We Want A Shrubbery!

 

click on the picture

       Once again the surfeit of free time intersects with the dearth of opportunity to buy simple items that I would normally use and force me into a position wherein I have to make things by hand. Exhibit One; normally I would simply buy railway shrubbery and get on with the job of adding vegetation to my terrain. This not being possible for two reasons; all the local brick and mortar joints are closed and I lack the patience to wait for Amazon or Ebay to bring me the goodies. Thus I was forced to fall back on skills that I had acquired many ages back, before the internet and ready-made Chinese junk. I was going to have to craft the shrubberies by hand. It is stupidly simple but terribly time consuming (time being the only resource that I have a lot of right now it seemed a good match).

Anton's Quarterly review is on its way

But for the meantime, again with Anton's permission I will briefly regale you with my accomplishments

Is that a "Flying Pencil" in my eye

Here is the review of Shapeways work and the painting of my Dornier DO-17's

"Off we go, into the wild blue yonder"

So Anton told that I should post some things, so post I shall.

Stone Walls Do Not A Prison Make....

.....but they work just fine as field boundaries.

 

the river is on the bottom edge of the picture, the two narrow channels are irrigation canals

 (made just wide enough to admit one of Zhodani Commando's figure bases)

       While I am still on fire for building terrain I thought that it would be a good idea to get moving on the second terrain panel of the Afghan Village project. This panel is designed to join any of three of it's sides to the panel with the village see this link for a background on the design idea. It represents a fertile low-lying area with access to a river and some irrigation canals. Unlike Americans the Afghans have the sense to build their towns on rocky hillsides and grow crops in the fertile flat lands; perhaps because they have so little fertile land.

 

 

my hills aren't quite as high

Let's talk Real Estate, Afghan Style

 

steps one and two 

chocolate brown base coat with medium brown dry-brushed over it

       Having finally gotten the hill to my liking I decided to have a go at painting the village that was the source of this whole project. The buildings were coated with the ever-present chocolate brown and then a heavy dry-brush of the same medium brown that I used on the hills. In all the photos that I have seen of Afghani villages they seem to be exactly the same shade of brown as the surrounding terrain. Next was the light tan highlights (a good bit heavier a dusting than than hills got) followed up by a thorough dusting of pale gray. Tomorrow I will go back and add white highlights and a few touches of color. All that remains is the other panel with the riverbank and irrigation canals and poppy fields.

How about some highlights?

    

 

  the last time we saw my Afghan village hill it was a wet mess of chocolate brown paint.

        A night's worth of drying time solved that problem and I got right back at it. First I double-checked to be sure that there wasn't any loose sand anywhere, once I was satisfied that all of that was locked down tight I began the two-stage drybrushing effort. The chocolate brown was only ever intended as shadow so the first coat of medium brown was applied very heavily. A second coat of medium brown was added after the first had had a chance to set for an hour. After that had dried for an hour I broke out the light tan, this too was applied liberally to all of the surfaces to establish a base and then a second coat was added with a lighter hand to make the details pop. Once this had had a chance to dry I will add a coat of pale gray then some white highlights.

Fine Grit, further adventures in Afghanistan

 

the last time that we saw the base for the Afghani hilltop village it looked like this

       Satisfied that I had applied enough of the True Grit mix to the base I took the next step. Well aware of how apt wargamers are at knocking items over, bumping things and generally creating mayhem amongst terrain and minis I decided that having large, heavy and fragile epoxy castings of buildings located on the high points of the terrain base was just asking for problems. To avoid such a sad occurrence I added some carefully crafted and located "boulders" to the surface. These were cleverly arranged to ensure that the buildings would be trapped in place and could only be knocked astray by Herculean force. OK, that last bit might be an exaggeration. 

True Grit (and some pebbles too) UPDATED

       The last step in the Afghan village project left me with the reconstructed hills finished and coated in paint. The next step is adding details to these hills; the first of which is ground texture. Rocks, boulders, gravel and sand in the margins and on the hillsides, I mean, it isn't as if anybody is tidying up around there so all of that geological detritus would be just lying about. Cognizant that I have to maintain a playable surface I tend to add this sort of detail in places that won't impede play; the endless balance between a wargamng surface and railroad modelling quality terrain is a fine line to tread. The first step is to add the flashy details in areas that are out of the way and won't impact the deployment of our miniature legions, the base of cliffs, the edges of roadways, water runoff gulleys etc. Then I step back and assess what more can be added and where.

A Second Tour in Afghanistan

metal yes!

plastics, NO!!!!!

          Ages ago I began a project for my good friend, Zhodani Commando, wherein I undertook to build a base for some Afghani buildings that he had purchased. This project had moved along nicely until I sprayed the nearly completed base with a matte clear coat that I had been using on minis for a couple of years now. This product is a solvent based automotive finish that is very flat and extremely hard-wearing; unfortunately it is also a lacquer-based paint and contains an extremely high amount of powerful solvent. A bit of thought would have had me waiting for a restock of Amory Matte Sealant at my local brick-n-mortar but I was in a hurry and thought that the thick coating of Durham's Water Putty and vinyl spackle would protect the vulnerable polystyrene foam that formed the body of the work. How wrong I was! The solvent penetrated the thin spots and dissolved the underlying structure leading to a collapse of the entire thing (I won't say what happened next but I will admit that I lost my temper in a rather significant way). The upshot of all this was that I had to start the project again from scratch (the wooden base having disappeared during the fire).

Upcoming Gaming Conventions 15-16MAY20 Drums at the Rapids 2020

15-16MAY20 Drums at the Rapids 2020

Drums at the Rapids  15-16 May 2020
        No info yet, aside from the date, I went last year and had  a great time 
                    
  Fort website link 

 HMGS website link (to 2019 info right now)

The Battle of Mobile Bay, an alternative history game

       This scenario is based on a couple of counter-factual assumptions; that the Confecerates were able to get the CSS Mississippi and North Carolina (putatively built for the Khedive of Egypt under the names Al Monassir and El Tousson) out of Great Britain and combine with the Alabama to form a "Blockade Breaker" squadron. This force has moved into Mobile Bay and combined with the local units to try to force the Union squadron away and open the port to commerce.
         Confronted with this situation Farragut has decided to force the mouth of the bay, take out the Confederate naval units then besiege the forts, thus solving the problem once and for all.

 

I ended up with twelve captains instead of the eight that I had planned on

 but they were a jolly bunch of sea-dogs