My gaming group has got back into Flames of War recently and I thought it was time to spruce up my North African gaming table a little more. I’ve noticed we tend to make a few little villages on my textured table with a set of 15mm Crescent Root buildings and my own homemade stone walls. So I thought it was probably time I got down to creating some roads through this rather barren desert.

A while back Jonathan mentioned he’d had some success using strips of weed mat and brown builder’s caulk to create flexible 15mm roads. I didn’t have any caulk handy but I did have half a tube of Selley’s Liquid Nails in the garage so tried it out myself. My test road features in the above photo. It’s nicely textured and takes paint well and is easily flexible enough to mold to the contours of my modular table set up. It worked so well I’ve put together this brief tutorial on how to create as much road strip as you need for negligble cost.

1. Assemble the materials. Like Jonathan I used a cheap, porous, textured weed mat for the base of my roads. It’s thin and sturdy with a low cost of around $8nz for a 5m roll of the stuff. Cut it into strips, arcs and other shapes as you need for your table. For this tutorial I’ve glued a couple of scraps together to create a ‘T’ junction piece.

You also need something to texture your road. Jonathan used a brown builder’s caulk, however I opted for Selley’s Liquid Nails. This DIY product dries to a water-proof flexible rubber consistency and I suspect it’s simply an industrial strength PVA. The advantage of using porous textured weed matting as the base is that the Liquid Nails will have no problem adhering to the matting, and dries into a fairly robust piece of terrain.

To detail the roads I used a mixture of cheap kitty litter and mixture of Woodland Scenics model railway ballasts (that is what’s in the plastic container in this photo). Three bags of varying grades of model railway ballast mixed together with some kitty litter for larger boulders and you’ve got yourself and endless supply of texturing gravel. I’ve been using this same plastic container of gravel for seven years to detail my Mordheim table and buildings, my 15mm North African terrain, other random scenery pieces and various figure bases.

The roads were textured with a set of cheap Chinese hog bristle art brushes, which were also used to paint the roads with a mixture of several interior acrylic house paint test pots from a local paint manufacturer.
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It’s June already! Time I posted about the three month painting challenge we kicked off in February then. No, your addition isn’t wrong, this challenge was supposed to finish at the end of April which was over a month ago. However for a variety of reasons much of late April and May was rather awful for my extended family and I simply had no time nor desire to do any hobby work.

I did start the challenge fairly strong, with the three DAK armored platoons I needed primed and ready to paint. It wasn’t long before I’d weathered all my DAK tanks with Marmite and the turrets were finished a week later!

Then things went on the back burner and here we are early June and all I’ve managed to finish and varnish is the two DAK panzers you see above - a IIIJ late and a IV F2. Still I feel a little more inspired now and will try and get some more of this army painted this year. How did everybody else go?

Did I miss this news or not? I noticed a story posted on Tabletop Gaming News just yesterday so I’m assuming it is fairly short notice of a price increase?

Battlefront are increasing their prices on average 11% across their range of figures and vehicles in one week. Rulebooks and gaming accessories (dice, templates) are not increasing in price. It’s been over three years since our local New Zealand market has seen a price increase from Battlefront and I personally haven’t bought any Flames of War figures for almost exactly two years so I can’t really complain!

The good news is that while Battlefront are about to increase their prices, we’ve been promised those prices will stay in place for at least another two years, so once again we really have no grounds for complaint. The way Battlefront treat their customers still makes me glad I play their games, almost makes me wish I’d given them more of my money in fact! Which reminds me weren’t their vague rumors a while back about them starting a new period game system? Whatever happened to that? Daniel - you’re our resident Battlefront guru, any ideas?

Today is Anzac day in New Zealand which is when we reflect on the actions and costs to New Zealanders in the various conflicts our country has been involved in over the years.

