Bumping up post count

After spending last couple of days on preparation for next weekend’s game, I feel I deserve to bump up the post count with this “short and sweet” troop review.

On a slightly serious note though… I’ve been experimenting for a couple of years now with how to best identify individual untis on the battlefield. Another issue I’ve been playing around with is how much information to press into those identification markers. This is my conclusion so far:

• Unit name is pretty much the only information players use during the game. Initial number of figures, unit quality and such… I get the impression that it’s either not noticed or ‘discarded’ by players while the game goes on.
• It seems to be of help to enable both sides to easily identify all units, also those of the opponent.
• Being a staunch believer in color coding, this time around I added differently colored frames to the labels. Frames identify individual brigades.
• Labels are somewhat labour-intensive, but they have an added bonus of easy identification of units in after action reports.

Pictures below show “troop review” of forces that will participate in next week’s game. It will be yet another scenario from the book that keeps on giving – “Heartland” scenario booklet from Caliver Books.

Najewitz Little Farmhouse and barn–ready for action

Seems like every single post I make here starts with “It’s been a while since the last post…”, but this time around it’s really been a while since the last post! Funnily enough not because stuff isn’t moving forward on wargaming front, mind you! The fact is that April, which didn’t even earn a single post here, was quite busy and fruitfull, thank you very much. But “real life” made it impossible for me to make any pictures and let’s face it, what’s the point posting something without pictures, right?

And so, here are finally some pictures, this time around from the finished Najewitz buildings that figured prominently and ‘in natura’ in my previous post. By now, they’re finished, painted and ready for featuring in those Chain of Command games I keep planning for.

Since those buildings are no longer available on the market, I will limit myself to saying that they’re very nice, but also very labour-intensive – couple of hours at the minimum needs to be spent on cleaning them up, glueing, sanding and filling. “Ready for deployment out of the box’ they’re not. But… once finished, they do look quite presentable and I look forward to putting them on the gaming table!

As for their preparation, they’re certainly a learning experience. I’ve cut some corners this time around and, after priming them in grey, I dealt with the interior quickly and efficiently with help of light cream paint in a spray can from Montana’s Gold product line. I’ve recently remembered about the existence of Montana and their spray cans and now I absolutely adore them. For those unfamiliar with the company, they produce spray cans for grafitti paintings. Wide range of colors, matte finish and very durable. Two coats were more than enough to paint the inside of my buildings. If you can find them, give them a try!

Exterior of the houses was painted with more traditional paints and techniques. Humbrol enamels were used on the stone barn. I tried to vary the shades of brown and do some wet-blending, but as usual I’ve chickened out in regard of palette and the end result is pretty uniform and boring. Oh well, maybe next time… The farm house was painted with… acrylic wall paint bought at local DIY shop. Perfect coverage and a whole lot cheaper than stuff from GW, Vallejo and such! I finished everything off with some Vallejo washes, just to dirt things up a bit.

Here are the promised pics, hope you’ll like them!

Najewitz french buildings, second batch–under construction

It’s middle of March, Saturday noon and outside it’s just friggin’ cold! Makes you wonder when this global warming thing arrives to Sweden! Oh well, this yet another cold snap gave me the opportunity to give some attention to another set of Najewitz 20mm buildings.

I’ve put together a the small farm building and stone barn couple of weeks ago. Now, I’ve spent almost three hours on making them presentable with help of “buckets” of filler and sanding sticks. I have to be honest, I am not a very happy bunny right now. Sure, they look quite spiffy, but the fit of individual components leaves a lot to wish for.

Anyway, here they are, ready for primer.

They’re bringing carts now!???

Well, it would seem so, Saxons have finally figured out that carts and loot fit together as hand in a glove!

Seriously though… one of generic raid scenarios in ‘Dux Britaniarum’ requires three carts of some sort. With this in mind, I’ve had a quick look around for something suitable. Offering from 4Ground was very much to my liking – their cart is made from laser-cut MDF, thus cheap as dirt and shipping it over the pond wouldn’t cost me my shirt neither. Also, those guys at 4Ground seem to be clever chaps and realize that something must pull those carts around. And so, they are kind enough to offer suitable draft oxen minis, sold in pairs.

