip. I use Titebond wood glue which is water-based and won't react with the foam. I drew lines on the surface of the base boards to make sure that the trenches lined up going from board to board to avoid any unattractive dog-legs at the joints.

 

the first board getting laid out, a cross between Tetris and Legos

(I was never any good at either of them!)