Breakout hit!

Yes, there have been a lot of Memoir '44 posts lately.  My apologies for that!  Most of the miniatures work I am doing is all prepping of miniatures, and not terribly picturesque.

Also, every day begins and ends with scenes like this:

To keep from going completely insane, Rich has been stopping by for a few quick sessions of Memoir '44.  This time around, we tried a campaign.

I think they are structured quite well.  If one side wins a game, then that effects which fight you do next.  There are also pre and post game rolls which are affected by the result from a previous game, and so on.  Wonderful!

This was the set up for Game One: Panzer Lehr Counter Attack.  Rich would be playing Germany.

The American G.I's are bracing for what could be a devastating assault by the forces of the 3rd Reich.

Tank ace Whittman even appeared on the battlefield!  His "007" tank has a huge bull's eye on it...

All of the German infantry in this match is elite, which means they can move fast and hit hard!

The Americans are hunkered down in villages and hedgerows... waiting...

My initial card draw.  This is a perfect balance of starting cards.  Lots of activity in all sectors, along with a very crucial "AMBUSH" card, which I will save for the inevitable surge by the Waffen SS and Gestapo units.

My pre game roll gave me mobile artillery, which you can see in reserve.  This is very significant, as this stuff can move into a better position, and then hammer those advancing units.  Line of sight and terrain are no impediments to artillery!

Onto the board!  A simple first move, just getting everything in place for the next turn.

Whittman attempts a bold advance with his Tiger Tank.

The Americans respond in force, but the shells bounce harmlessly off the powerful behemoth's armor.

Looks like a big fight is gonna happen here!

The Americans attack once again, forcing the Germans to retreat.

Stay tuned for the next episode, where we see furious action all over the battlefield!

The towering table of terrain

Now I know why I have been having such a hard time finding a place to put all the terrain I have made!  In fact, this is not even the entire collection.

Much of this was made for the terrain videos.  The finished obelisk is not there, along with some other buildings.

You also have to count the 5 display boards I have made.  Those take up even more space!

All this does present plenty of game playing options!

It was pretty wild seeing this all in one place, however! :-)

From hedgerows to hills to forests

On to the rest of the needed terrain hexes for the troops!  As I mentioned, You will need at least 4-5 hexes of each terrain type.

Hills were easy enough.  I varied between 2 sheets of cork and one bulletin board cork thickness.

The rocks, gravel and flock were getting everywhere, of course!

Forests were also needed.  To make them as different as possible from the hedgerows, I decided to use some of the vast amounts of dried foliage that remains from the Golden Days of dioramas.

Back then, I developed a method of anchoring the trees using green stuff.  A spot of glue on the bottom, and it would be very secure!

You can see the progress at that stage.

A bunch of nice terrain hexes, which would make playing the games not only more cinematic, but a whole lot easier.  Identifying what unit is in which terrain became so much easier!  You can survey the battlefield and take in in much more rapidly... making the game faster to play as well.

A finished piece with painted minis vs what we started with.  A big difference, I would say!

The trees have been used quite a bit, and nothing has broken yet!

Now almost all of the infantry are painted!

Not long from now, it will be time to move on to the Brits from the Mediterranean set!!

Between the hedges

No, this is not about Bulldogs football!

It's about the roughest, toughest terrain in all of Memoir '44... hedgerows!

Those buggers are nasty on so many levels.  To make them was not so easy, either. To leave enough room for the 4 figures that need to fit inside, and leave room for sandbags around the edge of the hex, is not easy at all.  

To create a wall to glue some foliage, I cut up some left over matboard.  This would be thin enough, but also strong.  I super glued it, and supported it with some gravel around the edge.

Once all this set up, I had to to paint all the walls and gravel.

First layers applied.  I assumed that I was going to have to paint the walls a variety of green shades, since the foliage would never cover 100%.

I thought it would make things easier if I glued some flock first.  My only concern was the possibility that the subsequent layers of glue would not stick as well to the flock.

Those fears proved to be unfounded.  The two types of clumping foliage worked very well!  However, I had to break it down into some very tiny clumps.  As usual, I super glued a lot  of it to my fingers!

That reminded me of the days when I used to do dioramas all the time that involved the foliage.

I finished off the rest of the base with more foliage, including on the soldiers.  I was liking the results a lot!

Now those guys are in some serious cover!  -2 dice for tanks shooting at them for sure :-)

Much more terrain needed to be made, including some more city tiles.

It takes at least 4-5 of each terrain type to get through a typical Western Front scenario.

So, that means lots more to do!  Stay tuned.

The reclamation continues

There was much work to be done on the Legion of Everblight warbeasts.

The cooling lava effect was entering its closing stages.

However, before the final dark colors were added to the lava, I wanted to establish the blue colors of the skin.

The idea was fire and ice, so now comes the 'ice' part.

These blues would be very intense, high chroma.  They would also be relatively light.

It was not exactly easy to work around the lava bits, but I still used my trusty filbert brush to create some increasingly light colors on the upper muscles.

We were working very very rapidly here.  The idea was to establish a general sense of the colors, not worrying about very detailed stuff.

Once we felt that the blues were mostly where we wanted, I went back to the lava... adding even more blue and black to the mix.  I also decided that the bottom jaw also needed to be dark, so that the lighting effect in the mouths would look better.

Constant adjustments indeed!  Now it was time for the other warbeast... and getting around those lava effects would be a real beast!

Once I had gotten around all the the lava effects, it was time to try and lighten up certain points.

Again, a big challenge.  But it was nice to see things begin to come together!

One of the main reasons I held off on the darkest lava color here was the knowledge that I was going to accidentally hit the carapace over and over, especially on the tips.

Now the darks are added, and the hot looks that much hotter!

There will still be 2-4 more steps on the lava effects, but it is coming along!

Side by side, the two big dudes!!

Now the new theme and colors of the entire army have been set.  Sometimes, that is the biggest challenge of any army.

The next time I get over to Joe's house, we will start working on these guys again... stay tuned!