"10mm Pennisular Game in the Twin Cities" Topic

Here are some pictures from a recent game played here in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis & St. Paul, Minnesota – for you non-Merkins).

Our Napoleonic scenarios are not "select 600 points from the approved army lists and have at it." The games umpired with the sides being presented with a tactical problem that has to be solved. Some games are potentially wildly unbalanced but are based of the situations that appear in real campaigns.

The following is based upon an attempt by the French raise the siege of San Sebastian in August 1813. The pictures carry a description of what is happening.

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Elliott

These Boards need an edit function!

Here's the missing shot:

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They do need an edit function.

Those figures and terrain however need praise and I need a tissue to catch my drool!

Very very nice.

Can you mention how you did the terrain? That is, as Angelbarracks mentioned, drool worthy.

Great terrain and figs!
What ruleset do you use?

Mark

Incredible. Makes me want to ditch my 15mm and start over in 10mm. I second the motion: what figures and terrain??

More praise for the terrain, figures and buildings. All beautifully done.

JW

TERRIFIC – to add another superlative.
And I add my name to the list of persons interested in the terrain …

Excellent stuff!

You have got to give us more info about the terrain…

Another here for the terrain-WOW!
Nice figures- I also do 10mm…
John

Thank you for the kind coments.

The figures are a mixture of Pendraken, AIM and Old Glory. The main change made is to give decent sized flags to OG figures.

The rules used were "Napoleonic Command' by Crusader Games – I'm not sure they still in print – it was a small press production anyway. They are however a high-level set of rules will all the charts you need on one sheet of paper – if you enjoy Empire they are not going to work for you ;-)

The terrain is reasonably easy to do.

The game was played on a 6' (180cm) x 4' (120cm) table, and the cloth was 8'9" (265cm) by 6' (180cm) You can get obtain larger cloths – up to about 12'(365cm) x 9' (275cm).

The idea is to get a mat larger than the table so that you can fight over various different battlefields by changing portion shown. The one we used was based on the field at Brandy Station – this gives you a nice mix of roads and rivers.

For the cloth you get a decorators canvas sheet from a home improvement store (Home Depot in the US, B&Q in the UK).

Draw the map of the battlefield onto the canvas.

From the home improvement store you can also get tubes of colored latex – brown is the best choice. First fill in the roads; you can draw ruts into the latex before it dries with cocktail sticks. Rivers are then painted on – blue doesn't work that well but a brown/green/blue mix works well. Put clear latex is then put over the top to finish off the surface of the water.

The next stage is the field itself; spread a thin layer of brown latex then before it's dry sprinkle some fine flock onto the surface before it dries. The surface is reasonably durable.

If you like, since I'm going to be making a new one based on the Battle of Lauffeldt, I can record the process and give instructions if there is sufficient interest.

Elliott

Yes please.

Yes, explain us more, please!

Another terrain admirer here. Excellent stuff. This is the kind of thing that really shows the advantages of the smaller scale figures (for me, anyway). It has the feel of a battle, with plenty of room for manoeuvre.

Very nice. High production values. IMO terrain is as important as the figures and your shots help make that case.

Good work.

Why am I not surprised to see Anleiher here? Super terrain. Lots of ideas here!

Inspirational work – yes for the terrain more explanation

OK, here's further explanation on the terrain. The table in the pictures is just one of several battlefields that I have made using this method.

First, 138SquadronRAF's explanation of the basic technique was quite good. The flexible latex caulk and canvas drop cloths are widely available and fairly inexpensive. The goal was to produce a natural-looking battlefield that was durable, and easy to store and transport (unlike rigid terrain boards, which are bulky, clumsy to move around, and easily damaged).

There's really no trick to the actual construction – the latex is spread on very thin (using a squeegee or piece of stiff cardboard . . . or your fingers. It's water soluble while still wet, and washes off easily), working only a small area at a time; no more than about a square foot or so, to keep the latex from losing its tack before the turf is put down. There is no need for any overspray since latex caulk has excellent adhesive properties (it's guaranteed to stick to your windows in all weather for 25 years!) If you pick a nice muddy brown color for the latex, there's no need to color the roads, and any spots where the turf rubs off or wears thin will just look like earth showing through the vegetation.

