Hand-Built History
Wednesday, 11 May 2022
More 1940 French
Saturday, 7 May 2022
French Guns of 1940
Squeezing six chunky figures around such a tiny gun led to some careful though about basing. I put each figure on a 1p coin base, but one or two crew are modelled on the same base as the gun. The latter base was made in what I call "amoeba style", so carrying the gun, but cut away in curves which allow the crew to be placed in close around it.
Monday, 25 April 2022
The Emperor's Cannon
Friday, 15 April 2022
A Nice Surprise
I checked my email earlier this evening to find a nice surprise had arrived. Some of you might recall that back in December I lamented some models having "got away" without ever being photographed. One of them was a German village I made for a friendly customer called Jonathon Marcus, who was for many years an international correspondent for the BBC. Well Jonathon came across my blog, took the trouble to photograph this model and send me the results, which I very much appreciate. I enjoyed poring through these images and being reminded of what I had packed into this model, half of which I had forgotten.
This was about the last piece I made for a customer, probably in about 2010. It represents a village in central Germany: Hesse or Franconia maybe, though many would be happy to call it "generic Germany". This representation wouldn't be out of place from the late Middle ages to 1945. It could be used on the table as the two sides of one village street or else two smaller "village units". There are three houses, a barn, a church and a bunch of rustic features around them.
Tuesday, 5 April 2022
Chateau MDF
Another laser-cut MDF kit. tarted up for skirmish gaming. This chateau is by Sarissa precision, still available and modestly priced. It's a model you see in a lot of skirmish games, and rightly so. Nit-picking types like me would say that in size terms this isn't really big enough for a chateau, more what the French call a "maison bourgeoise", but never mind. As well as WWII skirmish, I thought this structure wouldn't be out of place in a 1920's Chicago gangster game. I see it with a sign proclaiming the "Hotel de Luxe" or something equally cheesy!
One of the nicest features of this kit as it comes is the window and door surrounds, the kind of thing that laser-cut MDF does best. I did improve most of the other features, adding characteristic tall chimneys, stonework corners ("quoins") and better wall and roof textures.Frome the side, the chimneys are very prominent, as they always are on a chateau. The car is a slightly bigger scale than the building or the figure; it's about 1/43 scale, from someone like Solido. I had bought it cheap along with some French 1/48 military models from Gaso.line. It looks the part as one of the many thousands of civilian cars requisitioned to mobilise the French army in 1940. The badge on the door is that of a Moroccan Tirailleur regiment. Three such units made up the hard-as-nails Division Maroccaine, just about the toughest formation in this unjustly maligned army. If you can see it at all, the badge comprises a mosque and palm trees over the Etoile Cherifienne, symbolising the Sultanate of Morocco.
Wednesday, 30 March 2022
France 1940
Hello again, folks. Back after a few weeks when my head has been in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. This culminated in a re-fight of the Battle of Wissembourg, that was more notable for research of the scenario than the quality of its terrain, I regret to say. We made do with some fairly old scenic items that were not of the standard you expect from HBH! Later in the year I hope to address that, but for now we have photos from the next-but-one showdown between France and Germany, that of May 1940.
Saturday, 12 March 2022
A Breech and Some Rocks
Here ends my posting of Lord of the Rings models, with two different subjects. We have a breeched fortress wall, and some, ahem, scatter terrain.
Wanting to do siege games my friends and I bought the old Games Workshop "mighty fortress" kit, injection moulded in styrene. The whole thing was constructed but only painted up in a basic way, so I didn't think it was particularly worth photographing. However, you you used to be able to buy separate wall and tower sections, so I went to some trouble to model a breeched wall section, as seen here. The painting isn't really up to the standard of the modelling, because it wouldn't have matched the rest of the structure. I built the broken wall as masonry outer faces with a rubble filling, the way massive walls are commonly constructed.
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The first post was something of a test run, but thanks to those of you who have commented so kindly already. I'd like to take this oppor...