Flames of War - Commission work - Terrain pieces part 2

Hi all again and I hope you are feeling awesome?

With the last commission work I also got a request on doing a couple of more small boards with woods and difficult terrain such as craters...

With the last remaining bits of what I had at home I am glad to present you a couple of these:

Flames of War - Commission Work - Dragonteeth

I hope you are all doing awesome ? Well I finally managed to get my hands on some balsawood, a dice 8 and miliput to finalize a request I had lately to do some dragonteeth.

With this in mind I strayed out to do my work... hope you like the results....

The Balsawood is the base in this case. With the Dice 8 (8 sided dice) I pushed the "teeth" into the miliput and slapped it flat on the top. Easy as that.

Enjoy the results:

Flames of War - Tutorial - Gun Emplacements - Step by Step

While still trying to save some money on an expensive hobby, I came across the Gun Emplacements made by Battlefront. That indeed is something you can easily do yourself.

From my perspective these handy "Dug In" Markers for Artillery or similar stuff makes sense and is easy to build yourself.

Just to give you a basic understanding... these things will cost you approx 15 Euros for a pair of two. What you normally get is two for the front and two for the back side of a large base. Oh come on... this is something we can easily do ourselves.

Let us start with the components I used here:

- Beermatt (Still loving this stuff), substitude with 1mm Balsawood if that is more handy for you
- Sand
- PVA Glue
- Filler

The advanced version will also use:
- Miliput

We also need:

- Scissors
- putty knive or similar

Easy I guess ....

So lets begin the process.

Step 1:
Take some filler and put it into a container for mixing. I used an old youghurt type of thing. But also a newspaper could do this job. Then add some PVA to get a smooth working wet mixture. Add the sand to it and mix it through. Why we are doing this ?
Quite easy.. we get a bit more texture for painting later on. If you feel that painting is a bit not your type of thing you could also add cheap acrylic colour to this mixture. This will be your base tone.. so be carefull that it is indeed dark enought.

Step 2:
Cut your beermatt. I placed a large base somethere in the middle to get some measurements. If you have e.g. a fitting form upfront from e.g. infantry dug in markers you can also use these for the wide side of life. This makes it easier for the measurement part. That also leaves you with a stripe left after cutting of approx 1-2 cm... depending on the beermatt size.

Step 3:
Cut the above mentioned stripe down to approx 1cm height.

Step 4:
Use your putty knive to take up your mixture and carefully place it around the self made base. If you are not that kinda tidy here it is NOT a problem

Step 4. Build up slowly. No extra glue needed !

Step 5:
Use your cut stripe to match to your large artillery base. Make sure it fits in there and that you have a bit spare space in the inner room left. That helps later on to get the base out again.

This is how it should look like after Step 5.

Step 6: 
Let the whole stuff dry.  If you try the advanced version you know use your miliput here to place some sandbags or glue some wood pieces on it... either you can substitute "wood" with beermatt left overs.

Step 7:
Use some cheap primer (black) and prime it. Afterwards basecoat colour it with a cheap brown colour. If you need to add details on the inner parts.... use a knive and do some slight cutting into the beermatt parts. This gives later on the impression of wood. Drybrush and paint as desired.

Step 8:
Enjoy your work !

Total costs:

Sand - nothing , I got it from the beach
Beermatt - nothing, Taken from my local pub
PVA Glue - Whole Bottle 3,99 Euro. So this will approx have used up 10 cent
Filler - Whole 900 gramm container for 3,99 in sales at Lidl Ireland .., used approx for 20 cents
Colour - I used white and brown and later on mixed the stuff ... so 3,99 Each for 100ml, approx 50 cent altogether

Invest for two:

0,80 Cents Euro

vs:

15 Euros on cheapest mailorder i could find.

Saves: 14,20 Euro

Flames of War - Scenario - Skirmish / Soloplay - Dunajek Bridge

Eastern Front - 1944 January- Army Group North - Poland

Historical Background: 

On January 12, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front (Konev) launched a mayor attack from the Baranów bridgehead towards Silesia. With tremendous troop and material usage Soviet attacks smashed the german lines after two one hour each lasting artillery barrage. On the first day there were deep penetrations into the german front line done, and on January 15 there was no coherent German front in this area anymore.

