15mm Laffly W15TCC WIPs

I recently delivered a master of a 15mm french Laffly W15TCC tank destroyer to Craig at Gaming Models and thought I'd post of a couple of pics.  These were taken a little before completion.

Craig is currently going through a major mold replacement project, so it might be a little while before he gets the next batch of new items added to his page, but there are more coming, in the short term, particularly for the Japanese forces.

I've been out of town for several days, but prior to that had been quite busy working on my ERC90, which is coming along nicely, and on a M-ATV for my modern 15mm forces.  Once these guys are out of the way, I'll get back to my post-apoc terrain, and probably start assembling some of the 1/100 aircraft kits for use in my modern African campaign, which has sat dormant for almost a year.

Waltzing with Matilda in 15mm

In addition to my own projects, I have made a small number of masters for Gaming Models over the years.  One such project is Craig's upcoming 15mm Matilda I.  I've actually had most of this one done for some time, but have been piddling around with making the track assemblies, which have taken more consideration than most vehicles, due to the way the mostly fenderless tracks stand out from the hull.

Anyway, I'd thought I'd share a couple of pics.  These were taken when I was near to being finished with the hull and turret, but before I had done much on the track assemblies:

This has been an interesting vehicle to build as it feels very "Victorian", similar to the French Char D1 and Char D2 that I did sometime back.  Something about these prewar designs always strikes me as being so ugly, that they are attractive.  I'll be turning the Matilda I over soon, so that I can get on to some other early war projects. 

The Matilida will be available soon along with the rest of Gaming Models 15mm line of WWII vehicles and landing craft.

ERC 90 Begins to Take Shape

When I started gaming my fictional modern African campaign, among many things I began looking for 15mm modern French armor.  And, I was really surprised to find how few modern French armored vehicles were available in 15mm. As a result, I began my quest to fill some of that gap for my French, African, and Middle Eastern forces.

I am currently working on several vehicles, including the Panhard M3 apc, the VAB, and the ERC 90 armored car.  As it turns out, I am making the most headway on ERC 90 (probably because it is just the coolest armored car out there), and thought I'd share a few WIPs of it.  So here Goes:

It is still in the early stages of construction, but with the fenders finally roughed out, it has really taken shape.  In these photos, it is setting on wheels from my VBLs, and is setting just a little lower (maybe .06 or so inches) than it will when complete.  The VBL is for size comparison.  The ERC 90 is very sleek looking, but has a noticeably larger footprint than the VBL.

This side view shows it with two Peter Pig US Marines (which are just outstanding figs if you haven't seen them).

And lastly, the overhead view shows the footprint comparison between the VBL and ERC 90.  Still bit rough, but I hope to have it done by the end of the weekend.

A Hummer of a Weekend

Though I hadn't been able to work on anything for almost two weeks, when I finally got down to the basement this weekend, instead of jumping back into the post apocalypse, I decided to do some cleaning.  Well, actually, my wife decided that I was going to do some cleaning.  As it turns out, creating the post apocalypse is messy work, and the mess had started migrating into the rest of the house, so darling wife suggested that I put a lid on the mess, before she put a lid on me.

Anyway, as I started cleaning up the smaller of the two work tables, I realized that I had castings all over it and my painting table for various vehicles that I have mastered over the last couple of years, and the best way to clean up, was to assemble some of that heap into useful miniatures.

So, in keeping with my wife's demands, I assembled about over 30 15mm vehicles this weekend. 

All of the primered vehicles are new builds.  I rounded out my fleet of M1114 Humvees for the Middle East and African ops (14 new minis), 6 more Humvees to get woodland camo, 6 M2A2 Bradleys, and 8 VBLs. 

With any luck, darling wife will next demand that I finish some painting that needs done around the house...

Blowing Up the Police Station

The second building that I'm working on for my PA terrain is the previously mentioned Police Station.  The actual building is pictured below:

I am adapting it to fit my modular terrain system, but the general design and exterior finish of my model is very similar.  I want my models to be somewhat believable in appearance, so my method of construction depicts the construction methods that I observed being used during an construction of an addition on the station a couple of years ago.  My model is based on the original structure, thus everything to the ring of the "tower" is excluded, as is the addition to the left front of the building.  I was able to get approximate dimensions using google earth.  The following photos show the building as it comes together.  The foundation with the base terrain tile layout with parking area below:

I'm trying a new method in construction of the this model.  The building features concrete block construction with an outer brick fascia. First, the exterior block wall is constructed with the exposed block pattern  pressed in/drawn on with a ball point pen.  Then, the thinner brick wall is added around the exterior of the building, using a brick pattern plate made from styrene sheet and strips  The foam wall stock panel is cut from the sheet on foam on a band saw, the pattern aligned with the panel, and the pattern is simply pressed in by hand.  I've done this with larger stone and block patterns and in larger scales before with great success, but the small brick pattern in 28mm is a little tougher to transfer. 

