Don't Be Hasty!

Reading through my ACW scenario books, I see a lot of hastily built defenses. Gettysburg springs to mind on Little Round Top.

I soon realised I haven't got any of these in my terrain box, so I thought I'd make some.

I sawed up some paint mixing sticks to form short, sturdy bases. I also beveled the edges to help with the look.

These are dead easy to make from twigs from the garden. I also mixed in a few plastic tree structures to act as smaller branches.

To tie these all together I will dry brush them white, then add some brown Contrast paints.

Soldiers hunker down behind freshly felled trees to escape the hail of bullets.

A picture from a scenario book from Brad Butkovich.

These little scenery pieces are a sinch to make and will come in handy for almost any period of warfare. American War of Independence comes to mind first, but even WWII and beyond. Well worth an half an hour's messing around.

 Update, I chose to use the Woodland scenics washes in the end. Contrat paint is a little pricey to use on scenery.

The twigs were given a brush of grey to help bring out the textures and details.

A green wash was then added to just add some colour to all the browns.

The green wash is quite subtle but does look realistic.

Update: All flocked with grass and ready for the board.

I went back and added a layer of Light earth flock, as I thought it looked like wood chips. The surrounding ground would be covered in with the stuff after the axes had finished their work.

A really enjoyable little side project that is dead easy to do and very rewarding.

The hornets nest!

The White Wolves

A wolf in sheep's clothing...

Elven arrows find their marks amongst the ravinus ranks.

These wolves have killed and are red in tooth and claw. This group of wolves will join the packs assembled by the great White wolf, to take part in The Battle of the Five Armies.

These northern fell wolves will prove devastating for the lightly armoured men of Esgaroth.

An Elven shieldwall holds off the attacks, killing many with showers of arrows.

 

Skedaddle Bases WIP

 

I saw recently that 1st corp had brought out some new skedaddling figs. This gave me the idea of creating a few bases for Bonnie Blue Flag. 

In BBF, if you roll 10% or less of your fire reaction test, your unit is removed from play. My idea is to create some little bases that can help tell a story.

Some of these are due to a withering fire and there is also a low ammo base too. This is my favourite so I'll be doing more of these. They just help tell the story of why the unit retired from action.

The big question for me was if I stuck them all on the base, can I paint them all at the same time? The answer is yes.

The way I  look at it is, if I can't see it to paint it, then no one else will see it either.

Other examples of running troops.

Some old eBay figs get turned into something useful.

A Union unit takes a devastating volley.

"Where are you going?"

Low on ammunition, fall back. Keep throwing the rocks though!

Update: The Union bases have been painted and coated with Dark tone dip.

"Stand your ground!"

Update: The Union bases have now been flocked. The uniforms have also been given a second coat of Matt varnish to give it a fabric look and feel.

A new smaller flock device has created some nice realistic grass tufts.