It’s only taken two years and ten months, but the Eastern shacks I bought from Mike Parker of Battlefield Accessories are complete! They turned out very nicely too. I recommend them.
As you can see, the roofs are detachable and each shack almost holds a fire team.
I think I have enough Russian buildings for now. I really need to concetrate on AFVs and guns.
I’ll only buy more Eastern Front buildings if they turn up for good prices at Swap & Sells.
Cobwebs and dust
May 8, 2015
Just done a little sweeping and tidying, as this last week I am recommencing work on miniatures. I’m glad to see many of you whom I had links to are still publishing your blogs!
I can’t say how much I’m going to publish here. Probably just sporadically.
I’m trying to get these peasants’ storage huts out of the way, so I can finish the second platoon of Panthers, and then so I can start work on a number of prebuilt kits I’ve bought that were part of “vehicle graveyard” Ebay lots.
Today was Nunawading Wargames Association’s 2012 Open Day
August 4, 2012
Nunawading Wargames Association (NWA) is the wargaming club I belong to, and have done for almost two decades.
I toddled along to have a look at what my fellow members were demonstrating for the annual Open Day, which is six hours of participatory and demonstration games for the public to take part in.
To be fair to my blog, I’ll only show you WWII Eastern Front, which was being run by my good colleague cheetah185, and whose blog In my own time I have already linked to (see my set of links to other blogs). Cheetah185 and mates were running a Stalingrad game. Here’s their explanation to the public of what is being presented: . Here’s the map/board:
– notice all the aircraft? Russian fighters and German bombers. Here are photos of the action:
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I did some shopping – I had to! I bought a Raupenschlepper Ost with Flak kit by ACE Models and I bought four resin Russian shacks from Mike Parker @ Battlefield Accessories: . The Russian shacks will serve as animal pens, wood sheds, farm worker’s shelters, hunter’s lodges or whatever they are required for. Here are photos of the details of these shacks:
and for scale purposes, here’s a BA armoured car parked right next to/in front of one:
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Entrenching my troops
August 16, 2011
At some time in the last 18 months, I bought some fortifications from Battlefield Accessories. The particular ones I bought have three sides and are made of dug earth reinforced by wood and topped by sandbags. You can see the four I bought and have finished painting and flocking here: . I thought they would be good for indicating which of my guns were dug-in or entrenched and which are not. Here they are with my PaK 40s:
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They are well cast from resin, are single pieces with minimal bubbles or flashing to deal with. I wash mine in warm-to-hot water with dishwashing liquid in it. I then undercoat them (when dry) with Citadel spraycan Chaos Black and they take Citadel Paints well. Hopefully I’ll be using them in a game against Peter soon.
“Battlefield Accessories” is not MIA!!!
May 24, 2010
While at Little Wars Melbourne 2010 yesterday morning, I was pleased to see Mike from Battlefield Accessories in attendence and trading.
He explained that he is “between ISPs” at the moment, which explains why his internet site brings up a ‘Server not found’ error when you try to access it. He’s very much in business, however, producing his excellent wargaming terrain products and hopes to have his website back online in the next couple of weeks or so.
I bought a couple of barbed wire fence sets from him and will put a couple of pics of them here soon, so you can see how good his stuff is.
Oh, and no, I’m not being paid by him to write this.
Battlefield Accessories’ BA16 Ruined Building: Spare Wall Pack
December 20, 2009
Battlefield Accessories is a local wargames terrain/wargames scenery manufacturer producing mostly for the 1/72 & 1/76 scales.
Having already made up ‘BA14 Ruined Building Pack Size 3’ last year, I picked up ‘BA16 Ruined Building: Spare Wall Pack’ this year at our Open Day this year, for which the contents are 4 x4″ & 4 x 2.5″ Walls.
Since I still have so much 1mm sheet styrene lying around, it would supply the bases/floors for two of these buildings. I also decided one would be undamaged and one damaged.
The logs piled against the walls are real trigs that I found during walks around the neighbourhood, that are already dried out. Providing one uses a fine, sharp saw, they become very suitable 1/72 scale logs.
The moss effect almost entirely covering one wall on each building is ultrafine leftover flock that I originally purchased to represent duckweed on ponds. I’m now using it for modelling moss growing on walls.
The other green effect, looking like veins or cracks but fluffy is an attempt to model vines or creepers growing up and spreading their branches out along the wall. I’m fairly pleased with the final result.
The burnt effect is model railroad coal and some 50% Black Ink spattered beyond it to show where flame spread but didn’t consume the wood.
Now that these are finished, it really is time to get cracking with some Nikolas Lloyd caulk waterways!
Hills or mountains (or both) – ready for war
July 19, 2009
This terrain project is finished, and I’m pretty happy with the outcome:
The hills in the above photo haven’t had the pins/tacks removed. I’ve put my 1:72 UM Marder III (h) on the larger, to give you some idea of scale. The spraying of Scenic Cement yesterday and application of extra coarse turf worked perfectly to plug the spots where the first and second glueing attempts with PVA glue failed to thickly coat the area. I also added a few patches of flock/scatter on top of the Scenic Cement to provide extra texture – that too worked well.
The Marder III(h) above is casting a strong shadow against the smaller hill. I’ve talked in earlier posts about how shadows can reveal an AFV’s location – the above example is a practical demonstration of that. Now it should be evident why, in the latter half of WWII, German AFVs stayed under cover during the day or attached lots of branches and foliage to their AFVs if they had to move during the day…because the hard angles and unnaturally-shaped shadows really are noticeable.
These next two photos are of the hills/mountains with pins/tacks removed from their bases, so they look as if they are being used as scenery in a wargame:
I’ve realised with some previously-made hills, I used a finer grade of talus to represent small rocks which I could have done here…I’ll use them with the next lot of mountains / steep hills that I make.
The BZ-35 Refuellers are coming along well – they are receiving a careful solid coating of Catachan Green, which perfectly models the green the Soviets used on their softskins and AFVs.
I’ve commenced assembly of a 1:72 Sd. Kfz. 250/3 by Italeri (kit No. 7034), which was one of kits I bought at the Model Expo Swap & Sell on the Queen’s Birthday Weekend back in June. It’ll end up being used as a reconnaissance vehicle for encounter scenario games.
Yesterday I began work on painting up a building (4 inch square walls) from Battlefield Accessories. It’ll have the same paint scheme that I used with the AMRI railway station that I painted up last year, for re-creating the fighting around Mga Railway Station in North-western Russia.