New European terrain

I acquired some new terrain for my FOW1918/FOW WWII games. I am not sure of the manufacture(s) but I like the sizing and look of the buildings. They should do nicely as a French/Belgian village in 1914 and in 1940.

The bridge and stone walls in the above picture are from JR Miniatures. They make some very nice products and I have number of their destroyed buildings.

Here some 1914 German Uhlans move down the empty main street. The villagers have fled or are in hiding. Notice the cart on the left loaded up but left.

The buildings came painted (not very well) so I touched them up a little.

I have pulled the 1914 German Infantry out (I was going to send them out to be painted but...) and will start working on them. I will try to keep the interruptions to a minimum so that I can finally get a 1914 game in in 2010. ;-)

DBA Camps

Here are a few pictures of some DBA camps I recently created and posted on ebay.

The asian camps were from purchased items repainted but the stone hut was all scratch built,

foam, fabric & wood.

Making 15mm Trenches

There are a number of trench products on the market but to get the volume that I wanted it would have cost me a fortune. I decided to make my own.
In deciding to make my own I started searching the web for ideas. I could make table sections (and still may for specific terrain/games in the future) but it is limiting in the terrain you have to game on so I went with the modular style.
The next decision was what to make it out of. I looked at making masters and molds and mass producing them in plaster. Nice and heavy so they don’t move but if dropped…
I then looked at something out of clay or wood. Lots of work and the wood can not be shaped as easily. I decided on foam, which I had a large stock of at the time.
The foam is light and I was afraid it would move on the table but with it laid out it is fine and you can drop it without any issues. It is delicate to work with but can be shaped easily. I started out with right and left angles, straights, T’s and some angled sections.
I marked the foam and then cut the sections. For cutting I went with my table saw. A little dangerous and I will caution those considering this. BE VERY CAREFUL! It does give nice straight cuts and makes all the trenches the same depth. It is also much faster than by hand.


Once I made the cuts I molded or mushed the sections by hand, removing the straight angular look. I then painted them with craft paint and sprinkled with some fine sand to give a little more texture. Add some detail – sand bags, wood, tin sheets, etc. I did not model them like a display; these are for gaming so not to much clutter. The last step is a coat of wood glue. This gives it a nice hard shell and also some highlights.

Hope this is helpful and inspires you to make your own trenches. As I posted before, what is a WWI gamer without trenches?

Going over the top

What is a WWI gamer without his own set of trenches?

I had created trenches a year or two ago but they were very blah and I think if the terrain is blah the game is more than likely to be blah.

Well, I got side tracked, not sure how or why, from my ME project these past few weeks and started looking at the trench battle side of FOW1918. I purchased a copy of "Through the Mud and Blood" to see how they handled a few things that I thought were week in FOW1918. This with some discussions with Robert Dunlop (GWSH designer and historian) and I think we are on our way, just some play testing.

Back to the terrain, I started looking for pictures of other peoples trench terrain and actual photos. I modified my existing pieces. I think the angle pieces make a big difference. The sand bags are modeling clay and the metal sheets are some plastic sheet I got at the local train store supported by small dowels (logs). The actual trench is made from foam cut on my table saw (very messy).

One of my inspirations was this from Landships.com http://www.landships.freeservers.com/new_pages/trench_schematics.htm

I think it makes a big difference.

Chateau n'importe où

I am hosting two FOW1918 games at Cold Wars this March. One of the games is based on the German Blücher-Yorck Offensive of May 1918. I want to have nice rolling terrain with plenty of woods. This area is wine country and had not been devastated in combat. Some diaries mention how peaceful and beautiful the area was.

I was looking at my buildings and terrain and thinking of the new Crescent Root bases decided to create a chateau. Thinking of the German high command building in the movie "A Bridge too Far" where the young boy spots the staff car, it had to have high hedges around the outside.

So this is what I came up with.

This should add to the table and I am sure it will draw some great infantry assaults.