SETTING THE SCENE - part 11 - American G.I. / Fallschirmjager / Winter Railway

It has been over three months since my last post, so my apologies for this and also not giving feedback to your blog posts, although I have still been visiting you all.

Family life had to take priority during November and December and then with a new games room being built in the form of a Log Cabin I was not in a position to take pictures for the blog. That has all changed and now I am back up and running.

The cabin is well insulated and has a superb heating and aircon unit, so ideal for all year round gaming and I have installed 6 x 5ft daylight tubes directly over the table for maximum light when taking photos and gaming. I have lost the all-round backdrop from my old games room but I have made brackets for 5ft backdrops to slot into the table when taking pictures.

I have kept the table the same size 5 x 10ft but I now have more room around the table for socialising. I managed to salvage the old table but I will be making a new mat to go over the top.

I have not had a game in the cabin yet but I will be having a few friends around the beginning of April for a Battle of the Bulge game and there will be a game report to follow.

     
I have been busy with the hobby as you are about to see and I now have all the material I need ready to finish off my book 'SETTING THE SCENE'.

I will start with a couple of extra vignettes that I have done, a simple horse and cart, followed by some Fallschirmjagers on the back of a King Tiger.

 

 

This is quite a famous picture of some Fallschirmjager on the back of a Tiger tank taken at the time of the Ardennes conflict and which I have tried to copy.

 

 

   

 

I have adapted some existing scenery with temporary snow effects, the Chateau converted into Hotel Ardennes, made a load of road and street signs, adapted some more river sections and made a scratch build bridge from a couple of pieces off of a Scalextric set, a winter railway, shell destroyed woods and some large haystacks.

 

 The last two items I was inspired from Al and Adrian Deacon's excellent FOY and STAVELOT game table that they did recently and which has been doing the rounds on the forums and shows. The haystacks are a lot bigger than the ones I originally made a couple of years back and watching the FOY episode on Band of Brothers again, I could see how much bigger they were. My original haystack is on the bottom right.

 

 

I have also finished painting up the American forces and with all the support options, plus the figures for a Rifle or Armoured Rifle Platoon it came in at over 100 x figures. You can see pictures of the figures with the latest batch of terrain as a backdrop.

 

 

 

 

       

 

And for something slightly warmer, experimenting with Jungle terrain bases. A Perry Miniatures 28mm figure for scale.