Scenery - woods, rough ground and fields

I have just made myself a new war-games board to fit over the dining table and bought one of the excellent Mat O’ War cloths from Antenocities Workshop http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/mat-o-war-green-2m-x-1-25m.html and wanted to upgrade my scenery to match the mat, my basing colours and be compatible with the rather prescriptive rules of Field of Glory Renaissance.

I already had some hills that could be re-surfaced and plenty of hedges and trees so my main requirement was for the various types of flat area terrain: woods, broken ground, brush, fields, vineyards, plantations, etc. I looked at the ready made scenery from Miniature World Maker - I liked the way this lay flat on any surface and its durability but it seemed expensive and wasn’t a very good colour match for what I wanted so I decided on the home made approach. 

Antenocities recommended a particular static grass as a good match for their green Mat O’War so I  had ordered a couple of packs of that but when they arrived they seemed too bright. Luckily I already had a bag of darker and duller static grass which I had been using, dry-brushed with yellow ochre to lighten and high-light, for basing my Italian Wars army. This mixed in to give a much closer match and plenty for my needs. 

The first question was what to use as a base material. I wanted something flexible, tough, not too thick but heavy enough to lie flat and not move about. Many years ago I acquired some green and grown carpet tiles to use as a playing surface and give a patchwork field effect for 1/300 scale WW2 (you could get away with simpler scenery in the 80s!). After pulling the felt-like covering off and singing the last fibres off, wire brushing and sanding the surface of the rubber-base, I was left with just the type of base I wanted. These were only one foot square and It would be great to get some slightly bigger pieces but all the modern tiles I have seen so far have the carpet surface too deeply embedded in the rubber. 

I decided to just use the same basic technique and colour scheme that I use for figure bases. A base of sand, glued on with PVA. A base coat of dark earth then dry brushed first with yellow ochre then a couple of progressively lighter yellow ochre and white. The static grass is then glued on with more PVA, followed by any tufts. Instead of my usual Humbrol matt dark earth for the base colour, I bought a brown emulsion match pot and mixed in some other acrylics to get a fairly close colour match. I should have just got a litre of Dulux mixed to match a colour swatch - I’ll have to do that anyway as the first pot has almost run-out now.

The first thing was to make some general purpose irregular terrain areas that could serve as woods, broken ground or brush with different types of add-on features. The rubber cuts easily with a craft knife then it was just a matter of applying the fine sand, painting and glueing on the static grass.

This shows both trees and broken ground markers - in use it would be one or another. The broken ground markers are offcuts of Amtico flooring with caulk to add height, granite chips and sand. All painted and with static grass and tufts as usual and Woodland Scenics clumping foliage as bushes.

Next on this list was some straight-sided pieces as fields, plantations and vineyards. I wanted to put some more detail into these, sacrificing flexibility of use. One advantage of the fairly thick (about 3mm) base, is that features can be carved into the surface so I cut shallow trenches along some parts of the sides to indicate ditches. I left a wide enough space around the edges to take the hedges I already had so I could distinguish between open and closed fields. 

I wanted a ploughed effect on some field sections so spread decorator’s caulk over the surface and used a piece of card with a serrated profile cut in the edge to drag across creating the furrows. I also used a coarse brush to create tracks between field sections. For the fields, I added a few small rocks and grit around the edges to add interest. 

After the usual painting I used dark washes to deepen the ditches and added dark green 6 mm tufts to represent reeds and unusually lush grass in the arid Italian countryside. I considered using a proper water effect but was worried that might crack and settled on a couple of coats of gloss varnish - over such a small and thin area I think the effect is just about OK. I only applied static grass around the edges to blend in with the Mat O’War. 

I wanted part-grown crops along the tops of ploughed areas. I imagined this would be easy - brush across with PVA which would only catch on the high points then scatter on finely minced clumping foliage. That didn’t work at all. After some more trial and error, the best result was a couple of cycles of painting along the furrows with PVA and covering with a fairly fine turf mix.

Even with painting the tops with PVA, clumping foliage didn’t give very clear definition.

Foam particle turf mix worked better, I think.

This empty field shows how the hedges fit on to make it an enclosed field. My plan is that this could also be used as a plantation or vineyard (the vines are a story for another day).

It would be great to get some comments on these posts. So far, there have been a few hundred views but no comments but I'd really welcome some constructive feedback. 

Louis II de la Trémoille

Now I am catching up with actual painting progress - this is one of the most recent groups that I have painted. Louis de La Trémoille was one of the most prominent French Generals of the Italian Wars from Fornovo to his death at Pavia.

The figures are Minifigs - the current 3rd generation with some Milliput modifications to the gendarme and general's skirts and the gendarmes' horse barding as well as my usual replacement of the bendy lance with brass rod and Lilliput. Whilst the general and gendarme figures are pretty good, I don't think the bugler is anything like as nice a figure as the 2nd generation one which I used with Bourbon. Unfortunately there aren't many options for early 16th Century heralds. 

I have read that coats of arms were not worn by this time but the pictures I found of Louis all show him with an elaborately decorated tunic with his own arms and those of a Marshal of France so I was in two minds about it. In the end the fact that the model's tunic has a lot of creases persuaded me to believe the 'no heraldry' line.

Overall I was very pleased with these. I seem to have got the hang of varnishing and have had no problems with either a satin finish or white patches in the creases. 

