Felt Roads Just Leveled Up to Level 3!!!

Quite a whiles back we had the idea to make some roads for Flames of War, and we quickly decided we wanted something modular and easy to make. We came across a Youtube tutorial on making roads out of fabric, dyeing it black/grey, and spraying with PVA mixture. It was a nice idea, but I wasn't convinced on the spraying of PVA and also wanted something rough looking.

This is where instead of old jeans like the tutorial called for, we decided to use felt as a replacement material. We bought a heap of felt and started cutting it up into pieces of roads.

Straight cut piece of brown felt.

Once this was done, we brushed them a mixture of darker browns, followed by a green brush on the sides to simulate grass on the edges. This however did not work well, with the green quickly being drowned out by the brown and fading over time too.

It looks good on its own, but on my green felt table,
it looks too much out of place.

One night, while working on the fences, I was messing around with the spare green felt and test fitted some to the road, just curious how it would look. It looked great, I was amazed at the effect it had. Not only was the green felt better looking than the green paint, but it added a bit of depth to the road. 

It now looks more defined, with the road being clearly recognizable,
while matching the table as well.

I quickly laid it down onto my table, which is just four boards covered in green felt, and it was an obvious improvement. I quickly got to work cutting out more green felt, cutting them all to fit each felt, as one piece per side. The whole process is quite easy, and in one night, managed to do all the weird shapes, followed by the straight sections the next night.

Green felt cut to size. PVA used to glue it into place.

Its as simple as it sounds, cut the felt to size and glue it on with PVA. I made sure to cut the strips longer than the brown felt, to avoid mistakes in sizing.

Green felt is longer, to avoid mistakes.

Simply cut them after they are set, then they are ready to go on the table.

One down, twenty more to go!

With all of them complete, it was time to see how they all look on the table.

All of them laid out on the table.

Here's one configuration, using as many as I could without it being disconnected. The green felt already makes the roads look more neat.

Looks quite busy for a dirt road.

Since I had the table out, I decided to go all out and decorate it. First I added the trees I've recently based, with some of the houses to boot.

Trees and houses.

After this, I added fields and fences. The green felt on the roads is a good indicator of how far the fences should be from the roads. If you want them closer to the road, then that can be done too.

Fields and fences.

Again, I feel like more fences are in order, even after making those bush fences, I feel we still don't have enough to make it look believable.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how to roads now look, they've added a bit of depth to the battlefields and look more neat. Only thing I'd like to make is some dead end pieces. Some dead ends will help building a road system that's not too busy or convoluted. This will go on the to-do list.

Hope you've enjoyed this update, and stay tuned for more.

Dirt Roads

This isn't something new for us, however, I have decided to make some additional sections of road and thought it would be worth sharing. The idea isn't one of our own, but rather, passed on to us from another FoW player / terrain builder. Our particular road sections are a little more simplistic, and still give us good playing terrain.

From a local hobbies and crafts shop, I bought several 30x20cm Brown Felt squares. Designing 4" wide road sections, I cut them up and began to paint them. I used Burnt Umber as the base coat mixed with a touch of water to allow the paint to soak into the felt, and to act as a scrub to remove any loose felt. I then mixed Raw Sienna into the Umber which made a sort of Tan tone. I scratched that into the middle of the felt to give the impression that heavy traffic had been moving along the dirt roads. Finally, I used a Light Green and scraped along the edges to give a 'grass' look, and left them to dry.

This technique, we had tried before, but found the Green faded. As such, spare Green Felt from designing the game board is being cut up and glued over the top to add a bit of depth and detail instead. It's an idea only just being tried, but is so far looking promising. In the future, using these techniques, I would like to make longer, thinner dirt tracks, just for different terrain bits to use on the board.

The Shermans are coming!

So I finally got around to applying decals to my Shermans, and after waiting for more decals to come into the post, I've finally finished adding the finishing touches to these great tanks.

2 Platoons and 1 HQ upfront. Each platoon is sporting a Firefly

These tanks are marked part of the 30 Corps Guard Armoured Division. More specifically they are the junior division, as indicated by the red square marking with the white fifty-three.

Red Square with White 53 on right indicates the tank is
part of the junior division. The blue shield on the left
indicates it is part of the Guards Regiment.

The star on top of the turret is there to indicate to friendly warplanes that these tanks are friendlies, and not to drop bomb or shoot rockets at them. These stars was something new to the period of 1944, following a decision to standardize marking across all the allied forces. Before this British tanks didn't have a star, and the American tanks had yellow stars, but it was agreed in 1944 to apply the star to all allied tanks and for it to be white.

Moving on, I've gone ahead and made this set of tanks be part of A Squadron, as indicated by the blue triangle on the side of the turret. The blue also indicated it was part of the junior division.

Blue Triangle on side of turret, denoting A Squadron.

A quirk of the Guard Armoured Division was it's tendency to colour in the triangle black and add a number to denote what number tank it is. I've decided not to include this practice on these tanks because it will make it more difficult to chop and change platoons and not have them look out of sorts on the table. While not entirely accurate, the compromise is worth it, and doesn't bother me as much than if I did decide to replace a Sherman with a Firefly in a platoon and for the numbering not to match.