Don’t remember how long it took for the envelope (yes, envelope, apparently 4Ground took the page from IKEA’s operations manual), but it didn’t take many days before my carts arrived to me. Here’s what I’ve got, in three sets.

First a couple of words about oxen minis. They were all ‘business’, but required some serious cleaning up and putty to cover up some serious holes in the casts. Also, as can be seen in the pictures, heads are separate and the fit isn’t the best I’ve ever seen. Once the heads and bodies were glued together, it became apparent that something had to be done about the gaps around the neck. Lucklily that’s what green stuff is made for.

Carts, on the other hand, could be assembled without any problems. In fact, I glued them together while watching a movie and was done before it was finished. Really simple assembly was made even easier by a nice, easy to understand manual.

The paint job was also a pretty straightforward job. With carts, I started with couple of base coats of burnt umber. Then I proceeded with successively lighter coats of burnt umber and white. I finished with couple of black, brown and green washes.

With oxen, I first found couple of reference pictures of the real things – I was a bit surprised over variety of “cammos” that oxen come in. In the end, I went with dark brown/cream white “ambush scheme”. I’ve also decided to play around with paints and made a very first attempt at wet blending. Not sure how successful I was, but I think I managed “game table” quality. But what do I know, judge for yourselves.

Anyway… I must say that I am quite happy with my first experience of laser-cut MDF and 4Ground. If you need a couple of carts to move your loot quicker around the table, I can recommend this stuff as affordable option.

Najewitz French Café and garage

Couple of posts back I’ve posted a short note about starting work on a couple of 1/72 buildings from Najewitz. Well, they’ve been done for quite some time by now, I just haven’t had time to take the snapshots. And here they are!

My verdict about the kits? Construction was pretty straightforward, although I didn’t manage to get the walls to fit with each other 100 percent. In fact, the ‘hacksaw’ joints were quite prominent and even with generous dose of filler I didn’t manage to get perfect result. I have however to clarify that the issue could have been self-inflicted. Initially I tried to glue the parts together with plastic glue and was a bit surprised when it had no effect whatsoever. In slight panic mode, I switched over to super-glue and that worked much better, but I rushed the job and wasn’t very careful with ensuring 90 percent angles between individual walls.

Most problematic part turned out to be the roofs, or more precisely, getting the right angle there. I completely botched the job with garage roof and as a result there is a significant gap in the “joint” between the roof and the building.

Painting consisted of couple of steps. After a base coat of black from a spray can (big mistake, which I will not make again), I painted both buildings with actual acrylic wall paint. Let me tell you, those sample cans from DIY shops are worth their weight in gold, when compared with Vallejo or GW paints! Details like doors and window frames were painted with craft acrylics. Roof of the café building was airbrushed with Tamiya brown paint, while that of garage was painted with some off-green Vallejo paint. Not much consistency with techniques here…

As first step in weathering process, I gave both buildings a generous wash of Vallejo’s dark brown wash. Next, I used enamel washes to do some dirt and rain water streaks. Drain pipes were darkened with a couple of layers of different dark brown and grey washes.

The big although perhaps irrelevant question (after all, Najewitz isn’t selling these kits anymore) – are they any good and are they worth the cost? As for “any good”, you may judge for yourself, but personally I’d say ‘heck, yeah!’. They’re perfect for any WWII scenario in France or neighbourhood! In regard of value for money; here I must say that it kind of depends. You get two nice, but relatively simple kits for 25 Euro. With a bit of effort and investment of 6-8 hours I could probably crank out something similar on my own and here’s the big question – is the price worth a working day? To be honest, I don’t know.

Anyway, here are the pictures, hope you enjoy them.

1/72 Normandy buildings from Najewitz Modelbau

Well… this post was supposed to be a short and sweet introduction to buildings from Najewitz Modelbau, but I’m afraid I will kick it of with a rant. Over last couple of years, I’ve bought a grand total of five sets from these guys and was extremly pleased with the stuff I’ve received. Beautiful buildnings, minimal assembly, prompt delivery times. Of course when the packages from them arrived, I admired my new ‘precious’ and then placed them in my ‘stash’. Today however, I’ve came to realization that if my Chain of Command project is to ever lift of ground, I would have to force myself and actually put couple of these buildings together. With a sigh (another terrain project!), I dug up the boxes from Najewitz and picked one of the house at random to work with.

