Borodino for Joy of Six - Defences & Houses

 In just under two weeks time Mike and I will be hosting Borodino 1812 as a participation game at Joy of Six.  I needed to make some defences and some houses - here's how I did it, I hope it encourages you to have a go yourself!

The defences - these consisted of the redoubt and the big and little fleches.  These were very recent earthworks, so needed to be mainly soil with reinforcing timber.  I have some mdf trench sections, so I used these for the timber reinforcement and built up the terrain using lengths of lolly stick, suitably cut to size!

The formers:

Note gun ports cut once formers are finished

Redoubt to the left, Fleches to the right

A close up of the Fleches former

This is what they look like when polyfilla has been applied, followed by covering in basing sand, painted and highlighted with earth colours.  Even tough it was summer I reckon the earth would still be dark.

Here are the finished articles - matt varnished and flocked.  

The Houses Pendraken produce a very nice 6mm Russian Church, so I needed 8 more houses to be able to fight the two Russian scenarios in the Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles Scenario book.  This is the basic shape for a 1 storey building.

The next step is to clad the building in logs - in this case 0.4 mm round plastic strip.  Half way through the process I switched to 0.4mm half round strip.  The roofs got strip as well.  All of the buildings have a 2mm strip of stone to simulate the base that the building sits on.

They got a blast of primer and then a coat of acrylic black.  The church is from Pendraken and is also a simple wooden building.

Here's what they look like finished, basically lighter and lighter shades of grey to get that weathered silver timber look.

The most painstaking bit is the creation of the log walls, which need individual strips gluing on, but it doesn't take too long per house.

 

Battlefield Accoutrements - Bridges 2

 Over Christmas I finished off most of my bridges, as described earlier in this post - Bridges 1 and got them table ready.  I've added some rivers and troops for effect:

1.  Bridge in good condition.

Napoleon views his troops as they cross the river.

The same scene with a "hasty bridge" - created by your engineers and sappers from whatever was to hand....  handy for crossing the Berezina!

Finally, retreating armies often burnt bridges in order to cover their retreat.  So here is a suitably burnt bridge!  

 The troops are Baccus 6mm on 1" square Warbases 2mm mdf.  The river sections were made by S&A scenics - I got them last year then moved house, so they have only just had their first combat outing...

Building Wagons 3 - Austrian supply wagons 3

 After a hiatus caused by job searches, new job induction and many rainy days, I have finally got my wagons based, varnished & flocked.  Based on 1" x 1.5" 2mm mdf bases.  So, here's the eye candy:

1. Supply wagon, no spare wheel.

2. Supply wagon, spare wheel.

3. Mobile Forge.  Horses led by the "man holding a barrel" from Baccus AWL01 - sporting a leather work apron, a receding hairline and a waistcoat (hot work, being a smith!).

Some group shots:

Finally, what an Austrian supply convoy might look like...  heading for the bridges and towns to just, well...,  get in the way (as usual).

I trust that this inspires you to have a go at making your own.  I'm really pleased with the results!

Buildings Update 2 - German Barn

I wanted some buildings for my Napoleonic games and so decided to construct a barn.  A trawl of the internet found a blog on German buildings (Yes!) with lots of pictures of buildings both preserved, in use as barns and converted to something else.  You can check out the blog here German Barns by Maggie Blanck I can only recommend it as inspirational.

I built the barn from card (using white glue) which I then covered in brick plastic card (super glued to the card).  For walls and roof I used N gauge brick wall and tiled roof sheets from Slaters Plastikard. The roof was shaped from card and covered with tiles plasticard.  I added framing from plastic rod and added doors.  The barn was based on mdf from Warbases and painted with GW Citadel paints. 

This barn is not based on one particular example, it is an amalgam of buildings to give the effect I wanted.  

I'll also mention Jim Bibbly blog and Dan Hodgson Reveille Painting who regularly post pictures of their really attractive and detailed model buildings.  Their work inspired me to give it a go!

So, here is the finished barn, next to some BBB based Austrians (on 1" x 1" bases).  

The barn probably needs some magnetic strip underneath, both to give it a bit of weight and to raise it so the ground level matches the troop bases.  It also needs a bit of grass!