The Long Road Home

With the Little Wars Bolt Action tournament complete, it is time to get down to the army display board, and how I generated that in very rapid fashion, just like the objective markers!

As always, I began with the thinner pink underlayment foam, along with a few bigger chunks of insulation foam left over from the Barbarossa board.  This is why I save every scrap!!

I used wood glue and Elmer's extra strong glue on those pieces, and used painter's tape to hold them in place.

I started to use a glue/plaster mix during the Ardenne and Winter board projects, and that has worked well.  In this case, I will also be combining it with wood filler.

Since there is already glue in the mix, setting down some fallen trees with a few additional dabs of glue would have plenty of hold.

Using the dried tea leaves, I created ground fall texture around these fallen trees. The last time you saw me using that was on the winter board pieces here:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-tea-leaves.html

Time for the wood filler.  This was what I used on the roads:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/04/at-crossroads.html

Just as I did on the road lengths, I made the track and tire marks through the wet filler with the 1 inch flat brush.

Once the road was in place (I was hoping that it would hold all the vehicles in the list PLUS the Citroen objective marker!), I started to work on the opposite side of the road.  

There was more of an incline as well as more layers of foam to deal with on this side, so some of the wood filler was use to give it more "body" and strength.

Huzzah!  All of the landscaping is complete, and I also added a few trees.  I have a number of articles on how I use regular tree branches to make all sorts of trees.

I remembered that I had a set of 1/48 scale road signs, poles and cart wheels, and I thought those would be a nice touch to add in a hurry!

I grabbed whatever was at hand to make footprints in the mud, since it was possible that some of the troops might have to be walking along the same one as the vehicles.  It would also provide more of a human element to the board.

With a few light layers of sand over the board and on the center of the road, it was time to let this dry and set.

When I turned off most of the lights, I was greeted with this panorama!  I thought I would take an image which really displayed all the textures involved.

Once that was set, I took the Badger Stynlrez primers and quickly airbrushed some color onto the board.  You can see that I made the mud a bit lighter.  This is to offset the vehicles, which will cast a lot of shadows, and to allow the darker water stains in the ruts to show more too.

Knowing that the next few layers of color would be my greenish flock, I wanted to build up enough browns to make the green flock seem as if it really was growing out of dirt!

Stay tuned for the next episode, where you will see the flocking process and the water added to the ruts!  If you can support these kinds of tutorials on my Patreon Page, that would be very helpful!

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Rolling on to Victory!

Some new texture rollers have just been added to my Green Stuff World collection!  The Flagstone, Herringbone and Alien Hive will be fantastic additions, as well as this new version of the Roll Maker!!

I can certainly envision combining the Roll Maker with the Alien Hive texture, along with my existing sci-fi style rollers.

Here's a better look at the textures.  As always, there's a lot of patterns tucked into one roller, so there are no "plain" spots.  This is especially important when using sheets of Sculpey as I do, which are subsequently baked.

Onto the rolling!  Using the Gray Extra Firm Sculpey and the plain roller, I started to form a quick sheet to see which thickness might work best with the Flagstone texture roller.

You can get the Sculpey at any Hobby Lobby or Michales craft store, and even on the Green Stuff World webstore if you are overseas.

Green Stuff World also has 3 roller guides, each one as a different thickness.  These are incredibly helpful, and I use them all the time.  It can be very difficult to keep the same pressure on each side of the roller, even more so when you are creating the large sheets which you will see later in the article.

This Extra Firm Gray Sculpey is the one type of clay that does not get itself stuck into all the tiny crevices of the rollers.  It is a much stronger clay, but you can still break it and carve it like the lighter versions.  I usually avoid the Super Sculpey version, as that is more brittle, and can also turn out rubbery.

The Herringbone pattern is great as well.  My first thought was to use it as a cobblestone road, but it might also do well as exterior wall texture for medieval structures.  Definitely something to try out!

