Roads, Rivers, Bridges and Rail track. With the Pocket Armies project looking at putting around 6 - 9 units per side into a 4’ x 3’ space, it has seemed sensible to also consider having a more integrated road, river and rail system, that would also look comfortable sitting in that same space.
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| Russian Windmill - Ironclad Miniatures |
Our battlefield may well have a waterway, a couple of linked roads, a bridge and / or a rail track all at the same time and if the width of each of those is too great, then their collective presence overwhelms the small table.
This was already quite noticeable with my 80mm wide roads (especially with 30mm wide hedge or fencing to either side) for the 28mm figures and the resin rivers that were also 80mm Wide. The bridging point where one of these big roads meets one of these rivers, with a large bridge added, is quite imposing on a table that is less than 4’ deep, it just seems to dominate the table, so here are some changes.
Please use the ‘read more’ tab for a description of the new terrain pieces.
With part of the intention of the Pocket Armies project being to work towards a single scale, particularly for terrain, then a re-shaping of this tabletop battlefield to work with 15mm (and smaller) figures has been a necessary step to take at the very outset of the project.
I already have some home made roads that are 30mm wide and a commercial set that are 40mm. These slimmer versions though immediately helpful, brought some additional thinking about my smaller scale basing.
I have been using 40mm (and 80mm!) basing for my 10mm and 12mm figures, but have been feeling an urge to drop to a standard 30mm base frontage, simply because it looks better in march formation, is easier to reflect various other formations (especially for napoleonics) and I could see some advantages to pocket army management in terms of flexible unit size. Also moving multi based units is not that onerous when working with small armies.
An important aspect of the Pocket Armies project is that I do not want to use the smaller scale to simply give me bigger armies. I am happy with more, smaller and hopefully better painted armies, so that the 1 - 2 hour type game can be better realised and that the collecting, painting and storage aspects are somewhat liberated.
Briefly, I could use three 30mm x 30mm bases per unit to build up the pocket army to its 12 or so core units, but if all the units in the collection are not called upon to fight! then those left behind in the drawer could instead be inserted to make the on table regiments up to four bases each. So in effect bigger battles would get more smaller units of three bases, which would help stretch the economy of the unit and also be a better fit on the busy table, while smaller games could enjoy the better visual of four bases making a 120mm frontage, which also happens to be half the size that Black Powder uses, which in turn then makes the halving of Black Powder’s standard measurement of inches converted to half inches, a better fit.
It also still allows the versatility for three 30mm bases to be used on my Kallistra 100mm Hex terrain when needed to better visual effect than an 80mm frontage (that extra 10mm makes a surprising difference for linear effect). So win-win for 30mm bases, but boo - hiss for any rebasing!
Anyway, that minor but essential distraction made me look at a road system that would look right for a 30mm based travelling in march column and I have found two that I like.
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| A Fat Frank 'dirt track' section. |
I have decided to use two road systems. Fat Frank on E-Bay sells a variety of road types (see above photo). I went for the 30mm dirt track, which has a really nice gritty texture with cartwheel marks and is on a thin, slightly flexible backing.
The big advantage with these roads is that they are ready to go, fully dressed and can just be plonked down from new without any prep. I ordered twice from him and the second order exactly matched the first in look, colour and texture. I am going to use these for my secondary roads or when a game demands a bigger road net that might get a bit too much for the table. They will also make a great dirt trail or a track through woodland.
For main routes, I have chosen Timecast, who sell a flexible latex rubber product in various widths. For roads I have settled on their ‘medium dirt’ roads, which have a 32mm road surface and then raised roadside embankments for a total width of 47mm. I took their river system classed as ‘Wide’, which including the banks is 62mm wide in total.
Together with 30mm basing and the smaller figure (15mm or less), these seem a good combination visually for the table. They come in the raw, so need painting up and the coloiur ‘recipe’ recorded, so that I can add to what I have, making sure they match. I am a bit late to the latex party (there must be a song or a joke in there somewhere), but I am an instant fan. They are cleanly cut, so butt-up together nicely, there is some good quality control going on here.
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| Timecast road / river / bridge system. |
Timecast also sell associated bridges to integrate with their road / river sizes, so I got a couple of nice fine plaster bridges that match the ‘wide’ river the ‘medium’ width road, but now realise that one is for 6mm and the other 10mm, but the 10mm will be fine. The latex rubber material is pliable enough to drape roads over some of my smaller S&A Scenics smooth sided hills.
I already own a few resin bridges that I like, that make a good fit with the table, so I thought I would model them out with a plasticard base, so that they fully mate with the waterway.
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| Timecast latex fields |
Timecast also sell a variety of fields made from the same material. Again these need painting up / flocking, but have the advantage of hugging the table nice and low, making any in scale fencing look suitably better. Above left is a 5½” x 5½’ field in the raw, to the right, a 4” x 3” painted and flocked.