German orders:
For hours there was this tremendous artillery barrage on the frontline troops. You are a bit backwards with the duty to fortify the wooden bridge for retreating own troops which are located at the city of Zabno some couple of kilometers away. The small town you made a home during the last couple of weeks is called Wai Ruda. The next german "fortress town" there your staff is awaiting orders is Szczurowa. The bridge is ready to be blown up but instead of doing so after this soviet attack you wait for german refugee units. Your orders are to hold open the bridge as long as possible for retreating german units. If soviet forces try to cross the river blow the bridge up.

Soviet orders:
The attack is going well and the germans are withdrawing. We smashed through their lines and now our spearhead to the west is making fast progress. We just passed through Zabno without encountering any resistance at all and now are approaching the small wood between Zabno and Wai Ruda. Our orders are simple. Try to sniff our more german intruders and punch them into the snow. Any resistance is to be put down. Capture the bridge if it is not blown up already.

Tablesize:
This is a limited table sized 60cm by 120cm. The german deployment is on the southern part of the river. Every unit is entrenched. Pak and SMG are laid in ambush as well as the infantry.

Soviet forces start in the northern part. Mainly on the road with the two T-34 leading.
The river does not support a ford. The only crossing is the bridge. Whoever secures the bridge wins the game

Terrain (table size 60cm wide, 120cm long):
The river Dunajek divides the table into two halves. From the upper left corner a road commences in a corner towards the bridge which sits in the middle of the table. The area in the soviet deployment zone supports some more woods. A small hill covers the advance of the road starting from the corner.
The lower side has some small woods on the left corner. A hill is located on the right corner. Right before the hill two russian houses were build. In one the german SMG Team starts. A bit left you have the entrenched Pak38. The road commences from the bridge in an arc to the left corner. Foxholes for the infantry are dug before the wood.


Specials:

Due to heavy snowfall during the last days the communicationline to blow up the bridge doesnt work properly. To fix the problem the german player sends out one stand each round to fix the problem. This takes one full turn. Means the german player needs two turns in total to find and fix the line properly. The line can only be blown up by the Pak 38 crew. As the missing link is recognised in turn one this specialty starts in turn 2.

The german Pak Stand can only be penetrated by a shell from the ISU-152. However the T-34 shells can force the Pak team to hold their heads down.

Forces:

German Forces:
1 Pak 38 
1 SMG Team
1 Platoon Panzergrenadiers (free choice if you agree to use anti tank weapons or not)


Soviet Force:
1 T-34-85 OBR 1944
1 T-34 obr 1942-OT-34 (57mm gun) 
1 ISU-152
1 Platoon Strelkovy (Winter) without Komissar

Making the winner:

Victory Points:
Soviet Points:
+1 Capture the bridge
+1 for the soviets if they destroy the Pak Stand before the bridge can be blown up
+1 for the soviets for each stand destroyed who tries to fix and repair the line


German Points:
+1 hold the bridge or blow it up 
+1 for each stand of killed infantry
+2 for each tank destroyed

Germans can´t win on points if bridge is secured by soviet forces. Soviets can win on points even if bridge is destroyed.

 


 

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 ! :)

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

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 - Tutorial - Using "Sprues" for walls and sandbag emplacements

Hi all,

after reading through warheads.ie I got the question on a short tutorial on how to use sprues to their best advantage...

so here we go:

Step 1:
Take the sprue of your liking. This one I am using is from a US halftrack.

