"Lots of 3mm Project updates" Topic

Hi all,

With a countdown of sorts underway (hmm…) I've been flying along on my 3mm ACW and Napoleonic diorama/armies/modular terrain system for shrinking 28mm and 15mm scenarios. The last thing uses all of the extra bases used in my dioramas.

The Napoleonic brigades are almost done. Here's a shot of it as it approaches completion a bit more. The 800-900 cuirassiers are up front in their color-coded squadrons and the 2000+ French infantry brigade is in the back.

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A closer-up shot of the same:

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All the NCOs, musicians and officers are included in the cav. I have some command bases made up for the battalions but they aren't in this picture (It was taken before I finished them).

Here is my 29 gun Austrian battery on a ridge line. I may the ridge out of different sized Litko bases and sculpy. Baking the sculpy didn't hurt the bases nor did it melt the figs or peel the paint the one time I tried baking it with the figures in situ.

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The Austrian gunners are by far the best, most detailed sculpts O8 has yet made. Somehow they managed to put all the detail of 6mm and bigger figs onto something about half the size. They look great in person. In this battery there are 150 crew. Once Napoleonic horse teams and limbers for the Austrians come out the trees would ideally be replaced with the limbers and such. For diorama purposes the trees work though.

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There's the 800+ figure Hungarian battalion. These are the same sculpts as the French infantry but are painted differently. The best thing about 3mm over 2mm is that you can still clearly identify the uniforms of the units. Here's a close-up:

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And here's the built-in modular terrain system. This allows you to easily shrink down any scenario map for larger scales into 3mm. The squares are 60mm Litko bases, flocked and sealed. All you need to do to play any scenario for larger figs is to simply replace every square foot of table space at the larger scale with the squares. This means that a 20mm block of 3mm figs on my modular table is equal to a 4 inch wide unit of 15mm.

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The best thing about this is that you can do all the huge games you've always wanted (Dresden, Wagram, Antietam, etc) to do in 28mm or 15mm but couldn't afford or didn't have the space for. The map shown is pretty basic- one could add in whatever sort of terrain tiles were needed.

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There are some Austrian and French units hanging out by an unfinished church base. There's enough bases there for two large corps in FPGA, plus a large-ish division or corps of heavy cav in the back. Also, since the system is modular you don't have the wall-to-wall effect you get in some games, since you can theoretically expand the game board as the game progress and therefore flanks are inherently exposed.

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My masterpiece though is going to be my ACW diorama. I'm going to be putting a ton of time into this today. The idea behind it is a battle over a farm field somewhere in the Western theatre. This is really messy, a shot from an earlier planning stage:

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This shot is taken from the Union side looking at the Confederates. The big field I made from a piece of plexiglass with a piece of railroad grass mat. It's much tougher than it sounds. I used some litko bases to crease the rail road mat around the edge of the plexiglass so that it initially looked like there was a perfect rectangular impression in the mat that the plexiglas fit into perfectly. I then scored the plexi glass with a razor and covered it with with a thin coat of the super-strong 24 hour dry two-part epoxy. After than I put the plexiglass into the impression I had made and then folded the tabs around to the sides of the plexiglass. FInally I hot glued the mat to the plexiglass, running a litko base down the seam to make it as flat as possible and using packaging tape to see the glue over the edge of the tabs. It's more elegant than it sounds. Here's the backside:

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Ok, so it doesn't look so elegant either, but no one will see that side. It's still pretty darn tough though, and the finished product is the exact thickness of a litko base… and doesn't warp. I'll be re-flocking it so that it fits in with the style of the rest of the diorama. I have a lot of work to do on this today, so I'd better get rolling here. When I'm done I'll be back with some more updates!

As usual, you've done outstanding work!!

Ditto that, it is really fantastic!

Amazing figs and module system! :)

Really great stuff! Very inspirational!

Goodness that's just visually awesome. Right up my alley, FM, impressive and just imagining how cool a full table will look. Beaut job.

Best,
Bob

Very nicely done !!!!

Do you have a website?

I just love the look of the small scale stuff and you've done a great job with it and the terrain. Thanks for sharing the photos.

Hi Bill- no website yet. All of this was done for a huge project for Pico Armor and it will be at Historicon this year if you want to check it out. I have to take a little break from painting now, but when I start next time I am going to have a website dedicated to 3mm.

Thanks a lot for all the compliments guys! If you're going to HCON make sure to stop by Pico Armor's stand where it will all be on display! As a teaser here is the only pic I've taken of the completed ACW diorama. It will also be there. It turned out completely different and much larger than how I originally envisioned it. It's not a great photo, but if you've been following my posts you can see how far its come. Bear in mind that the whole thing is over five feet across and almost four feet deep. The large central fields are made from different sorts of boards- sawn-up clipboards and plexiglass.

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That's crazy. And beautiful at the same time! Really makes me want to try the micro-scales (6mm and 3mm) for the effect of having all 170,000 samurai at the Battle of Sekigahara, the entirety of Waterloo, or the entire field at Gettysburg.

This makes it look almost do-able by one person!

Lion in the Stars-

My next project may actually be Gettysburg at 12:1 with all regiments shown. I could knock it out really fast, maybe in a weekend or two. I'd do it totally different from the above though. While doing the terrain above I discovered a few awesome tricks for making gigantic, tough yet portable terrain. The first thing I would do differently would be to forego the thick bases and go thin and sue a terrain mat underneath, supplemented with the sort of fields you see above.

I also figured out a great way to make a terrain mat, something that blows the old latex caulk mats out of the water. I'll have to do a post on it one of these days. It beats "traditional" caulk mats on presentation, weight, price and time involved. In fact, I think that I could make a 6' x 4' terrain mat in an hour or less with roads and rivers picked out, and have it be dry and playable by that time. If I could go back I may have done the above project in this new style, but time (HCON deadline!) was a big factor.

All I can say is that I wish I was as fast and productive as you. It's taken me 6 weeks to paint up 12 French infantry battalions. Granted, I only paint here and there and rarely for more than an hour at a time.

But…

Hi Macunaima-

I wish I was fast and productive! I wasted a lot of time, effort and the goodwill of my GF with the many mistakes I made. I learned a lot but it was definitely a learning process. The biggest thing I learned was not to mix these elements together:

1000 square foot one bedroom apt.
1 x girlfriend about to take second round of medical boards
A full time job and trans-Los Angeles commute
A bad cat
6000+ model soldiers

These things do not mix together well! Next time I'll have more space. I may even rent studio time somewhere for making my next terrain mat series. I'll be restocking on 3mm goodies soon so we'll see what happens!