"Hanoverian and British v's the French" Topic

Rick, Huw and myself fought out an non specific date, Tricorne era battle last night. More photographs on the following link.

link

No picture.

Something I have actually noticed already!

Crikey!

Its a tough audience tonight.

And have now corrected!!!

Great looking table and figures. Thanks for the slideshow.
Cheers,

Double thanks for annotating the pictures with the action.

Good photography – the style makes several of them look like a museum painting of a battle.

Rick

Somehow your tables always look perfect. I´d be green with envy if I wasn´t such an enlightened person ;o) Beautiful.

Are these terrain boards? How do you make the surface?

They are terrain boards of various types that are fitted together to make a battlefield. But often, even the players used to my games forget that. Last night Rick leaned over and dislodged one and remarked hat there is a tendency to forget how I put them together.

The surface is railway grass sheets mostly. But to get a more realistic look…instead of a golf course…I change the shade of the grasses here and there, put in some long grass in places etc.

Roads are made by marking out where I want them to run. Then I wet the railway grass area with water and some very thin PVA glue. The grass is stripped off and the goo used to make filler for roadsides, ditches…rough terrain areas etc. The bare area left behind is treated to some DAS hobby clay, with wheel marks scored in. It can be applied thick to enable deep wheel marks, or just a touch enough to cover the paper base of the original grass matt. Variety is how you achieve a real look.

The same for areas like the embankment. After that its a matter of using various acrylic paints to mix and blend on the roads and stream banks etc to get the right look. Dark brown areas will look muddy and with a few streaks of wheel track, filled with water material, can look even muddier.
The had the banks built up around it so that it looks lower than the surrounding terrain. Again the colours you use give the impression of muddy banks, or drier ones.

Teddy Bear fur is used for long crops, but I also use various other types of commercial grass areas, wheat field etc. The general idea is not to make it all look too consistently the same. Its not in real life, so if you do that on a tabletop you end up with an artificial look.

The swamp grasses are actually the centre part of dried up Scotch Thistles. They make good long grassy, reed looking areas.

Oh and because of the need to fit a tabletop within the area of my wargames room, the terrain boards are made in three sizes that enable them to slot together into a wide range of combinations. Most have the ability for roads to link up with other boards, but in a combination of ways. Because I dont like the look of ugly seams, the joins are mostly hidden by the crops and fields than can be put on, by buildings, trees & portable woods. In some cases simply some spare grassy clumps I keep in a container and put on over the seams. As there is usually an off cut or two of the railway grass sheets, I keep those too. They can be laid over joints and linked in with the other portable scenery. The idea is to provide a combination that to the eye, makes the table area seem like one, even though it is made up of several boards. The one in the photographs comprises three large ones two medium and one small. Each has a basic terrain on it already, but always still leaving room for the addition of portable scenery that completely change them from their usual look into something different.

It serves to produce a beautiful result in any case. As soon as the kids leave home, I´ll have the room to store terrain boards! It´s GW´s golf course until then ;o)

Crazy good stuff !

Thanks Mal

really lovely Mal,

nice to see some french lights getting a run!!!

cheers
matt

It was great to finally field them. I've had various French light troops for some time and not had a chance to use them in a battle.

Have you tried Sharpe Practice or Sounds of Drums & Shakoes, palying just with light troops in small actions – gets very exciting.

Nice scenery as well!

Show off

Lovely work Mal