Adventures on the Wargames Table

These two lovely little features are more of Paul's expanding collection of scenery for our Peninsular Sharp Practice games. I think I've mentioned how he likes to get me to paint his terrain, haven't I? ;o) Both are from Grand Manner. Here's the village fountain. A roadside shrine I really enjoyed painting these! The recipe is basically the same as for the Spanish Church and Grain Store I did a while back. The red for the plinth and jars is Foundry Conker Brown A/B/C. The base for the shrine is Americana Honey Brown, followed by highlights of VMC Tan Yellow and WMC Dark Sand. The grass is Colonel Bill's Winter Grass.

I've wanted to make a little vineyard for Peninsular battlefields for a while but with modelling projects I often like to make a test piece before launching a bigger effort. Anyway, here it is. The figure is not very Napoleonic but he was very conveniently available! In the pics below you can hopefully see that I made the frame from a kebab stick held between two upright off-cuts of MDF which are glued to a strip of plasticard. The anchor cables at each end are simply thin bits of electrical wiring. The vines are more pieces of wire folded over the stick and twisted to look like gnarly vine stems. The base was sanded and the whole lot painted in a dusty brown/sand/cream scheme. The vines were painted in a much darker brown. Then I glued small pieces of Woodland Scenics clump foliage along the entire stick. I aimed for a slightly irregular look. This piece is about 6 inches long. The 'full' vineyard will have 8 to 10 inch sections, probably half a dozen. I th...

A change is as good as a rest - or so the saying goes... It's been all Sharp Practice here on the table recently so Orange Dave and I decided to have a big(ish) game of Bolt Action. It's 1500pts per side, so fairly busy for my little 6 x 4 table. We agreed to play the mission "Top Secret". The wrecked 251 is in the centre of the table and contains a dead senior German officer with a bundle of very interesting papers, maps, etc. Here's a couple of pics I took whilst awaiting Dave's arrival (thanks to all my FB chums for the kind words when I posted these on Saturday afternoon). Those pics weren't too bad, but I must apologise for some of the rest of the photos as they're not as good as I'd hoped. The lighting in my lounge plays havoc with my camera. For this scenario all troops begin the game as reserves but can deploy from turn 1, following a successful Commad check. My two platoons gave me a total of five Grenadier squads (4 regulars and 1...

In Sharp Practice it's vital to track the morale of your force and that of your opponent's. Thankfully Charlie Foxtrot Models make an excellent little item that's perfect for the job. It starts out as plain laser-cut MDF but I decided to give it a bit of a makeover. I sprayed it white and picked out the letters and numbers with black. I used the same recipe as the basing for my AWI models. The flag tokens are just 25mm bases on to which I've glued some printed and trimmed flags. Get yours here ! That's a £1 well spent I reckon :o) You can also see my interim deployment points. These are just slightly larger versions of the morale tokens. I'll eventually make some nice little dioramas with spare models or scenic items but they'll do for now whilst I concentrate on getting the troops painted. BTW, these were (shamelessly) copied from an ACW example I saw on the FB group by David Robotham. Thanks mate! In other news... Chum Colin got these splendid ...

I've been busily painting a couple of items for chums Colin and Paul. Both kits are from Grand Manner and whilst they needed quite a bit of trimming and cleaning, I'd still thoroughly recommend them. Colin has Bavarians and Russians for Sharp Practice so GM's Eastern European Covered Well seemed ideal. Sources of water on the table are sometimes quite handy in SP, for example troops might get fouled barrels. The dog is from Colonel Bill's Caught Short pack. The barrels are from Bad Squiddo Games . Paul has the traditional British and French for the Peninsular theatre. Regular readers (thank you!) will have already seen the church and grain store, so I thought GM's Olive Press would come in handy. I've really enjoyed painting these kits and look forward to many games with them. Thanks for the superb weekend chaps! :o)

I like my gaming tokens to match the units. Shiny pieces of plastic are all well and good but I do find that they rather spoil the look of a good table. So I made these Present!, Uncontrolled and Reload! tokens for Sharp Practice. They are simply Charlie Foxtrot mdf bases (40mm x 20mm) on to which I've glued the printed words. I've roughly torn the edges of the paper as I thought an irregular edge would look better. Next, just apply your usual basing methods. Here, it's sand and grit painted with Americana Honey Brown followed by highlights of VMC Dark Sand (847) then Foundry Boneyard light. Then out comes the box of grass and foliage, etc.

The Redcoats are marching to war! Yes, I've pulled my finger out and painted some figures for Sharp Practice. Award winners they ain't, because I've made the conscious decision to paint them up "fairly quickly". As long as they look good at three feet then that's good enough for me. One of the big stumbling blocks for me back in my "Napoleonic days" was getting to caught up with the details on each individual figure which slowed painting to a crawl. Plus it just made things hard work. Here's the painting recipe if you're interested. I started with a light-to-mid grey primer. The flesh is Foundry Flesh mid, the red is Foundry Bright Red shade, the musket is GW Scorched Brown. Next, give these areas a wash of slightly thinned Agrax Earthshade wash. When that's dry highlight the flesh with the mid and light colours from the triad. The red gets the base colour again, leaving some shaded areas. The musket is highlighted with Foundry Conk...