The rivers are just painted on, as explained previously, and then covered with clear silicone bathroom caulk. If you're careful not to smooth it out too much, it retains a nice, wavy, liquidy finish, and cures glossy so that the water areas look wet. When you add the turf along the edges of the rivers, you can build it up a little thicker so that it gives the illusion of the river being recessed below the ground level (personal pet peeve . . . add-on rivers that sit above the surrounding terrain). Adding a few stones and clumps of foliage along the banks while the latex is still wet gives a nice effect.

You can see an example of how I construct a game table using one of these cloths, and other games that I have run using them, on my flickr page:

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I'll be adding a picture tutorial of exactly how to use this technique on cloth, as well as on interlocking foam-rubber floor mats (to create a geomorphic system) soon.

Enjoy.

Regards,

Jeff

Thanks Jeff,

I should also give credit to Jeff (War Artist) for providing the pictures too – check out the "ATF Games" for more examples.

Very innovative, inexpensive and elegant terrain.

So the hills are just batting under the cloth and pinned to the rubber mats? Would the batting hold up a large unit of 28mm figs, or is it only good for smaller scale stuff?

Thanks for the ideas!

Really clever ideas!

If these are all 10mm figures, I can't think of no better PR for this scale

Great looking game, but I was wondering what type and colour flock you used?

Thanks for the compliments, all; and you're most welcome for the ideas. This system of "soft" terrain (as opposed to the "hard" terrain derived from the model railroading hobby) is, in my opinion, more suitable for the wargaming hobby than the expensive, bulky, and fragile terrain boards made from styrofoam or similar materials.

It began as an attempt to fill a personal need, Since I travel to at least a couple conventions a year, and I usually run a game or two, I needed a terrain system that:

a) was portable.
b) would store in a small space.
c) could be made from readily available and inexpensive materials.
d) did not require any special tools or difficult-to-acquire skills.
e) did not need maintenance or repair.
f) was flexible enough to use for multiple scales, periods, and geographic locations.

All this, and it had to look really, really good. (It's all about aesthetics, after all, isn't it? If you're not going to make your games look as good as they can, you might as well play boardgames.) Sounds like too much to ask, but I think it fits the bill.

Ever since my first debut of this type of terrain (I think it was Historicon, about 1998 or 1999), people have been asking about it, and I have made it a mission to explain the technique to as many people as possible. It makes our hobby look better (to everyone, but especially to the general public) and it increases the enjoyment of the games for the participants. And that's a good thing.

Brucka -

I've used it for everything from 6mm up to 25mm, and
have had no problems with the hills supporting the
weight of the figures. Pinning it down pulls the canvas
tight over the batting, and the result is quite solid.

Sparta –

It's just Woodland Scenics stuff. Any model railroad turf will do. I get a green turf, a tannish or yellowish one, and a brownish one, and then mix them together in different proportions for the various areas of the cloth. (Look at a few aerial photos sometime, or cruise around in Google Earth . . . the earth is not all one color anywhere, in any season of the year.)

Which reminds me – I should have mentioned earlier that when I put the turf down on the spread latex, I pat it down to make sure that it sticks. Then, when the latex is dry, I use a Dust Buster (or other small, handheld vacuum cleaner) to suck up the excess. That way I can recover the loose turf and reuse it for another area. A little goes a long way.

Regards,

Jeff

Thx war artisan, will give it a go.

Incredible, very very impressive – thanks for sharing the pictures and your knowledge.

Maybe i missed something, but how do you make the hills? Put something under the cloth? If so, what?

Hi Don,

No, you didn't miss anything. The explanation was in the caption to one of the photos on my Flickr page, and I didn't repeat it here.

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This and the other pictures in the set describe the whole process.