If you want to get an idea of how I work with these sheets once they are baked, I have a number of tutorials here on the blog in the Basing Techniques section.  You can also watch this recent Facebook Live tutorial:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10212356287316393/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

I will be doing another Facebook Live session later tonight, trying out these rollers and a few other items.  The more support I can get on the Patreon Page, the more time I will have to do the live sessions.  I try to experiment as often as possible to make sure and force myself to think of new ideas! :-)

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Objectives

When I learned of the Bolt Action tournament at Little Wars just a few weeks ago, that set off a scramble to prepare.  The army was painted, but I didn't have a display board, nor did I have objective markers.

While I am not sure if they are actually needed, I figured that have the standard 3 objectives on hand might be a wise precaution.  One of them is already set, but I needed 2 more that could cover a few different aspects.  They needed to fit my early war "what if" French army, but later on I wanted them to be potential terrain pieces which could work for both France 1940 and for our Barbarossa campaign.

This meant breaking out the extra firm Gray Sculpey, and seeing if I could get these sculpted, baked and based in a mere 2 hours!!!

The hulls of the Panzer 1 and 2 were a more simple task to create, but the wheel and track assemblies are always much tougher to construct.  I had to save major time, and after reading a book series called PanzerWreks, I discovered that burned out tanks had a tendency to end up on their belly armor buried in the dirt/mud. 

This is due to the rubber on the drive wheels burning off, but more importantly the tortion bars melting.  Once this happened, the weight of the vehicle made the remaining hull sink to the ground.

This was perfect, since it meant that I could set the hulls into the wood filler, as well as the scattered drive wheels and sprockets.  I could also make some very quick and easy folded track lengths, and bury those too!

This alone saved hours of painstaking work on something that was "destroyed".  Yet another reason I did not want to spend very long on this project!

I used my clay extruder/pasta machine to create metal 'plates', which I could cut up with the exacto knife and turn into hatches, hinges, viewports and so on.

I was hoping to keep the hulls intact so that I might even be able to make temporary "complete" wheel/track assemblies in case I needed a working tank, but this part of the vehicle is simple enough to sculpt that I could make more in a pinch.

It is mostly a matter of creating 'blocks' of the Sculpey clay, and cutting away at it to get the desired shapes.

Once the pieces were set into place, I added some more wood glue to cover up bits of the tracks, as well as provide a little more 'grip' for the shattered wheel assemblies.  It was pretty funny to see them sitting at such odd angles, but after looking at dozens of images of wrecks, this is fairly common.

I had a collection of debris from my previous terrain projects (the roads and display board), which made some very nice large rocks and other scatter bits.

The original bases were going to be larger, so that I could potentially have miniatures standing on them, but space on the display board is at a premium.  Also, this is a lot closer to the normal recommended size of Bolt Action objective markers.

These have already been primed, and I will try to paint them in some form of video tutorial.  It might be a facebook live, or an instagram live.  Not quite sure yet!!

As always, any support on my Patreon Page makes it easier to create how to articles such as these, terrain making videos, painting videos, and so on.  It is a lot of fun to do them, but they also add a lot of extra work to every project.

Any support is greatly appreciated!

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

A New Species

Here's a few shots from the Black Heart Models bust that I painted during a live session last week.

It was a lot of fun, experimenting with new colors, in addition to the Mig Ammo Oilbrushers!  This link will take you to that broadcast:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10212698297826442/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

While I could not follow these reference pics exactly, they were a handy guide.  I might still try to do the lacquered effect on the skin, but I have to make sure everything is completely dry.

I used a Badger airbrush on the pedestal base, starting out with light primer colors, and then going over the top of those with a few of the Ghost Tints.  You can see that I emphasized the blue and magenta, as I thought this might be a perfect compliment to all of the greens and tans of the bust.

It was a tricky balance, since the colors on the bust were somewhat muted.  There are some areas that have a deep blue green or dark red, but those are in specifically designated areas.  Using Pthalo Green and Quinadridone Magenta really added some extra punch, very similar to what I do with the Reaper Clear and Liner paints.

