Normandy

Pont De La Croix

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 1 Comment

Like many other wargamers out there I grew up with Gavin Lyalls “Operation Warboard” and endlessly reading his excellent battle of Pont De La Croix. I have seen a few posts on various blogs and in magazines about recreating this battle again. So 30 years on from when I first fought it on our ping pong table, my brother and I are going to refight an old favourite.

Below is the original map from the book followed by my interpretation on my 6′ x 4′ foot board at home. All the terrain and scenery is scratch built. Except for the trees that come from Hong Kong somewhere at less than 50cents each. This made me realise that I need a bigger table, my church is a little big for such a village, and I need to get something better than my bleached and sprayed felt ground sheet. The ground does not look quite right for me, needs to look more textured and natural. Let battle commence!

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Waffen SS Set 1 by Pegasus

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 6 Comments

I thought I would post some pictures of a couple of squads of troops I painted from the Pegasus Waffen SS Set 1 figures that I picked up from Hannants a while back. Its an awesome box of forty or so German infantry. Plenty of rifles to make up your squads in plenty of different poses. I think these are the best figures in plastic for 1/72 scale you can get. Great detail, great variety of poses, and really easy to paint. I have set 2 somewhere in my stash which I will get out and paint some time……..

In the background is another Pegasus offering, one of their Opel Blitz trucks. I think the best value Opel truck you can find in 1/72 scale on the market today. A box of two costs around 8 pounds. Simple models, but perfect for wargaming.

My painting of these guys is my own interpretation of German camouflage schemes, somewhere between peadot and oakleaf… I wasn’t too bothered which, but was happy how they turned out. I use a base of a bright olive green, then do adjacent patches of red brown and dark green. Then go back over with smaller dots of brown and dark green. Finally I put a bunch of tiny bright olive green dots across the whole thing. I do all the camo first so you can just paint the webbing and straps over the top. Pants were field grey from Tamiya paints. Painting German camo is a labour intensive job but I was happy the way things turned out with these lads. Some pictures below! Its hard taking photos of men compared to vehicles, I think I need a better camera. Or a better phone…….

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Ruined Two Storey Normandy House

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 2 Comments

I spent the last week working on a two storey ruined building for my Normandy village. After struggling with various different materials and techniques it all finally came together after more research and trial and error. I roughly copied a design from a terrain manufacturer as some inspiration. My usual dimensions for a 1/72 scale building are 40mm per floor, or twice the height of a regular man at this scale. Then the roof section i make the same height. So a two storey house will be 120mm high. Doors i tend to go 30mm high and windows 20mm square. These measurements all seem to work out well. I use 3mm MDF for the base and 5mm foam core for the walls. Both products are so cheap it makes building houses a really good option compared to buying, if you have the time…..

Once i had the structure cut out i removed sections roughly to create the ruined look before i PVA glued the thing together. Foam core is great as you can remove the card carefully and carve brickwork into the exposed foam with a ball point pen. The render effect on the undamaged walls was made using regular sand from the playground across the street mixed with a paint thickener i found in my art cupboard. PVA glue and sand would do the same thing. Window and door lintels, shutters and doors were all made with balsa wood glued on. The roof was constructed from balsa strips, as were the removable floors. I used modelling clay to make a bunch of roof tiles and also little bricks to create piles of rubble around the edge of the house.

Oh yeah and i forgot the wall paper you can see on the second floor was wrapping paper i found in our house that had a real retro feel and made the whole thing a little more interesting. Check out the photos. There is even a lonely private from the Durham Light Infantry (AB Figures) hanging around in the smokey ruins…….

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