FoW Eastern Front terrain

After recently enjoying some MidWar games set on the Eastern front, I realised I had another gap in my terrain selection. I had no suitable looking buildings, as all my buildings are themed for the western front in Europe.

Also following on from the linear terrain walls I had in my last post, I decided some fences should be considered, as these again offer subtly differing rules to both walls and hedges.

So once again I set to, with MDF and balsa...

I roughed out the basic outer shape of 4 buildings in MDF, two single storey and 2 double storey.

I then clad these in balsa and scored in a plank pattern, used some match stick for door and window frames on the smallest building.

I completed the smallest building first and it took nearly all day to do this one building, mostly due to the fiddly nature of the windows.

I cast about for a quicker way to make the windows, and reverted to the plastic crochet mesh I used previously in my 'pirate world' 28mm scale buildings.

Roofs were made that would be lift off variety, and the double storey buildings had an insert made for the second floor that could be lifted out, allowing troops to be placed in both levels.

I wanted a simple timbered look as this was how I imagined a lot of their rustic buildings being constructed.
The forest zone of Russia having plentiful wood...This image was actually reinforced the other night watching TV and of all things the SKY Travel channel showed one of the episodes of "Worlds Greatest Motorcycle Rides" ... and this particular episode had our intrepid rider exploring Russia. One of the places he stopped off to visit was a wooden church on an island on a lake, and it struck me instantly that these wooden buildings I was busy making were going to look right!

A German column drives by this farming community

Lift off roof and second floor:

Troops can be placed inside on both ground floor and 1st floor.

  

As you can also see from above terrain I made a load of fence sections too, also out of scored balsa and mounted on lolly sticks again.

In the game, fences provide routine cover and concealment but not 'bullet proof', and whilst slow going, they do not cause bogging checks.

Finally as part of my recent terrain work, I made a bunch of dug in markers. I copied this idea from mate Paul.

They are simply made from the foam inserts from the blister packs the models come in. A hole is cut out the foam to fit the models base. The foam in then smeared and painted with a sand /paint /PVA glue mixture . Once dry, the sponge foam goes rigid and can be painted further and flocked.

Well enough for today, I have XXX Corp reinforcements  to paint up...

Flames of War - terrain - Western Europe

Well I'm back! Father enjoyed his visit with us, and we had an excellent time together. More whiskey was consumed than was probably sensible, but thats what holidays are about!

I did manage to get a little work done while he was here. I can't sit and paint indoors when dads outside enjoying the weather, but I did find it OK to take figures outside to sit and trim in the sun, while chatting and quaffing the odd foaming ale or two... ;-)

Dad also took a weekend break from us in the middle of his holidays to visit an old school friend of his who now lives in Oamaru, in the South Island.

So while he was away, I took the opportunity to improve some of my 15mm scale terrain for my Flames of War gaming. Its all aimed mostly for the Western Europe theatre, so Normandy etc.

Whilst visiting my local store (Macks Track) I found a small set of plastic fence sections that I thought looked about the right scale. I also grabbed some bags of various coloured clump foliage to improve the look of my hedges.

Fences

Hedgerows

Above you can see the fences and hedgerows. They were all based on lolly sticks (AKA ice-block sticks). The gates were made from 0.8mm balsa sheet. The gates posts are two lengths of matchstick glued together.

I also realised after some of games against my local Yank opponent (Brett) that I needed something to slow up his fast charging Americans, so I started off to make some minefields and barbed wire. I know you can buy pre-made, but I knew I could make them cheaper myself!

Plucky commandos face minefield and barbed wire obstacles

Barbed wire

Minefield

Both barbed wire and minefield are on 3mm mdf base. The wire used, was copper wire, stripped from an old piece of electrical flex. Two lengths were twisted together in a drill to make the barbed wire, and this was then coiled round a pencil. The supports for the minefield wire are just chopped up cocktail stick. The barbed wire supports are L-section plastic strut cut to length and glued together. I also messed about putting three pieces of this together for beach obstacles.
All were painted and flocked to suit

I also needed some good looking buildings. I had pondered about making my own, and had made one a while ago as a trial exercise. Though do-able, I did find making buildings at this scale very fiddly. I cast around the web for suitable buildings and some of the best I liked the look of, were from the Total Battles Miniatures range. I grabbed a small house, via Maelstrom Games to see what they were like in the flesh, or resin!

I managed to get it finished today. You can buy them all ready painted to go, but the price goes up dramatically! So I bought unpainted. Out of the box, the resin piece needed a fair bit of work to tidy it up.  The 'flash' was trimmed off with a hobby scalpel, and a dremel rotary tool. After that there were a great many small holes in the cast, that I filled with GW's new liquid Greenstuff, a very nice and useful product! :-)

Heres how it painted up:

Total Battle Miniature's - House

...and from the rear

Commandos skirt the building...

I have ordered more of these buildings from Maelstrom and await their arrival. I've ordered the small outhouse, cafe, and church.

Heres a couple of pics of the hedges and fences in action, alongside my recently 'tarted' up ploughed fields sections. (Note the hedges in these pics still had to have the base flocked with static grass. But you get the effect. I'm rather pleased with it.)

Also note these hedge are meant to be 'regular' hedges, and are not considered Bocage. I'll do some bocage later on...

What was once a quiet corner of Normandy...

...now awakens to the rumble of German armour!

None of this sadly counts for AHWPC but no matter, I have also made progress on my halftracks and command figures, which will follow in another blog post.