In this case the windows and doors were located and cut out of the block wall. The outer brick wall was then applied over it, requiring the windows to be re-cut into the brick layer using the block layer as a guide.  The layers are glued together with artist's matte medium, using straight pins to hold the pieces together while drying.  The view below shows the model with some of the windows re-cut into the brick layer and pins still in place in the back wall.

I never had the pleasure (or possibly, misfortune) of exploring the police station, so my interior design my be somewhat chaotic.  It is partially based on help from the members of the yahoo group, Baddawg's Landing, http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/BADDAWGS_LANDING/
Baddawg's Landing is owned by the Baddawg himself, and filled with all kinds of great stuff for skirmish gamers, (especially modern/near-future/sci-fi gaming) and lots of good people.  Assistance from the Landing made this task quite a bit easier than it might have been otherwise.  Below you can see the model as it currently stands, with a portion of the interior walls in place.

My time has been getting sucked up by other thinks over the last couple of weeks.  So, lots of work to be done still, but since I hadn't posted in a little while, I thought I'd let everyone know I'm not dead yet. 

When completed, this will be the dominating structure in my initial PA terrain layout.  The building will be about 9 inches tall, with a 13"x17" footprint, and set on a two foot square terrain tile including walkway, drives and parking lot. Hopefully I'll have something more to show by about next Monday.

My Dilemma, or Why I'm Basing Marines, Rather Than Blowing Up the World

When I build terrain pieces that have any character, I usually develop a bit of a storyline for them, as I build them.  Generally it is something that never really relates to a game, but helps me visualize the evolution of the piece, as it came to be the way that it appears on the table.  It is kind of like having the evil twin of Bob Ross, the painter, talking in my head as I build, but instead of "... and a little bunny lives here, and nearby is his friend Mr. Tree...", it is more like "... and a psycho with claymore mines lived here, but he was cut in half by his cannibal friend with a minigun on a acid trip...". 

Anyway, a story develops, a pictures appears in my mind, and I create the terrain piece.  In the case of my little house, the story that developed involved the house being caught is a crossfire between the National Guard and group of thugs that occupied the police station, which is located across the street (as is the real house and police station on which my terrain is based). 

The house gets shot up by riflemen, a 20mm gatling, and grenades, scavenged and stripped, left to decay, and sometime later caught on fire by transient survivers taking refuge in its remains.  Then comes the time of my games with the shot up, blown out, cut down, burned out, pillaged little house.

While I was painting the foundation, I was considering whether to build the wrecked house out of styrene or bass wood.  I like styrene, as it is very fast to work with and gives a very clean finished product.  The bass wood is nice, as it is strong, has a fine grain, and lovely texture.  The down side of the styrene is that it does not have the earthy texture, and produces an almost too clean product for what I want in this messed up little house.  Meanwhile, the bass wood is much slower and tedious to work with (requiring super glue, rather than solvent with the styrene), can be damaged by dampness in my basement, and is a little trickier to paint as water based paints can cause the wood to warp.

In the end I was leaning toward the bass wood, thinking that the texture would lend more character to the final product.  So I went through my stash of wood, and found that I am way short of what I need to complete the house.  And looking at my plastic, I have enough textured plastic sheet and strips on hand to build it right away.  I know that in the end though, that I will not get the same splintered wood effect with the styrene, and my paint job won't be as good.

So my foundation sets...

... without a house, while I base 15mm Peter Pig US Marines and ponder what to do.

Foundation of a Dying World

As my roadway terrain sections are nearer to completion, I started working more on the design of buildings and city blocks for my post apocalypse terrain in recent days.  When I started this project, I had left a lot of loose ends dangling with respect to how the city blocks would accommodate buildings, and how the terrain tiles would interface. 

My original plan was to make 2'x2' foam squares that could stand alone, or have buildings set on them.  I wrestled with myself about the types of details and features that this method would not permit, such as basements and foundations of buildings, streams and ditches, etc. 

