Dismounted Cavalry & Horse Holders ACW.

Over the weekend I finally got around to painting these figures that I have had sitting on the unpainted lead pile for a couple of years.

 It made a nice change from making terrain and finishes off my small ACW collection. All the figures are from Perry Miniatures.

   
Here they are mixed in with my Perry plastic figures.

SETTING THE SCENE (part 3) Hedgerows & Trees for Winter & Summer.

It has been a while since my last post and part of the reason for this was the amount of terrain I have been making, 140 x trees and lots of hedges.

There is 88 x Pine and 52 x deciduous trees and I have used some of the Deciduous trees along with most of the hedges for my summer terrain.

Although 'Setting The Scene' will primarily be a Winter Theme, I will also include in the back of the book the summer versions of 'how to make' trees, hedges, flexible roads, terrain mat and anything else that I do between now and getting the book finished.

Before I go any further with this post I would just like to show you some superb figures and vehicle that Nick over at Moitereisbuntewelt.blogspot has done for me, in exchange for some of my terrain.

I just need to do the snow basing to the figures and snow effects to the half track but I couldn't resist including them in some staged shots later on in this post.

For more details of these, visit Nick's excellent blog over at

http://moitereisbuntewelt.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/6th-ahpc-vi-submission-28mm-us-winter.html

Nick has also kindly done a painting guide for the figures at http://moitereisbuntewelt.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/us-winter-infantry-colour-guide.html

Back to the terrain and here is the latest batch.

I thought it would be nice to build the trees into the hedgerow, rather than have them separate as I already have individually based trees. Some of the separate hedges are from 'Last Valley' which I have re flocked to blend in with the hedgerows that I have made.

Summer version first.

  
Winter version.

A few staged shots with Nicks superb American troops and halftrack.

General Purpose Terrain Mat, Roads & Fields.

I will be going to Normandy in June with some friends and as we are leaving our wives behind, it will be a full week of military history with a little beer and wine in the evenings to help us relax after the many miles of walking during the day.

We will be starting with the beaches and then over the course of the week, we plan on working inland. We are staying in a rustic Normandy farmhouse set in typical Bocage countryside and is set central for visiting as much of the area as possible but is quite rural. Due to its location we will probably not be eating out every night so on those occasions, we plan on playing a couple of games of Chain of Command in the evenings along with a couple of bottles of wine to help us with making those tactical decisions.

We thought it would be ideal to try and recreate part of a particular action of some place that we had visited that day, onto the table top, having the benefit of seeing the actual terrain up close of what was actually fought over.

Between us, we had to decide what each of us would bring and what scale we would play the game in. We opted for 20mm as one of the lads, Steve Lygo has a vast WW2 collection in this scale of figures and vehicles, plus it would take up less room than 28mm transporting it in the car. John Warren will be bringing along some 20mm buildings, trees and hedges and I said I will provide the terrain mat and roads.

John stayed at the farmhouse last year and informs me that there is not a suitable table to game on, so I have purchased a couple of fold up pasting tables from a DIY store which won't take up too much room in the car and will give us a playing area of just under 6 x 4 foot.

Having recently made a Snow Mat and flexible roads, I decided to do the same for the Normandy table, making the mat 6 x 5 foot, so I could also use it with my existing 10 x 5 foot table. Also the mat rolls up, keeping storage space down in the back of the car. Hopefully we will have enough room to be able to take some clothes with us for the week?????

Whilst making the terrain mat and roads, I also made a few fields, these were really just test pieces before making the bigger mat and I also promised John I would make him a few fields for his Napoleonics that he is doing in a smaller scale.

I also just realised that I will have to do some flexible river/streams ready for Normandy and will include a step by step guide on methods and materials for these, along with the summer mat, roads and fields in the back of my 'Setting the Scene' book that I am working on.

Flexible roads and fields, ideal for following the contours of your hills.

                      
I have placed a few items underneath the terrain mat to give an impression of rolling countryside and the mat is thick enough that it doesn't crease and the contours are gradual, which is more ideal for placing troops.

To give you an idea of scale, I have placed a few 28mm Perry ACW figures on the table.

With the flexible roads on the table, along with some 28mm Warlord Games, Bolt Action figures and vehicles.