Pocket Panzers

  It's been a minute since my last update — April and early May have been very busy, and even when I've had time, I've struggled to focus on and finish a single project. But with our French and Indian War campaign using Sharp Practice 2 set to kick off in about a week, I felt the need to get my act together and finish some more terrain. That's where this second log house comes in. This scratch-build uses largely all the same techniques as I used in my first cabin , but has a few other features, most notably the stacked-log chimney instead of a stone chimney and the bark-sheet roofing instead of shingles. The log chimney was a lot of hassle, but I think it looks relatively convincing, and it has that distinctive early colonial flair. I'm not all that eager to do another one, however. I guess that's the cost of detailed scratch building. The use of bark sheets as roofing is drawn from the excellent YouTube channel Townsends, where their group of living history ent...

Well, games set in the French and Indian War mean specialized terrain for the period, at least if your brain works like mine. After all, you can't have tomahawk-toting Huron fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad , right? Of god forbid, some sort of gothic 40K monstrosity. What I'm trying to say is that this is the first of several period-appropriate buildings I plan on scratch-building for our games in the period. It's built in much the same way as the log building I scratch built for my eastern front terrain, which can be seen most prominently here, where I also showed off my split-rail fencing for the FIW project. However, I tried to take the lessons I learned from making that cabin and apply them here to get a better result. Those lessons were, primarily: 1. the dowel rods I used as logs looked far far too uniform; 2. I notched them by hand with a craft knife, which took forever and murdered my hands; 3. the insulation or chinking between the logs looked unconvincing, and...

  As some of you may have inferred, my next big project will be set in colonial America. I plan to keep the precise setting under wraps for a little while longer, until I have some figures done to show, but I have already gotten cracking on some terrain. This first batch covers, as you might have guessed, fences, ponds, and a bit of delicious scatter terrain. My Russian cabin is shown here, though some more period-correct buildings will come in time. To me, the split-rail 'snake' fences are a must-have for a project like this, so I set about making some, drawing inspiration from Mark at Tactical Painter and John Bond . Here, an anachronistic German soldier shows the scale of these fence sections. I did 8-inch lengths, largely because I typically have to transport my gaming kit to and from gaming stores and friends' places. It might be better to have one or two 12-inch lengths. If so, I can always make those later. These ponds are cut from the MDF or hardboard I use for bas...

  Happy New Year, all. I figured I'd take a bit to look back on what I've gotten done this year. Since I started the blog in March, a lot of it has been documented, but I think a summary is in order. This is the first year I've tracked my painting progress, balancing new models gotten against those painted. I'm happy to say I ended up in the black this year, which I don't think has ever been the case. First, some numbers: 2021 Models Acquired: - Figures: 181 - Support Weapons*: 5 - Vehicles: 14 - Buildings: 4 - Scatter Terrain**: 2 - Animals: 2 2021 Models Painted: - Figures: 200 - Support Weapons: 5 - Vehicles: 11 - Buildings: 5 - Scatter Terrain: 50 - Animals: 6 * Artillery, tripod machine guns, etc. Anything not handheld. ** Entrenchments , tree bases, rubble patches, etc. I almost forgot to include my winter tree bases here, which boosted my numbers quite a lot. I nearly broke even with about 40 new figures and a tank gifted for Christmas, but still managed to c...

  Over the last couple weeks, I set about revamping my bunkers and entrenchments for WWII wargames. My last attempts were made in the first couple months after I started gaming, in my college apartment bedroom. I have a much better setup now, I'd like to think. So let me show you what I've made. Here are some of my previous entrenchments in use. Up top, some scatter sandbags and below, an earthen rampart of sorts. These aren't bad, but not exactly what I wanted. The rampart, for example, is large enough to give convincing cover, but looks a little out of place on the table. There's some planks on the back side, but what's supposed to be holding all that dirt up in that shape? Anyway, I knew I could do better. Bunkers These designs are pretty shamelessly stolen from TinyHordes' Soviet MG Platoon , which is appropriate because that's the Chain of Command list I'll be using them for. Three machine-gun bunkers and a command post bunker up front. These are ba...