After I have washed the components and took the snapshots, I wanted to take a quick look at Najewitz’s site to check what they called this particular item. Well, the site is still there… but all the stuff they sold is gone. From what I can understand, the firm has switched focus and is now selling files with design plans for 3D printouts of buildings. I won’t lie, I am quite annoyed by this move. I get it that a company is free to do as it pleases when it comes to its activities. But at the same time, making lateral move like this, without much of a warning, is leaving me at least in a bit of a lurch.

On with the ‘first look’ at one of Najewitz 20mm Normandy buildings then, although I’m not sure there is much point in it anymore since it and all of its brethren seems to be no longer available on the market. Anyway… the building I will be working with is actually a set of two buildings – a café and a small garage. They’re made of plastic. The walls are about 5mm thick, while the roof sheets are bit thinner, maybe 3mm. There is minimal flash in some of the windows, but otherwise the casts are very crisp.

Construction should be simple – one just has to put the ‘teeths’ together and ensure that the angle between the walls is 90 degrees. The fit of components is pretty good, but I suspect some filler will be needed to hide the ‘tooth’ outlines at the corners. Roofs may be a bit more tricky and will probably need some sort of reinforcement, as I intend to make them removable.

Timecast latex rubber rivers

Since this article is a ‘pure’ review of a commercial product, let’s start with the mandatory declaration of independence – I am in no way associated nor sponsored by Timecast Models. Thus, this review is an expression of my personal opinion as private consumer and wargamer.

Allright, with these rather official preliminaries completed, let’s get on with it.

Couple of years ago I’ve decided to ‘migrate’ my terrain from GHQ-s styrofoam hexagons to ‘conventional’ DIY terrain boards. Major reason for this move was my wish to simplify the setup and keep as much of it (hills, woods, rivers, ditches, hedhes and so on) as removable, flexible stand-alone pieces.

At the same time, Timecast Models released their roads and rivers system, made out of silicone rubber. That in itself wasn’t anything spectacular, many companies make similar terrain pieces. But two things caught my attention in regard of this particular product range. First, Timecast Models made rivers came in four different widths that could be connected together with dedicated ‘connector’ bits into integrated waterway system. Second, Timecast complemented their product with variety of resin bridges and fords. In other words, their product line struck me immediately as a complete and expandable solution for waterways. And that, ladies and gents, isn’t something one can often say when it comes to wargaming terrain.

My first (and so far only) order included enough straight and meandering river sections of smallest width to provide continous river of about 2 meters. I’ve also ordered all available sets of fords, connecting bits and river bends. Samples of what came in the box are shown below.

As can be seen in the pictures, the rivers and fords are made of brown, flexible rubber-like material. You can easily cut and trim individual pieces with a pair of scissors.

Before painting and flocking, I washed the whole lot in lukewarm water with some dishwasher detergent. Every bit was gently scrubbed with a toothbrush, rinsed in cold water and left to dry. It was probably a bit of an overkill, but better be overly cautious than running into problems later on with some chemical residues left-over from mouldning process messing with the paint.

On with the painting then… I kept things extremly simple here and started with painting the riverbanks with dark-brown acrylic wall paint from Flügger. Water surface was painted with dark-blue acrylic artist’s paint from Amsterdam. I know, I know, not very realistic, but I like my rivers and ponds blue. Next, I tried to add some shine to the water surface with help of blank acrylic varnish, but I can’t say this step had a lot of effect. Finally, I’ve stuck some flock on top of river banks with thinned PVA glue. And that was that.

Couple of comments about painting process. First and foremost – the paint seems to stick to the rubber material used for these terrain pieces… and stays there! This is more than I can say about my silicon roads from Total Battle Miniatures. Yes, you can peel it of if you scratch it forcefully with fingernail or something sharp, but the paint doesn’t peel of on its own if you bend the ‘bands’. That’s a good thing. Second, the flock I’ve glued on with the PVA will probably rub off with time. But that’s no biggie, I’ll just reflock if I feel it’s necessary. Finally, I feel it’s a good ocassion to repeat the advice I keep hammering on this blog – if you value your money, do not use modelling paints for your terrain pieces. Vallejo, Army Painter, Games Workshop, it doesn’t matter which brand you use, their pricing is insane and wasting their product on terrain pieces will cost you a pretty penny. For large terrain pieces, use artist’s paints that come in huge tubes, or better yet, take a trip to your DIY market and find their paint section. They usually sell half litre sample jars that will last you forever, for price of two GW paint pots and carry color ranges that will make all modelling paint ‘systems’ look puny.