On this theme, John Campbell on TV3 last night mentioned ‘Expedition Saharan Saunter 2009′ which is a group of Long Range Desert Group re-creators:

“We are planning an Expedition to follow the footsteps (or wheel ruts) of the brave men of the LRDG and cover some of the routes and battlefields in the western desert. This will be a dynamic site updated regularly to keep all informed of our exciting project.”

Sounds like a hell of a challenge to me and I’ll be interested to see how they get on next year!

It’s been a little quiet around here lately, mainly because I appear to be suffering another bout of ‘modeling malaise’ so really haven’t felt that inspired to paint, despite the fact this is the last month of the three month challenge! I have made something for my DAK force recently. This custom Zeltbahn Objective - although of course it’s unpainted.

This little diorama that is intended to show a couple of unfortunate motorbike pioneers that have found themselves behind enemy lines - Flames of War objectives are typically placed on the enemy side of the table.

It’s assembled from a mix of ‘bitz box’ pieces. The BMW + sidecar are from Battlefront, although I’ve sculpted a couple of cushions in the sidecar as this space is usually filed with a passenger. The figures are Peter Pig Germans in ‘relaxed’ poses, drinking from enamel mugs. One of them carries the MG34 for the sidecar. The open Zeltbahn tent is a two part resin cast of my original sculpts. The open side is held up by 1mm plastic rod. I intend to put these three Zeltbahn up for sale soon at $6us a pack of the three variants I’ve mentioned earlier.

Painting the objective will be interesting as Zeltbahn were printed in a disruptive and splinter camo which will probably be hard to replicate in 15mm! I’ll most likely just try and get a good faded look to the tent as this objective will be used for my DAK force.

Comments welcome as always, particularly if you’ve got any suggestions for getting over a modeling slump…

We’re approaching the end of the first month of the informal Flames of War painting challenge amongst my gaming buddies and visitors to this site. I haven’t completed a single unit yet, but I have painted and varnished a total of two Panzer IIIj (late) and three Panzer IV turrets. I need these turrets for the HQ and first Combat platoons of my DAK armored force.

This first shot shows the Panzer IV turrets, with the commander getting the long barreled IV F2. My DAK force represents units from the 15 Panzer division in North Africa, hence the single digit turret designations. I believe these digits are supposed to be a solid red too, but these were the only decals I had to hand.

Here’s the HQ IIIj late turrets. You can see the weathering effect I applied to these tanks has been softened by the subsequent ink washing and drybrushing to give a reasonably convincing effect in 15mm scale. Now I just have to paint up a couple of tank bodies before the end of this month to have completed the first unit for the three month challenge.

Incidentally the photos on this post were taken after reading Hyun’s excellent mini photography tutorial on Wee Toy Soldiers. I’m not saying they’re superb photos by any means (the figures are too dark), but I think his tutorial has definitely improved my mini photography skills. Certainly worth checking out.

After I posted a work-in-progress shot of my partially painted Flames of War DAK Panzers several people expressed an interest in the weathering technique I was using. This brief tutorial will take you through the process. Please be aware I can’t claim to have invented the technique myself, I’ve just been applying it to my 28mm and 15mm war gaming models since reading about it in Issue #6 of Model Military International, and I can confirm it works just as well in smaller scales as it does in 1:35th.

Base Coat your Model

For this tutorial we’ll be applying the base weathering coat to a Flames of War 15mm German ‘Famo’ 18-ton half track. This first photo shows you the model after it’s been base coated a with Tamiya German Gray spray can and left to thoroughly dry. You can also see the other supplies I’ll be using: a Tamiya Dark Yellow spray can, a fresh pot of delicious Marmite, an application tool and an old toothbrush. As our European or American visitors may have some difficulty finding Marmite, they may wish to experiment with other foodstuffs. The Marmite is really just used as a cheap masking medium that can be dabbed onto a model easily, isn’t too greasy or sticky and dissolves in warm water. Let us know what else works! It’s also worth noting that this technique requires you apply the top coat of paint as a spray, so you’ll either have to find a spray can of your chosen colour or own an airbrush.

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