While lamenting that I would lose the use of basements and streams and whatnot, I also began considering the waste of the bottom 1" layer of foam that resulted from this.  Essentially, the entire base layer of 54 square feet of terrain accommodated three shell craters, and nothing else.  My intent in doing the terrain this way, was to create and vertically dynamic rolling layout, hopefully more realistic, and somewhat more pleasing to the eye than some of my previous , more flat, near-future and sci-fi terrain.

In what I call a light-bulb moment, I saw the obvious.  Instead of relying on 2'x2' squares, why not just make 1' square tiles like I do for my historical terrain, and detail them with all of the below grade level detail that I want.  With 2'x2' tiles, I was restricting my vision to simply creating 2'x2' gaming matts with terrain set on them.  The difference may not seem like a big deal in concept, but will result in a dramatic difference in the finished product.

Considering the various buildings that I wanted to make individually, I found that placing them into 1' square terrain panels seemed to rapidly tie up many of the lose ends, that I had left hanging.  After  firming up most of the buildings that I had decided to build, I looked at my basic terrain layout and reconsidered some features.  I decided to take out a one foot width of "city blocks" immediately west of the highway, and shifting the remaining terrain one foot east.  The result is that I can fit a row of buildings along the west edge of the table, completing the neighborhood.  It requires me to temporarily discard a 1'x2' section of road, and to build three new 1'x1' roadway sections.

Okay,  done with the background, here is what I've got done.  I've completed assembly of the first "city block' tile with a foundation of a small house, driveway, walkway, etc.  My basic sketch and the plan view transferred to the foam is shown below.



The foam is the grey/green colored foam marketed by Lowes.  It behaves like the blue and pink foam that you've seen elsewhere on my blog, though this sheet contained a surprise for me.  The entrance to the house in on the right, a driveway raps around the rear (to the left).  The house consists of the original house with basement, and an addition with crawlspace to the rear with side porch.

I started out by cutting out the basement area, with a hobby knife and straight edge.  Then cleaned up a little bevel in the cut with a True-grit file.

This is the point where I realized that the sheet of foam that I picked up did not have a uniform thickness, generally ranging from 1/16 to 1/8 inch thinner than 1 inch thick.  This means it does not mate evenly with my other terrain panels.  So, I laminated a 1/8 inch thick layer of foam to build it up to the right height.  Consumed with the frustration of my discovery, I again missed the obvious, and glued the layer to the top of the tile, rather than the bottom, which would have reduced two steps of later work.  I wouldn't have had to layout the plan again, and by adding it to the bottom, I would have had a basement floor in place.

Note that I've rotated the tile 90 degrees in this view, and had added in the driveway with ballast glued with matt medium.  Prior to gluing the ballast in place, I also added some cracks in the driveway with a hotwire stylus. Another view below.

I then began adding the foundation walls.  The walls are made of  3/16 inch thick blue (Dow/Corning) foam sheet that I cut down to size on a band saw.  I split the foam into small sheets, usually 7" x24" by whatever thicknesses that I need.  Each wall section was cut to fit with a hobby knife, and then scribed with a black ball point pen to represent concrete block inside and out.  I'm working on some plates that will allow me to press this into the foam in the future, but those aren't ready yet, and I wanted to get started.

The walls were glued into place with artist's matte medium, and then pinned with straight pins until dry.  I still have some end detailing to add to the walls, but will do that later.  Here are a couple more views with figs for a better sense of scale.

This back view above shows the rear porch and steps.  Also note the stack of foam slabs that I use for making the walls and whatnot behind the terrain piece. 

The next view shows where I added some foam to build up the grade around the foundation.  it will be smoothed out better and puttied, once everything is dry.

And lastly, a view showing the tile fit in with the other terrain.  I will eventually glue a 1/4 inch thick layer of foam to the bottom of this tile to create the floor of the basement, and bring it up to the proper height to mate to the sidewalks.  In this view, a piece of foam has been placed under the tile to raise it appropriately. The road section to the front of the house is one of the new 1'x1' roadway sections.

I'll give it an hour or so to dry, and then continue working. 

Originally, I expected the 2'x2' city block panels to be just under 1/8 inch lower than the sidewalks, which would have allowed for buildings on styrene sheet bases to be set on them and be about even with the sidewalks.  But I actually cut the sidewalks thicker than I had intended, and didn't catch it until I well into the construction phase.  The result is that the sidewalks are a little higher than originally intended, so even if the Lowes foam was a full 1" thick, I would still have to add a thin layer to the bottom, or place shims under it.  In any event, it will all work out in the end, so all is well.

I'll probably have the next update tomorrow evening.