Above - they do look very good when grouped and blend well with the overall look of the table. Here is a shot of a scene that was part of a 12mm ACW game that was posted here a few weeks ago,
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| TimeCast fields |
Above - they do look very good when grouped and blend well with the overall look of the table. Here is a shot of a scene that was part of a 12mm ACW game that was posted here a few weeks ago,
Finally, what of railway? I already have ‘N’ gauge (for 10mm) and HO/OO gauge (for 20mm and bigger) track with associated wagons and plenty of buildings in those standard rail scales, but 15mm sits between the two. A quick consultation with my (not so local these days) model shop, advised that 15mm (1/100 scale) would look better with TT gauge track and rolling stock (1/120 scale) .... but they sold neither and thought it was hard to get hold of.
The thing with model rail shops is that they assume that you want a running train set with nice shiny looking gear - I don’t, it just needs to look right and the stock doesn’t need a working engine etc, but carriages and wagons need to look good (read - well used) just sitting on the track.
I remembered that Ironclad Miniatures did a resin rail set that was intended to work with 15mm, so a quick phone call to the owner confirmed that TT scale would suit me and that his resin tracks had the rails at 12mm apart, which is exactly right.
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| Ironclad Miniatures resin tracks |
So ..... a visit to e-bay saw a small clutch of TT wagons on auction and due to end within the hour. I got 4 wagons and 1 carriage for around £4 each.
Then a visit to Ironclad Miniatures web page resulted in a purchase of resin TT track. Now that I have them in my hands, they are lovely, well defined, flat, clean and visually spot on.
I had mounted my current two ‘N’ and HO/OO track systems on balsa and cork bases respectfully and applied stone ballast, they look a bit scruffy, so are totally outclassed by the smart Ironclad stuff. I have yet to paint them, but the texture is very obvious and looks very painter friendly.
I had mounted my current two ‘N’ and HO/OO track systems on balsa and cork bases respectfully and applied stone ballast, they look a bit scruffy, so are totally outclassed by the smart Ironclad stuff. I have yet to paint them, but the texture is very obvious and looks very painter friendly.
The wagons on arrival looked a bit, well, old and unloved. So I cleaned them up with a cotton bud, re-painted one of them and the applied washes generously to them, followed by gloss and then mat varnish. The result is quite a nice set.
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| TT gauge is around 1:120 |
Above, On the right, this was a dreadful 70’s creamy yellow plasicky colour. A bit of research allowed me to paint it grey with an off-white roof. The rest of the effect comes from washes, with a gritty wash added to the roof. It looks like a 'working' model now.
Above, On the left I couldn’t get the inside of this trailer stain free, so added some cargo. The tarpaulin is made from a dice glued to the wagon and then a PVA soaked piece of paper draped over it and folded into form and then carefully painted up and highlighted. I was going to glue a couple of rail workers sitting on the edge with their feet in the wagon, but thought they might look strange just sitting there having a break as T-34 tanks rumbled by with guns blazing :-).
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| A lovely TT gauge carriage by Triang |
Above, This is a nice item and having seen the same thing in HO/OO scale, it becomes obvious how useful the TT 1:120 scale is for the smaller table. You can go smaller with 'N' scale which is suited to 10mm figures. Here, i just used inks toget a worn look and reduce the plastic effect.
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| TT gauge wagons |
Above - Finally, a couple of wagons. On the left, the container just needed a thickish wash to help it 'calm down'. On the right, the wagon looked a bit grim inside, so Idropped in some balls of kitchen roll soaked in PVA as filler and once dry, put in a mix of medium sized stone balast and PVA, levelled it off and left it to dry. You can click on all of these images for a closer look.
As I delved into the Ironclad Miniatures website, I also ordered some buildings, but was particularly taken by this windmill (below), which has gone together very nicely and painted up well.
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| So nice, here it is a second time :-) |
As these things have started to arrive through the post, it feels like an important sub-structure of the project now exists and that my table is well on the way to fulfilling it’s part of the deal in me getting the look and feel that I want for these games.
Things are moving ever onwards .... but no dedicated project armies have yet left the painting table. Further orders have gone in to suppliers (pre-paint stone walls arrived today from Coritani, who have the fastest turnaround that I have ever come across) and painting and modelling to get some suitable troops, buildings and accessories has started - so hopefully more project updates to come soon!
RESOURCE SECTION.
My sister web space (COMMANDERS) is more snippet based than here and will be getting Pocket Army updates. LINK
Ironclad Miniatures website is here LINK
Coritani website is here LINK
https://www.magneticdisplays.co.uk
TimeCast webpage is here LINK
Fat Frank on E-Bay - search under Fat Frank 15mm terrain (or roads)