Oh yes, one last thing. I’ve included couple of resin bridges that were suitable for those rivers. I still haven’t painted them, but I think it’s only fair to included couple of snapshots of how they fit together with the rest of  the ‘system’.

Overall, my initial impression of Timecast’s river system is very positive. They’re made of what seems to be durable, flexible material. Acrylic paint and varnish sticks well on them and they look the part once painted. Addition of dedicated bridges and possibility to integrate different river widths into single ‘system’ is in my opinion a stroke of genius and was the factor that convinced me to go with this product. So, for the moment at least, I can’t but enthusiastically recommend it to anyone in need of simple but effective representation of rivers on wargaming table.

Hedge test piece

Once again, going where everyone has been before. After watching a couple of tutorials on Youtube, I’ve ordered couple of packs of coconut fibre. Here in Sweden the easiest way (actually the only way, it would seem) to get hold of them is in small packs intended for nest bedding for birds and critters.

OK, you wonder, why should I care? Well, as it turns out, coconut fibre works pretty well as base for hedges of different sizes. And hedges, or to be more specific, boccage hedges is something I will need meters and meters of for my future Chain of Command campaigns.

For this first trial, I just wanted to see how hard it would be to work with the stuff. As it turns out, not hard at all. First, I took a wide lollipop (3cm wide) stick and sawed of the rounded edges. I didn’t bother with painting or flocking it, as it was quick and dirty proof of concept piece. Next, I pinched off a handful of coconut fibre and glued it onto the stick with hot glue. A bit of trimming was necessary to give the lump of fibre appropriately ‘hedgy’ look. Finally, I blasted the thing with spray adheseve and sprinkled the thing with Classic Flock from Noch. Couple of minutes later I repeated the last step, just to give the hedge a bit more ‘bushy’ appearance.

And that’s it, this is the result of this first trial, which by the way took all of 7-8 minutes.

FOr no reason whatsoever

I think that given enough time, every wargamer jumps into a period or game system because this or that miniature range is just “so good”! I’ve been there a couple of times myself. But… how many of you have started a new project because of terrain, or to be more specific, paper buildings?!

Allright, perhaps ‘starting a new project’ is a bit of an overstatement, so far we’re talking about a single finished item and as we all know, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. But let’s start from the beginning. I am a regular visitor at Wargames Vault. I’m sure most wargamers are familiar with it and if you’re not, have a look. Just don’t blame me for the money you’ll spend there afterward! A lot of useful stuff can be found there – rulesets, magazines, counter and paper terrain. In that last department, a man with name Dave Graffam has published a whole shedload of very, very impressive buildings. The only problem is that they are intended for fantasy or middle ages. OK, if you squint, they’ll probably can be used for renaissance too. In any case, not really my cup of tea. But nonetheless, something about them caught my eye and when they were on sale couple of months ago , I could not resist the temptation. I grabbed a bunch of them ‘just because’ with no real expectation of doing anything with them in forseeable future.

Couple of weeks ago I found myself feelig quite pleased over the fact that I have finished my Saxon warband for Dux Britaniarum. At the same time, I was for the moment quite fed up with painting minis. I needed to change gears. I then remembered that bunch of PDF-s on my harddrive and decided to take a closer look at them. Well, let me tell you – Dave Graffam has gained an instant fan-boy about a minute after I opened first file. A lot of work has been put into these buildings and the components look beatiful already on the screen. But what really impressed me was the fact that many of PDF-s have so called layers – this allows you to change textures, add and remove details and decide where the door and windows are placed.

I decided to give one of the more complex buildings a try and printed out components for Willow Brook Inn – sixteen sheets of paper, two of them are for the base, four for very basic “cubes” intended to act as supporting components hidden inside the structure and adding sturdiness to the whole thing. Once all the sheets were printed, I mounted the base on 5mm foamcore sheet. Remaining sheets were mounted with help of spray glue in rattle can on 300 grams black cardboard. It’s not necessary, but for me normal 80 gram is just too flimsy for this type of projects.