On the front of the tank, there is more of the Divisional markings, but there is also a yellow circle with the number 30 in it. This indicates the bridge weight rating, meaning the tank has passed a test, and the resulting number roughly says the weight of the tank and what bridge category it is safe to cross.

Divisional markings and the bridge rating, barely visible under all that mud.

I've dry brushed some brown to the front, and to the tracks, to show that it's been cross country and been dirtied up. Don't worry, the boys will wash it off when they get to Arnhem in less than a week...

All in all, I'm quite pleased with how the tanks look now, the decals weren't difficult to apply, and they really bring out the character of these workhorse vehicles. To round off the tanks, I decided to blacken the cannon tips, to show that they've been doing bloody business on their way up Hell's Highway.

Blackened turret, obviously had a scrap with some Gerry.

Some more Sherman Closeups.
That commander looks bored.

More Shermans and a Firefly.
It's gun can go toe to toe with most German Cats.

Hope you've enjoyed this update, and stay tuned for more.

Ploughed Field 2/3

For my second field, starting out similarly to the first. I decided to try adding hedges instead of fences this time. From a previous test we ran using scouring pads glued to pvc plastic. The glue didn't hold all too well. Having a heap of hedges sitting around, I decided to hot glue them to the edges of the field.

Using a knife, I cut up some sections of the hedges to look like a vehicle had passed through -- mostly for detail. I then cut up some of the 5cm Hobby Sticks and made a gate. As this dried, I moved onto painting the hedges, looking to brighten them up a bit. I ran a few different tests on spare scouring pads to see which I liked most. I found that Deep Green as a base, followed by a dry brush of Deep Green mixed with Warm Yellow making a lighter, warmer tone worked very nicely.





I then dry brushed the gate and glued it into place. Around the base of the board, I added more gravel and painted it up to look like rocks, again, adding some detail to the board. This time, I decided to add some homemade clump foliage following the guide of Mel the Terrain Tutor, I added it around the edges to simulate bushes. Finally, I finished off with static flock and grass tufts to look like a lush, Green ploughed field.

Ploughed Field Terrain 1/3

 This is going to be a three part story, using different ideas and techniques, I'm looking to build three different ploughed field terrain pieces that I would like to share.

Being new to terrain building, I decided to set myself a goal to complete some terrain pieces for a friend for his 15mm Flames of War game. Using basic and cheap household items, I'm aiming to build detailed pieces that we can use to play with, without putting in large amounts of money for professional terrain.

I've been following some professional terrain builders for tips and ideas as well as following the guidance of friends, I've decided to add in my own ideas, and put them to work. Firstly, I purchased some cheap cleaning sponges, which I painted Brown and dry brushed a few lighter tones to add some contrast.

I then found a backboard of a bookshelf lying around doing nothing, which I measured and cut up for the base of the fields. I hot glued the sponges down and added spakfiller to soften up the edges and give it an uneven and more 'natural' mud look once dried. I then painted the base a coat of Brown and moved onto the fences.

To make the fences, I used 5cm hobby wood sticks and measured out the height of the supports and the length of the beams and cut them individually. I made up individual fence pieces and glued them together using PVA glue and left them to dry. The whole process was pretty time consuming and rather boring and did require some patience. Once dried, the really fiddly and frustrating process of hot gluing them together and onto the base followed, which tested my patience even more.

Now came the fun part, painting the fences. I started off with a Burnt Umber - which was probably too dark and matched everything else. I then mixed in Raw Sienna to make a much lighter tone of Brown and gave the fences some dry brushing to lighten them.  Once dried, I added Matt White to lighten the Brown even more, then added a few more coats using the dry brush technique.

Once dried, it really started to stand out and I was feeling pleased with how it was all coming together. To add some detail to it all, I used some clean gravel and glued them in various places using PVA glue. Given that some of my fences didn't glue as well as I had hoped, I was able to use the gravel to look like rocks left in some of the more 'damaged' looking areas, to seem like they were blocking the hole.

I then added a few layers of Stone Grey paint, followed with some dry brushing using the Matt White to get them to stand out and give off the impression they are rocks. This was a tricky task and required a pretty steady hand and a keen eye. Some mistakes were made, but I worked to fix them. Following this, I added a light dry brush of Forest Green and another lighter tone of Brown to give it an earthy look. Finally, I added a very light coat of PVA to some of the recesses in the field and added a watered down coat around the base and added two tones of Green Flock and finished up with some Grass Tufts.

Small Hedge Fences

This evening I decided to make some small hedge fences for 15 mm.

Did some tests, and was pleased with how they look. They are basically flat scourers cut into strips, then glued onto strips of green felt to match my board.

The scourer strips are 1 cm tall, while the felt strips are 2 cm wide, cut to match the length of the scourers.

Gluing them is done with a hot glue gun.

Some Germans to test the height.

Gavin's boys taking cover.

Introduction

This blog is going to be a small project between two friends detailing our journey into WW2 historical wargaming, more specifically Flames of War. 

Painting and terrain projects will be the main focus, with maybe some battle reports in the future.