...and the Up Side.

After a discouraging few days lamenting the demise of my paper buildings...I buckled down and repaired and rebuilt them all and on top of that, built a nice church (also available free at GHQ) that takes only about an hour to construct. I was able to get all the wrecked buildings back into shape and despite a few bent spots they don't look too bad. One of them had a hole torn in the roof which I just left and painted some fire damage and it looks pretty convincing. Adding some bits of clump foliage around the bases also makes a huge difference (especially with paper houses since it encourages your eye to perceive the flat surfaces as more three dimensional and less "papery")

So now I have experienced the full ups and downs of paper terrain...and hopefully I can keep that little monster away from my stuff till she gets a bit older!

10mm WWII Action: Attack on Uden

British infantry in the foreground defend "Hell's Highway" the village of Uden in the background...American paras under assault in the far distance.

Today I had some time to set up and run a small WWII action in 10mm using some terrain boards and my new Pendragon 10mm figures. The battle was just to have a go at the rules (I've not played them before) and to see how the terrain boards look and work with the figures.

A British 17lbr rushes to aid the Paras

The boards are made of 1/4" mdf with sections of outdoor carpet adhered to the surface. The sections are 2x4' and though they are abstractions of the real terrain in Holland, I tweaked the roads to make them "geomorphic" for more variety. The mdf color makes a decent road surface that will get some further texture with paint and foliage to make the roads a bit rougher. The buildings are 6mm paper buildings from GHQ's website. They have a nice selection of Dutch buildings and since I'm modeling the Arnhem battles, they work perfectly.

Elements of Panzer Brigade 107

The hedges are homemade using sections of 3M scrubber dipped in glue/paint and then dipped into flock...simple and fast... Still working on how to make convincing forests.

A Bren carrier scout platoon in some serious peril...

So far I'm enjoying the project and the rules as the figures paint up easily and look good, and the rules are interesting. All in all a nice break from my usual larger scale stuff.

(also...I've put up a link to some 15mm WWII Desert War unpainted stuff that I'm liquidating this week, just click on the For Sale link in the header.)

Jumping On the 10mm Bandwagon

There are a lot of guys out there who are doing some really great gaming in 10mm so I'm a bit late to the party, but this summer I'm scaling down all my WWII stuff to 10mm. I think the figure lines have really taken a leap forward in coverage and detail so it makes something I always wanted to do become something I definitely need to do now.

10mm Pendragon Germans and GHQ 6mm paper houses

What you are seeing here is an initial batch of Pendragon 10mm Germans next to some 1/285 GHQ paper houses (available free on their website). I'm finding a lot of 10mm players use 6mm buildings for less table coverage and it seems to look right with the minis...so initially, I'm doing it too. I'm going to collect armies for the Arnhem operations of WWII. There were lots of different troop types involved and that always makes for some fun army building. I'm using Blitzkrieg Commander rules for a start.

The initial German force I'm building is going to model Panzer Brigade 107...a unit that figured in the attempts to cut the main highway to Arnhem. It's an interesting unit typical of the period and is outfitted with Panthers and Jagdpanzer IVs so fun to paint. I just used the OB from the "Rapid Fire Rules" supplement, and just converted it to 1 stand = 1 platoon level.

These are just a few workbench pics of the Brigade as it is getting finished. Since I'm in the US I'm ordering these from "The War Store" online...and getting the usual great service even if Neal has to order the Pendraken stuff every 2 weeks. I was able to produce this brigade for around $120. USD...a real advantage over my usual 15mm Battlefront/Flames of War purchases which, though they are a quality product, really sting the pocketbook!

I'm pretty excited about the quality of these Pendragons and will post the British Grenadier Guards Battlegroup in a few weeks.
In the coming months, ultimately I'm hoping to rebuild my North Africa collection in 10mm as well since my 15mm desert collection has all been sold off to fund new projects...(and other more pressing financial things as well).