I had been waiting a long time to test out these brighter and more intense tones.  This bust was certainly a great candidate!

You can find her on the Black Heart Models webstore here:

http://blackheartmodels.com/products/micro-mania-busts/micromania-sil-species

I will be painting many more of these busts, which I will be turning into various tutorials.  Some of these will be "hard copy" recorded and edited videos available only to my patrons on the Patreon Page:

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Ostfront Opens

Some of you might recall the Barbarossa Board terrain project from last summer.  Well, a few weeks ago it was time to take it out for a spin with a test game for Roy and his Soviets!

There were a number of step by step episodes showing how that was created... Here's one link to the board project:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-cabin-in-woods.html

We tried to keep things fairly basic for this first game, but something that would touch on all aspects of deployment, reinforcements, unit types, and so on.  It was decided to do a Demolition scenario.

Obviously, the Soviets had a bunch of order dice.  There were a number of anti-tank rifle teams, inexperienced squads, NKVD units and Maxim MMG teams.  The T-34/85 is actually a 76, we just had to proxy that.

As the board was made to represent the Pripet Marshes in Ukraine, I knew that the streams and rivers on the board were going to present a significant challenge, especially to the advancing Germans.  It was rough ground for infantry and tracked vehicles... but I made it impassible for wheeled vehicles to keep things more interesting.

That choice of playing the terrain had less to do with the depth of the water, and more about the sloped nature of the river banks.  Also, I had a number of wheeled vehicles, and I did not want to be racing across the board to claim an objective on the second turn ;-)

Commissar Royitsky surveys the field, and informs his troops that they will soon sacrifice themselves for Mother Russia.

The Wermacht troops surged to the first river, getting out of their Opel Blitz truck which could not cross that obstacle.  It was hoped that the SDK 251 rolling up behind them would be enough support to get across the second river!

The air observer continued to hide out inside the lumber mill, trying to figure out where his ground attack planes were..

However, a number of Soviet ant tank rifles had moved away from a potential air strike and into position in the woods which blocked the path to the Red Army base.

While the Luftwaffe aircraft were heard overhead for several hours, they did not make their expected strafing and bombing runs in time... much to the dismay of the German high command!

The troops of the Wermacht would have to use all their skill to utilize the steep river banks as cover to reach that enemy base.

The Soviet tankers detected this movement, and attempted to cut off the advance.  They took up a position in the center of the battlefield, ignoring the autocannons and light artillery of their enemies.  This would allow them to block the central path, which also had the only bridges!!

Behind that was the Machine gun team, which would have to bear the brunt of the eventual air assault.

The Soviet forces were indeed taking a number of casualties.  The squad of green troops had already been dispatched, as had a few of the anti-tank rifle teams.  The heavy Maxim MMG team also met their end to repeated long distance fire from the Panzer II and the SDK 222.

In response to the German "right hook", Commissar Royitsky forced his inexperienced squads across the river.  They were hit by withering fire from troops on the central island, the Opel Blitz and another machine gun team.

The untrained troops wavered a number of times, but Royitsky restored their morale with a few well placed pistol shots to reluctant soldier's heads.

Meanwhile, the German advance to the Red Army base was thoroughly blocked by two fanatical units of NKVD.  Despite the exhortations of their officer, the squads were being gunned down as they struggled in the rivers.

The Hanomag gunner was unable to kill the pesky NKVD in the woods, and eventually the T-34 crew would use their battlefield experience to finally claim the transport vehicle as their first kill.

Once the German squads had been sufficiently ground down, the NKVD felt confident enough to emerge from their forest hideouts to assault the Axis troops.

The German armored support had rapidly moved to the left flank, trying to hold off the Red Army attack on their own base.  Despite all the massive firepower and casualties, the Soviet survivors had reached the German base despite valiant efforts by the Wermacht.

Commissar Royitsky had achieved his goal, at incredible cost.  Will he be able to raise enough new recruits to hold off the next German attack?  Stay tuned as Barbarossa continues!!

I also have my video battle reports:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78AWDqiSgH4