Montag, 20. Januar 2014

Flames of War - Tutorial - Lets make some buildings Part 1

In one of the forums I am part of I got the question if I could not do some sort of easy tutorial on building a building, house or something similar.

As staying neutral at this stage I want to do some scratch building with you on doing this. Lets start for the beginners and doing it .... NOW....


Materials needed:

Thick cardboard (I used grey cardboard approx 2mm thick)... makes it not easily to destroy and still flexible enought for our purpose

A ruler (really essential here) and...

a hobby knife.....

and a bit of glue which I will need in Part 2


So lets start

Step 1 :
Define your measurements... for our purpose and game technics it makes sense to at least get two stands of infantry into it... so lets put them together and cut a scare around them (makes it approx 65mm by 50mm)



Great stuff... bear in mind... we will need this approx 3 times (one is the bottom.. two are for the roof parts)

Step 2:
After this step build your walls around this. As I like the Battlefront webpage "Flames of War" quite much you can also find a definition there how high a building should be a minimum by refering to the Stalingrad Appartmentblock tutorial.. if you do not know it by hand.... its 30mm high.



As you can see on my picture I left out a couple of blocks... why you might ask ? I always hate it to fill my already small space available to me with a full 65x50x30 plus roof building. So I was thinking on interconnecting parts. This also leaves me to some easy to make variations later on and a much easier casting then it comes to reproduction. We need all parts two times.






As you can see I also already did cut out the windows with my hobby knife... the measurements for this I got from the based miniatures themself:




Windows are 10mm by 10mm
A door is 10mm by 15mm in my measurement.. Do not cut away your excess cardboard now. We will need it later on.


Step 3:
Continue with your roof tile.. we want the roof to be taken away so that we can place some miniatures inside of it. We do not later on want to move the complete house.

So we need the roof triangle as well.I decided on the smaller 50mm side being the right one to place my roof on. So cut out this tile as well two times . My highest point here is 20mm..... that makes it 50 by 20mm and we will have a small angle.





Step 4:

We also need a chimney... so lets also cut this out. Now we come to a place...you need your chimney being more exposed ? Then cut it out two times... in our tutorial we will be pleased with one time. Chimney is 60mm on its highest point and 25mm on on its widest part. Do yourself the favour and work with helping lines to get the upper part in a better shape then mine :)))



By now we should have:
3 Parts 60 by 50mm
1 chimney 60 by 25mm
2 parts of long side walls approx 64mm by 30mm
2 parts of short side walls approx 54 by 30mm
2 roof triangles 50 by 20mm



See you in the next part.

Flames of War - Tutorial - Entrechment Marker

Also finished the painting job on the Entrechment Marker... easy way to build it up with some putty , balsa wood , toothpicks and the usual colours and flock...



Flames of War - Tutorial - Rebuilding things from Battlefront Webpage (Minefields)

Also finished a couple of more minefields by now as shown here:

Minefields



Flames of War - Tutorial - Selfmade fences the tricky way (mikado)

With some more time I finished a couple of more of my

Fences (the tricky ones)

Love the outcome ! :)


Freitag, 3. Januar 2014

Flames of War - Tutorial - Building things from the Battlefront Homepage - Barbwire -

Browsing the Battefront Homepage you will find the Modeling section and some things on "How to do..."... Christmas brought some Balsa Wood to me and so I started redoing the tutorials from their webpage.

The Barbwire:

As I am also building a 78. Sturm Division Unit I am in need of some trenches and stuff like that. The barbwire stuff from the BF webpage looked easy and I also would rate it as being easy.

Materials used:
Balsa Wood
match sticks
Superglue
Miliput
Filler
Wire


Step 1:
Scale for this one is 20cm by 5cm. This is also the exact sizing BF gives on their webpage.After cutting your Balsa Wood into shape you can take some of your match sticks and cut them to approx size of a standing model. You will need three parts of your cut match stick for one "metal holder". So superglue them together (first as a cross and then do a support strand as the third one). This done you can either choose to do only one row of barbwire in the middle or two from the outside. As sticking to BF plans this one will focus on only one row in the middle.






Step 2: 
Superglue your selfmade metal poles to the balsa wood. As I did it ... you can put in some variation on the wideness of your metal poles.



Step 3: 
Take your miliput or similar epoxy to build some nice textures around (e.g. craters).

Step 4: 
Use filler to give the balsa board some more texture.



Step 5:
Paint and flock as desired

Step 6: 
Take your wire and a thin pen. Spin the wire around the pen and you get your barbwire rolls. Cut down as desired. Paint them as you like and as it fits to your scenery. and glue them to the board.


Step 7:
Enjoy your work

Mittwoch, 1. Januar 2014

Flames of War - Tutorial - How to build a Sturmboot German Wehrmacht (Assault boats)

Thanks to Gary of "Garys Command Post" which I was browsing and asked him about some sort of template or similar to what he has done.

For the sizing of these Assault Boats I highly recommend comparing to a midsize FoW base. This will make the boat a bit bigger than it would have been , but it suits best to what you want to do. I normally also recommend putting the shorter side of the medium base in direction of "travel" :)

So what materials do we need ?

- The plan
- Cardstock
- PVA Glue
- Filler
- Colours

Step 1:
Use the template onto your cardstock and trace around with a pencil. Then do it again with the flaps "F" to get an idea there to fold later on.

Step 2:
Cut out

Step 3:
Trace a second "bottom" of the boat slighty smaller then the first one as you can hide the folding flaps with that.

Step 4:
Glue everything together

Step 5:
Use the filler to clean out any gaps which you might have from glueing

Step 6:
Prime and paint as desired



Template (Curtesy of Gary):






The finished piece (Curtesy of Gary again):


Flames of War - Armylist - Germany - SS-Panzerkompanie (SS Tank Company)

Hi all,

after all painting and building stuff some ppl asked me on how one of my armies actually look like.

Taking a look into "Atlantik Wall" starting page 184 you will find the SS-Panzerkompanie  (SS Tank Company).

Here we have a Fearless Veteran unit:

SS-Panzerkompanie HQ
2 Panther A    - 425 Points




Combat Platoons:
SS-Panther Platoon with 3 Panther A - 640 Points





Gepanzertes SS-Panzergrenadier Platoon with 3 Panzergrenadier Squads - 260 Points
Replace Command MG Team with Command Panzerfaust SMG              -   10 points
Replace one MG Team with a Panzerfaust MG Team                                -   10 points



Weapons Platoons:
SS-Panzer Anti Aircraft Gun Platoon with 2 Flakpanter 38 (t) - 90 Points



Support Platoons:
Light SS-Panzerspähplatoon with 1 Panzerspäh Patrol - 105 Points
(in this case I swapped Command SD KfZ 223 radio with an Sd KfZ 222)



Corps Support (Confident/Veteran):
Amoured Rocket Launcher Battery with 3 Panzerwerfer 42 - 165 Points



Total Points: 1705
Number of Platoons: 6