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.
Wednesday 30 March 2022
France 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.
Wednesday 9 March 2022
Ruins of Middle Earth
This overgrown ruin been painted and dressed up by me, but it's basically a "ruined monastery" by the German firm Ziterdes. Their buildings are produced in "hard foam", ie expanded polyurethane, like the Hudson and Allen products. That's a specialised, expensive process to set up, but results in an ideal wargames model: strong , light and well-detailed. I have got a lot of trees based on pins these days, and they would look good in and around this ruin, but I wanted to show it clearly in this post.
I suppose this model could work for some historical skirmish games, but to me it is perfect for the Lord Of The Rings landscape, which features the ruins of ages past, some built thousands of years before the main stories.
One more LOTR post to come and then we will be back to real historical subjects.
Sunday 6 March 2022
The Mausoleum of an Ancient King
Here's the second batch of Lord of the Rings-themed modelling. Neither the building nor the statue-lined road were modelled directly on anything from the film or book, but I wanted to make something with the atmosphere of the story, as a scene around which a skirmish could take place.
The other inspiration, for the Mausoleum at least, was spotting a whole series of items in my local Hobbycraft shop, which I couldn't help seeing as the basis for something LOTR-ey. So the main structure is a papier mache box, the dome a polystyrene ball, the curly ornaments were jewellery "findings" and the scrollwork from stickers used for greeting cards.
The statues were cast in plaster, which gives something ideal for distressing to show age and damage. Roadway from Wills cobblestone sheets. Bushes done in my usual way, out of rubberised horsehair and granulated cork.
Tuesday 1 March 2022
The Seeing Seat of Amon Hen
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All wargamers have a "lead mountain", some call it the "pile of shame", comprising all the stuff we bought but haven'...