Saturday 15 September 2018

Terrain building for 28mm ACW

With the Perry 28mm ACW Battle in a Box project jacked up again, I decided to do the terrain elements from the set, so battlefields can at least take a step forward in look.


The building has the chair as part of the kit, the barrel is added from elsewhere. The wood structure has plenty of texture, which makes dry brushing and washing a useful part of the final look. I decided to keep the footprint small rather than going with bigger basing, as the initial small footprint seems to be a significant benefit of this building. The building has presence without being too dominant.






The Snake fencing has been mounted onto 35mm wide thick plastic card. 35mm was chosen to reduce footprint, but it has the effect of elongating the fence, slightly reducing the zig-zag look. To my eye it still looks functionally good with the benefit of creating 6’ of fencing, rather than the suggested ‘just over 4 foot’. 




Balsa wood uprights have been added, together with some additional planking on the floor or leaning up against the fence to reduce the plastic look (thanks Matt Crump for the tip) and the floor has been fairly heavily textured, starting with an acrylic paste to kill the flat plastic card. They took a while to do with quite a lot of stages, but it has been worthwhile as blog reports will likely often show photographs of troops against these fences. The wood was given brown Vallejo primer, then acrylic Raw Umber, then acrylic Titanium Buff with a 1/3 mix of Raw Umber to dampen down the vibrancy, finally the wood was given a heavy wash. The base has various textures ranging from course sand to Warlord Games forest floor basing and various flocks blended together. The thick grass clumps are from Great Escape Games.




While pushing this terrain across the painting tray, I also included four bases of Renedra cross and rail fencing that has been primed and waiting on painting sticks for simply ages. The stone work was built up a bit more with additional rail modellers ballast and course sand, mainly because the supplied stones do look quite plastic due to mould lines that are fiddly to remove. I like the final look and they add a different texture to the table, plus the more fencing the merrier it seems for ACW. The four sections came on two sprues for around £10 (though that was three years ago). I quite fancy having a stab at making some more, but might consider using barbecue bamboo skewers and heavy gravel, though perhaps at this stage, getting more Renedra sprues might be better for consistency.

24 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks Jonathan, I was lucky to start with good kit.

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  2. That's a very nicely painted building there Norm, and the whole project is coming together now, you certainly get a lot for your money in that box set. Had written a fairly long winded reply to your previous post then accidentally deleted it, but will just add that it was an excellent read and a visual treat. I really like the table and what you did with just a few basic terrain items.

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  3. Thanks Andy, I never think of myself as a painter or modeller, so I am really pleased at the way these turned out.

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  4. Thanks Lee, I paid around £95 for the box and remember working out the contents to be worth around the £150 mark, so a great starter set full of sensible stuff, including light rules. Glad you liked the table, you will be coming up to having to think how to put your 40mm to the table, I am looking forward to those posts.

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  5. You've done a great job there Norm and I especially like what you've done with the fencing:)

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  6. Thanks Steve, there were quite a lot of steps, but I hit the point of no return, so just had to carry on :-)

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  7. Given the disparity between model scale and wargame ground scale, reducing the angle on the snake fence was a good idea. That dichotomy in scale often bothers me if I allow myself to think about it,especially for small items like the cabin which would be insignificant on a battle field but a wargame table just doesn't look right without them.

    I have a hard time painting rail fences, all the real ones I've seen are a sort of silvery grey if they are 2 years old or more but model ones painted grey just don't look right to me. I'm not sure I've ever seen posts on a snake fence as opposed to a post and rail one which runs straight but it may well have been common.

    Anyway, your scenery/terrain looks great!

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  8. Thanks Ross, the cabin does the trick - but even so, if I thought about scale, then the cabin would be regimental size :-) also the hill would not be a hill if vertical scale is even slightly allowed the dangerous prospect of being considered. I like that some rules these days treat scale a little loose and fast. I’m guessing if my elongated fence did not have posts it would fall over in the real world :-)

    A lot of historical tudor wood construction buildings now owned by the National Trust are beoing allowed to have the timbers return to their natural state of brown silvering - rather than the black (and white) paintwork that the victorians insisted on giving our imagination.

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  9. Lovely work on the cabin and your fencing, I'd say it was a good call to elongate it,building scale is always difficult but I think you have to them, your post and rail fencing I'd lovely and I think it was worth adding the stones as they set it off just right.
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain, It seems quite a lot of wargame tables have the fences slightly elongated, so much so that the ‘look’ probably has become a little real and ‘true’ in the wargamer sense.

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  10. Those are some very nice items and will look great on an ACW battlefield. Nothing screams out American country side as snake rail fence. 😀

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    1. except even more snake rail fencing :-) Cheers.

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  11. Outstanding. Gives me some great ideas for painting ana adding to my terrain. Thank you!

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    1. Thanks Mark, your AWI tables are really nice.

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  12. Excellent museum-quality terrain there, Norm. I saw the ACW Battle in a Box set on a You Tube video - although not my period, it looked very impressive and a great deal.

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  13. Thanks Dean, it is a well balanced starter set, I hope they do something similar for wars of the Roses or Agincourt.

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  14. Great looking terrain Norm and making the fence longer has got to be the way to go.
    Cheers,
    Pat.

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  15. Thanks Pat, it's surprising how easily 6' of fencing is 'used up' on a battlefield and suddenly I need even more!

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  16. Wow, superb, love the splendid fences!

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  17. Thanks Phil, my older ones now look like they need a facelift :-)

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  18. Great Norm, and far better than my efforts, well done.

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  19. Thanks Robbie, I wish I could even get close to your painting output!

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