Step 2:
Cut down approx 1mm thin parts of the sprue

Step 3:
Take your base and glue with plastic glue the bottom row on it

Step 4:
Use really much of your plastic glue on the upper part and start laying on top the next row

Step5:
Repeat step 4 as often as desired. Wait till dryed , prime and paint it.

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

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 Minefield:

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

Materials used:
Balsa Wood
Toothpicks/Partysticks
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. As Balsa Wood is a light and easy to work with wood you can take the Toothpicks/Partysticks as they are and simply press them into the four corners of the balsa piece. I also put one extra in the middle for the signpost. Afterwards I took a Miniature and cut the "posts" down to approx neck high of the miniature.

Step 2:
Mix the miliput or any other epoxy you are using and define the parts of the mines and a possible crater of an exploded one. The mines you will do with a bigger and a smaller piece which you roll into ball shape and first press the bigger, than the smaller one on top of the bigger one. The crater is a larger piece there you simply make a ring and then push down the size. If you have, like me, this cutter knife you can scratch in some lines into the miliput so you get a bit more texture to your crater.

Step 3:
After this is done you can either start painting and flocking or like me use some filler for more texture on the board.

Step 4:
After drying... apply some colour and flock to it.


Step 5:
Connect your wire around the outlining poles. And ready you are. As I am using a 120x120cm gaming table it suits for me to do six of these to get a whole table covered. Easy to do and doesnt take much of a time

Flames of War - Tutorial - Fences (the tricky ones)

Today it is time to again work a bit around on something that takes less then 5 minutes for at least 2 parts of todays fences.

Everyone knows the classic ones. Being a one piece cast thing totally shutting down any view and giving concealment to troops. Why should that always be the case ? Why cant a fence not be a hinderance for advancing troops instead of giving concealment ? ....


So here we go...

What do we need ..

Materials:

Tongue depressor
Toothpicks (Partysticks)
Superglue

and thats it....

Step 1: Did I state that I like coffee ... so lets start with one upfront and have a few on our materials

Step 2:
The more tricky variaton.. Superglue upright standing "bolts" on your base.

Step 3:
Put a lose layer (I took two here) on a 180 degree ankle on your base. In my case it is 2 toothpicks... Why ? Because a fence does not start on the bottom but somethere on the first third.

Step 4:
Superglue toothpicks from one upright "bolt" to another. To give the more hold we first layed the 180 degree toothpicks. So you can simply go ahead and place your fence parts simply in 180 degree again on the already existing bolts.

Step 5:
as seen on the picture and


Step 6:
Equal steps 3 and 4.

Step 7:
Base as desired and enjoy your result.....

Flames of War - Tutorial - Entrenchment Markers (easy way)

After looking around on the web in search of entrechment markers I was wondering why there is a prize for approx 15 Euros or 12 british pounds for a bit of markers... ok they come prepainted and possibly also with some flock... too expensive in my opinion.

So lets take a look at them closer and substitude some things.

Scaling... 

always the worse problem to encounter... I scaled mine to approx half of the width of a small base. Means you take your small base. Place it and then use half of the smallest side. Thats my base width.
For its length I took two medium sized infantry platoon bases and put them next to each other. With this I still keep the opportunity to work out a complete entrenchment for a much lengthier part.. e.g. dug in platoon etc.


With this settled.... start ...

Substitution....

Materials needed:
The base I have done upfront
Partysticks
Superglue
Filler


Step 1:

Make sure you have everything by hand... enjoy your coffee....

Cut the partysticks to an even length. I personally dont like the more upper and lower parts.. I only took the middle part from it.


Step 2:
Use some rest from your base cutting part and glue it on top of the base. Afterwards Superglue the Partysticks alongside.

Step 3:
Cut some smaller parts from the partysticks as to stabilize the thing.

Step 4:
Use filler to get some sort of upwards hill to your entrechment.

Step 5:
Wait till dry.. Decorate, Prime, paint and flock it as desired.... and, of course,  have fun....

P.S.: Time on this one is nothing more than 5 Minutes......