Russian Terrain

 

Here are 3D printed terrain pieces from the Russian collections of 3D-Print Terrain and Hartolia. They have been printed at 1/72 scale for some Eastern Front WWII gaming with Chain of Command. Aside from the church they were all printed recently on my Centauri Carbon printer. I think the church was printed on a Creality CR10 printer. Quality is like night and day!

Looking at photos from the early 20th century, it appeared that most building were unpainted so I went with this for the rural buildings. I airbrushed the wooden buildings with Dark Umber, followed by dry brushes with Khaki, Dark Grey, Light Grey and Deck Tan. I might go back with some white paint for the window frames but that would be about it.

The fences are mdf from Things from the Basement, they were airbrushed with Dark Grey and then dry brushed with Light Grey.

I am quite happy how they came out and they saw the table 2 days ago.

ACW 15mm Terrain

 

Recently, I have been working on getting some Pickett's Charge games back on the table. This is a ruleset by David Brown which is similar to his Napoleonic ruleset Général d'armée. I played quite a few games several years ago with my friend Adam but have never set up a game in Montreal for our wargaming club. I am a little limited as I do not have a CSA army but I am working on this now. I also know that version 2 of Pickett's Charge is in the works but I suspect that it might be another year or so before we see it.

In the interim, I felt it important to work on some terrain for the game. My sense is that terrain is more important for the ACW than for Napoleonics, especially linear terrain. I already have several buildings, crop fields and trees that are suitable. I do have a lot of snake rail fencing but otherwise my linear terrain and barricades were lacking.

To test my new Centauri Carbon printer, I thought it would be a good choice to print some small terrain especially picket fences which can be a challenge in any scale. What follows are my efforts.

It does not look like much, but there is 5' of snake rail fence as well as 5' of picket fence. 

Really happy with the print of these fences from 3D PrintTerrain ACW set.

Some log barricades 

This fencing was put together some years ago and comes from Battlefield Terrain Concepts. It was pretty beat up and I had to reassemble more than half of the pieces.

Some resin field barricades from Battlefield Terrain Concepts

A mixture of resin prints as well as some 3D Prints. I am not sure how the haystacks came out but I think they are OK.

Lots of 3D printed stone walls.

Overall, I am quite happy with how everything came out, and I should be good for most battles. I still have another package of snake rail fencing to put together.....a tedious job which can be put off in the short term, but for now I will have to shift focus to some CSA troops.

Some Napoleonic Terrain

Our next planned GdA battle will be Quatre Bras. I am taking the scenario from the GdA Hundred Days sourcebook, with some amendments to make it work with GdA2 (skirmisher generation and number of ADC's). We are hoping to have the game in late September or Early October. It will be a club event and we will play it over 2 days with between 6-12 players on a 5x7' table. 

The scenario map from the book with a 5x7'grid

I have been working on the 2 farm complex over the last month and I am close to done, maybe some minor changes in the flock colour yet to be decided.

The building were printed from STL's available from 3D Print Terrain. The files are originally in 1/72 and I first printed them at 75% (15mm), they came out well but it was pretty obvious that the footprint was still too big. I then decided to go with the 6mm STLs, that were available but doubled the scale to 12mm. Although the documentation that came with the STLs said you could print at 12mm, I was not that happy with the quality so I went back to the original STL's and printed them at 60%. I went through a full spool of PLA in this process. I felt the 1/72 STLs were better so I finished the project with these.

In the first photo, we have Gemioncourt Farm on the left and the Quatre Bras farm on the right. The complex sizes are 9" and 7" in dimension so only slightly larger than what is on the scenario map.


The STL files come with all the buildings and fences of the actual farms but I left out pieces to reduce the size of the footprint. It was a bit of a challenge but I think they look ok. as you can see the large complex, Gemioncourt, is the centre piece of the battle and is a strongpoint according to the scenario rules.


Tall Hedges for Wargaming

In our recent Caesar's Camp campaign, I realised that my terrain collection was deficient in Hedges that blocked line of sight. I have a large collection of hedges which are about 15mm in height but with 20mm figures it is hard to give the impression that soldiers behind these smaller, cultivated hedges cannot be seen. 

In CoC there are 3 types of linear obstacles; minor, medium and major. Minor obstacle are decorative hedges, low fences and garden wall to name a few. These are defined as being waist high, and are easily crossed with 2d6, dropping the lower dice. These obstacles do not block line of sight. Medium obstacles are defined by being chest height and again can be characterised as farm hedges, stone walls and higher fences. They are again crossed with 2d6 but the higher dice is dropped in this case. It would seem that in some cases these medium obstacles can or cannot block line of sight, this is usually defined by the scenario or the campaign, and in the case of sight blocking terrain the figures would have to be within 2" of the obstacle. Finally we have Major obstacles, usually being defined as dense hedgerows or actual bocage. There is some flexibility here, but generally one would suppose that they are taller than the figures and block line of sight unless the figures are immediately adjacent to the obstacle. I would think that bocage is higher than dense hedgerows, but this distinction is unimportant in respect to the CoC mechanics of movement, I have wasted too much time reading notes on how these terrain features should look on the gaming table!

Anyway, for the Caesar's Camp we needed Dense Hedges, which were defined as a major obstacle for movement. I looked around on the internet, and I like how Travis did his hedges on TableTopCP, so I went with that plan as described below in a series of photos. 

The ingredients, reindeer moss of various colours and 3D printed bases

Aleenes Tacky Glue

Push the Reindeer Moss in Place

Like This

Wtered down Modge Lodge 6:1

The messy Bit

It is difficult to dilute the Modge Podge

9 Feet of Hedges, it takes 3-4 days to dry well

Finished Hedges in Play

Terrain-3D Printed

I bought a new FDM printer a couple of months ago and I have to say it really works well for me. My friend P-Y had bought an Artillery Sidewinder X2 and I was blown away how quiet it was. My Creality CR10S is really a piece of junk and I just threw it out. I am sure the 3D print enthusiasts who love to tinker with things (you know the type, the ones who offer advice on the product FB pages.....the psychos I mean) enjoy the Creality printers but the Artillery Sidewinder has just worked immediately when I took it out of the box.

Anyway, I have been recently using a matt PLA which I really like and have been printing a number of different things. I have also been throwing a lot of terrain out which I have had for years, which I am just not happy with. Because of this, I have had to do some replacements. First up is some hedges for Chain of Command in 20mm. The hedges I have are in hard resin and are quite nice but in 28mm and really have not worked that well for my 20mm games. I had a look and found these on Wargaming 3D. It is odd as they say they are for 6/10mm but I find them perfect printed as is for 20mm. It might be that they are packaged as bocage.

From the top using a matt PLA from Polymaker. Then washed with dark green (equivalent of Citadel Camoshade). Dry brushed successively with VMC Dark Green, Olive Green and Deep Yellow. Bases are painted with Dark Umber, and dry brushed with a Mocha Brown followed by a Medium Brown Ballast and some green flock.

I will need some more pieces as this is only about 15' so far.

My Friend Luis sent me these STL's, I believe they are free on Thingiverse.

I might have used a darker brown weather powder, but I have a hard time resisting colour.

Might add some lighter flock.

Single Culvert for Winter gaming

Double Culvert for regular terrain.

I do have a couple of more 3D printed terrain pieces to paint but my my biggest project recently is mdf terrain in 28mm mostly for Pulp Alley. Still have 2 more buildings to assemble and paint but I am getting there.