Here’s some interesting tourist photos of various British and German guns and tanks from the British Imperial War museum. Including the Matilda Infantry tank and the trusty 25pdr gun.

If you live in New Zealand you can now order the Quality Terrain 15mm Trench sets from this site!

Now I just have to do a little more work to make the Order Quality Terrain link a little more prominent on the blog!

Spending my modelling time casting trench kit pieces at the moment. The TradeMe auctions have exceeded my expectations which is interesting. I’m busy putting product pages together as well and some kit instructions I can print and distribute with the pieces.

I put together this little terrain ‘mock up’ with some grass matt, flock and the cast and painted trench pieces. Unfortunately I had to use my North African New Zealand figures and their sand bases don’t quite match the rolling grassy plain and dark earth embankments. However the overall effect shows off the trench pieces very nicely imho.

I’ve also started a couple of auctions on TradeMe under my ’stuart.nicholso’ account to try finding a reasonable price for these kits. I’ve cast enough pieces for a handful of kits and if they don’t sell I’ll use them for my own terrain. They’ll look superb in a fixed terrain piece because a bit of extra Pollyfilla will cover the embankment seams.

I’m also considering creating some kind of textured base that can be used to fill the trench. Although it’s hard to see how that could be done given the trench supports are randomly spaced. Possibly some kind of thin resin piece that could be cut at the appropriate points. The actual trench floor should be a mixture of gravel, dirt and flat timber ‘walkways’.

All in all not a bad effort for a month’s modelling, although of course it means I’ve completely missed the deadline for this month’s painting in the Pityak competition. Ah well at least I enjoyed myself and I’m certainly keen to create some more 15mm terrain. Dry stone walls and wooden gates next I think…

Well who knew! Heroes for Sale are the local reseller of a bunch of quality board games and CCG’s (Avalon Hill, Days of Wonder, Mayfair Games, Steve Jackson Games etc).

I walk past their shop on K’Rd most days and all I ever thought they were was a comic and toy shop. I guess the local TV ad campaign they’ve just started is working then!

Painting up a set of my cast 15mm trenches for some photos to put up with the TradeMe auctions. The pieces are so textured they’re very easy to paint with a bit of drybrushing. Everything you see in the photo (bar two long pieces) was painted in an hour last night after being primed black. The British Universal Carrier is for scale.

The small gap in the trenches at the bottom of the image is because I’m still casting up the piece that fills that space when the trenches are angled. Obviously straight trenches don’t need require that piece.

Well, I’ve mastered casting the 15mm trench molds with minimal bubbles. I’m using various techniques that reduce my reject rate to around 1 piece in 10 which is fine. After a brief discussion with Aaron over a game of FoW I’ve decided not to re-master the angle pieces and instead have to finish two more simple straight joiners and mold them up this week.

I’ve also planned out the kit I’m going to try selling on TradeMe - it’ll contain enough pieces to make:

• An 8″ straight two-sided trench AND a large gun emplacement.
• OR an 8″ two-sided trench with a central 45 degree bend AND a smaller gun emplacement.
• OR a 16″ straight one-sided breastwork.
• OR a 16″ one-sided breastwork with a central 45 degree bend.

Buyers will also be able to combine multiple kits to make arbitrarily long runs of trenchworks. This is what I intend to use the pieces for myself - a large 1200 x 600mm piece of terrain with a set of fixed trenchworks set in textured insulation foam.

Pricing is yet to be determined and it depends if I can generate any interest on the TradeMe auction site. I’d like to sell the kit for at least $20NZ…preferably $25NZ. If I can’t get these prices I may split the larger kit into smaller multiple kits, or simply use all the pieces I’ve already cast for myself and my friends!