Charles III, Duke of Bourbon and some Mounted Crossbowmen

My plan original plan was to build a collection with a core that, with a few flag swaps, could pass for French, Imperial or one of the Italian states. Who better then as a general than Charles III, Duke of Bourbon who was Constable of France, played a prominent part at Marlignano then switched sides in 1523 and fought for the Imperialists at Pavia and finished up sacking Rome with an Imperialist army.

The figure for Charles is an old Asgard/TTG general on a Minifigs horse, accompanied by a current Minifigs (3rd generation) gendarme with a hand painted banner and a Minifigs 2nd generation bugler. I don't understand why some of the Minifigs 2nd generation figures were replaced as many - like this one - are much superior to the ones which replaced them. I had some varnishing problems and ended up with a slightly satin finish and too-thick varnish.

These were some Minifigs 2nd generation figures which I had had in the lead pile for a long time. They look a bit early to me but are nicely proportioned and moulded.

French Valois Arquebusiers

Having looked around for a while for suitable figures, I bought a bag of Old Glory generic arquebusiers RGE6 from Time Cast Models.

I painted up the first batch with a limited range of colours but they looked too much like Landsknechts and I didn't like that they all wore identical hats. So, after seeking some advise on the Miniatures Page, I modelled a selection of new hats and helmets with Miliput. The first ones were rather clunky but I was quite happy with the later ones. The officers are a couple of spare sword and bucker men from Venexia and Essex modified a bit to give them similar headgear to the others and remove the baggy pantaloons on the Venexia figure.

Once painted and mixed in with standard figures, this gave much more of the look I had wanted.

Making lances

I originally posted an explanation of my lance-making process on the Slithering FOG-R board last year - I'm playing catch up with this blog to get to the current state of my painting progress.

It sounds a long process but each step is quick and, if you do a few together, it doesn't take long at all.

I use 0.8 mm brass wire. After shaping the point and cutting them to length, I mix up some Milliput and roll some into a long, thin (about 1mm dia) sausage. I cut a piece (about 30 mm long, IIRC) and wrap it around the lance in a spiral, starting with the spirals close together at the hand-end and widening the helix towards the point. I then roll the lance ona smooth cutting mat. Surprisingly this spreads the Milliput around the wire core very evenly, keeping the wire central. Then I set them aside to cure. Before the Milliput is absolutely hard, I cut the step for the hand with a sharp knife - doing it then avoids the risk if chipping or fracture.

Here is a photo of the lance making process:

For sanding the lance to final shape, I hold the lance in a pin vise. Rough shaping is with a file to give a uniform cone then with folded-over sand paper wrapped around a dowel to give the flared profile (the nose of the vise helps with this) and smooth surface.

The extra-long ones are for Essex figures, to compensate for needing an extra few mm below the hand. Although it makes the proportions wrong, I prefer to have the extra stability of having the lance glued to the figure at two points.

I painted about half the lances with the 'barber's pole' spiral pattern. Tis was also done in a pin vise, free hand, painting a bit then rotating 45 degrees or so and painting a bit more. You can actually do multiple steps, equally spaced for each rotation. If you look close enough, the spirals aren't that neat: I use a three shade method so the boundary from one colour to the other is softened, averages out and looks smooth. It takes a bit of practice but the method is quite easy. One thing to look out for is that to keep the spiral thickness about the same, the helix needs to change as the diameter reduces. The sad thing is that I suspect the barber's pole lances were not used in battle but they look pretty.

Essex Gendarmes

I have rather mixed feelings about these figures. They are very cleanly cast with good detail but most of the horses have a rather heads-down defeated pose and the thick, cast-on lances are held out to the side in what looks a very uncomfortable pose. Some of the figures are perfect for French Gendarmes but others are more Germanic looking and one had what looks more like a jousting helmet than the typical close helmet / armet.

One of the horses has barding straight out of the Triumph of Maximilian - although very well done, it just doesn't look like the smoother style of barding seen used by French Gendarmes in the Pavia Tapestries and the Voyage de Genes. I wish in hindsight that I had remodelled this with Miliput.

As with the previous group of Minifigs and Asgard / TTG Gendarmes, I replaced the lances with wire/Miliput and bent the arms to bring them closer to the body.

More Gendarmes

My lead mountain contained some more, unpainted 2nd and 3rd generation Minifigs and old Asgard gendarmes and painting another couple of units of Gendarmes was next on my jobs to do list. I only had enough figures for one unit so I sent off for a dozen Essex gendarmes to try to get more variety. When these arrived the difference in build was far too much to mix them in with the smaller and thinner Minifigs and Asgard/TTG figures in the same unit, though I thought they would look OK on the table together. 

One problem was the huge difference in their lances. I normally replace spears, pikes and lances with brass wire but plain wire doesn't look much like a late-medieval / renaissance lance, even with the blobs of epoxy that had seemed OK as a hand guard when I painted my old unit of gendarmes. Eventually I found a fairly quick and effective way of making replacement lances with brass wire and Milliput. I posted a how to for this some while ago on the Miniatures Page and will re-post it on here at some point - it is quite easy and nothing like as fiddly as it sounds. The end-result isn't perfect but they don't bend, and are better proportioned than the chubby telegraph poles cast on some figures. Most importantly it gives enough of a uniform appearance to allow figures from different manufacturers to be mixed without looking ridiculous. 

Part way through painting these, whilst looking for inspiration in contemporary illustrations and on some the excellent blogs of 28mm Italian Wars miniatures, I noticed that the rider's skirts weren't quite right, being too small and not covering the back of the saddle so I modified the later ones with Milliput.