Once everything was dry and set, the next step consisted of a looot of cutting and glueing. After all, it’s a paper building. The whole thing took me about nine hours to finish with no problems encountered along the way. I strongly advise anyone meaning to give these buildings a shot to follow the instructions and advice of the creator, which can be found in a manual included with this building. I am not complete newbie when it comes to paper buildnings, but some of Mr. Graffam’s advice was both new and quite useful for me while working with this project.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the end result. The first thing that strikes one once the the buildning is completed is its size – it is a substantial construction with large footprint on gaming table! And there is a lot of potential for improvements if one wishes to spend some TLC on it – beams could be replaced with balsa strips, the roof could be textured or covered with your favourite material for thatched roof, window shutters could be added, doors replaced… But even ‘straight out of the box’, this is a very beautiful terrain piece.

Paradoxically enough, the fact that I really enjoyed putting this thing together has created a bit of a problem for me. The simple fact is that I don’t have any use for it or for the remainder of this product range! That I had to use minis of gladiators for size comparison is perhaps the best proof of that fact. But I would love to build some more of them, maybe even create a complete town setting with them. And so, just like any ‘proper’ wargamer would, I’ve now started to look for rulesets and miniatures that could allow me to use it (and its ‘siblings’) in a game. If you have any helpful suggestions, let me know in the comments!

Lol… New miniature ranges have triggered this reaction with me often enough, but paper buildings? Now, that’s a first!

Review–grass tufts from Gamer’s Grass

As long as the almost complete standstill in my wargaming persists, perhaps the best way to keep this blogg alive is by posting a review every once in a while. Let’s start off with grass tufts from Gamer’s Grass.

Allright, so to begin with, what exactly are grass tufts. Well, like pretty much all terrain and basing materials we use in the hobby, it’s yet another cross-over product from model railroads hobby. Basically, it’s a small lump of grass fibers secured at the bottom in a small drop of white glue or other type of transparent material like silicone. A bunch of such lumps is delivered on a sheet of wax paper. The idea with the product is that user is to peel individual tufts of the wax paper and glue them on terrain pieces or miniature bases either with PVA glue or superglue.

If I am not correctly mistaken, the product was introduced over ten years ago by a company called Silflor – they’re still the ‘top dog’ in this department and have by now developed a vast variety of products in this range. The thing is though that their products are rather expensive.

Gamer’s Grass offers pretty much same product While their range is smaller, it is  in my opinion at least, better directed towards the wargaming scene. Most of their tufts are about 6mm high, which seems to be optimal for 28mm miniatures. For 15mm minis, this height may be a bit overpowering on a base, so their smaller range of 4mm tufts is probably better choice. Other heights, such as 2mm and 12mm are also available.

The tufts come in different colours and heights. Individual tufts are made in three sizes and are shaped as an oval. Some shades/sizes are also available in form of irregularly shaped lumps. An individual piece of wax paper holds between (approximatly) 120 and 40 tufts, depending on size of indivudual ‘lumps’. The price is what makes products from Gamer’s Grass really attractive.

I’ve been using stuff from Silflor on a couple occasions and the comparison between their ‘top of the line’ product and what you get from Gamer’s Grass works out quite well indeed. As already said, we’re talking about lumps of grass fibers put in a ‘base’ of some sort of flexible material, so there is not much room for improvement! If I am to be completely frank, it seems to me that the material used for the ‘base’ by Gamer’s Grass is a bit more fragile. As a result, couple of tufts have desintegrated in my fingers as I peeled them of the wax paper. But with a bit of caution, they can be handled without any problems. Once glued onto a base, they seem to be able to handle the abuse expected to be caused by handling of miniatures in games and during transports.

Last but not least, couple of words about the customer experience. My order was placed through their webshop and consisted of over a dozen of different tufts. Payment was done through Paypal and order was promptly confirmed through email. The small package (with all ordered items) arrived to my delivery spot just over a week after placement of the order. Overall, a very smooth purchase without any issues.

In pictures included in this post, you can see some of the sheets that I’ve ordered. Most of them are of standard 6mm height and in various sizes. If you take a look at previously posted pictures of my early Anglo-Saxons, you can see the tufts ‘in action’. I was really satisfied with that ‘test run’ and can recommend Gamer’s Grass without any reservations.