Terrain Pieces

This post will contain pictures of commercial or custom made terrain pieces. Whether you war-game, setup dioramas or just like to have fun with a nice battle scene, terrain pieces can go from being a nice complement to playing a central role in your setup. And if you are into building them yourself, they can turn out to be really fun projects to work on. You might even find yourself constantly scouting all types of places for anything that might be useful in one of your future projects or just 'the right' item to give that realistic touch to the one you are currently working on. It is also a process of experimentation to see which way of doing things turns out better. Anyhow, Whether you make them or buy them, having nice terrain pieces to complement your troops can give a big boost to your scenes. For now, I will begin with one that I recently purchased.

CTS / Form Tech - Destroyed Tiger Tank

This is a foam product that comes kind of painted. I must say that I liked it when I saw the pictures and bought it online. Then when I held it in my hands and saw it up close I second guessed my decision. Then when I took this picture I concluded that it's not too bad. I think I will enhance the paint job later, put a bit of vegetation around the edge of the base to smooth it out and that should give it a good face lift. As you can see it has room for a couple of figures maybe even more if you squeeze them in there. It does seem however to be on the smaller side of the 1/32 scale. Anyhow with a bit of touch up work I think it can be a nice addition to quite a few battle scenes.

Click here to see a post about a trench system

Click here to see the trench system in use

Bunkers on a budget

If you ever feel like setting up your own Siegfried or Maginot Line or an Atlantic Wall to storm from the Normandy beaches, or simply find yourself in need of bunkers, one solution which I have come across which is both cost-effective and produces structures of acceptable realism is to use the styrofoam that comes as protection with TVs, computers, printers, etc. It often comes with round corners and colum-looking shapes which resemble a concrete structure. With a little bit of spray paint and cutting a couple of firing slots you can have a fairly decent-looking bunker in very little time and for almost no cost (other than the new TV!). Here are a few examples that I built a few years back.

Sometimes the challenge is finding something to cover the openings in the front that looks acceptable and provides protection to the defending troops.

Some of them also have pits on top which make great observation posts.

This one has some nice lines and shapes.

They are also fairly sturdy. This one shows quite a few marble impact marks from all the attempts in past battles to knock out the guys inside.

This one is not the prettiest, but one day I found myselft with eight of these and well, they got pressed into service.

This one had a hole on top which got filled with an observation tower, or perhaps it's a chimney stack? This building has also played the part of a factory at Stalingrad. Note that a small piece of cardboard acts as a platform for the firing slots on the second level. 

Click here to see shots of Waffen SS troops defending some bunkers.

Trench Builder

To complement the previous post about the Trench System I would like to share with you a video of a small program that I wrote at the time that I was building the Trench System to help me visualize all the possible trench configurations, given a set of available trench modules and the desired width of the system. Back then, I used this information to decide how many trench modules of each type to build and, just recently, I replaced the temporary images for actual pictures of the trench modules. The program also allows you to order the available pieces and specify how many of each you have, which in turn influences the order in which the resulting configurations will be 'discovered'. The program will pause a configurable amount of time (1 sec for this video) between each solution. I only recorded about a minute of the program's execution, but the program can actually run for hours and hours. Notice that there is also a setting to display configurations that end up leading to a 'dead end', meaning that some pieces remain with open connectors, and therefore the solution is not valid. Selecting that option makes the display a lot more interactive, but it also slows down the program, so I only turned it on during a portion of the video. If I ever find the time I might rewrite it for the web and let you play with it first hand. Even if you are just considering a hypothetical trench system I still find it fairly entertaining to watch.

Follow this link to watch the Trench Builder video.

Here are some pictures of German Infantry fighting from the trenches.

Trench System

By now, the trench system used as the backdrop of some of the pictures from previous posts might be starting to look familiar, so today I'd like to share with you how that looks in its entirety and how it was built. How it looks really depends on how you want to set it up and how much space you have. The system is modular, with each piece measuring 1 square ft. The entrances to each trench piece are always located in the same place so that they can connect with any other piece as seen below.

I have built 18 pieces so far, and that allows me to build quite a few scenarios. There are corner pieces at a 90 degree angle, corner pieces at 45 degree angles, straight sections, semi-straight sections with a bend in the middle, a 4-way intersection, 3 way-intersections, a command bunker, a firing bay for a tank, an end section, a couple of firing bays for artillery pieces, and a couple of filler sections with craters on them.  Below are a couple of assembled configurations from past setups.

A setup in depth

A stretched out setup

In terms of how it was built, each piece is made with a plywood base. The trench itself is made with little wooden pieces from twigs and branches, glued with hot glue, using a 'glue gun'.

The slopes of the trenches are made using styrofoam, cutting away and scraping off what you don't need in order to give it some realistic profile. Note that the slope always has to be at the same angle if you want to ensure that it will align with any neighboring section.

The styrofoam is then covered with paper mache. The paper mache I use is called Celluclay. You just mix it with water and add some Elmer's glue to it and you are good to go.

Inserted into the paper mache you can add little rocks, logs (more little branches) and vegetation (decorative moss). When the paper mache dries it can painted over with acrylic paint.

Another configuration of the assembled trench system. This is as compact as it can get.

Click here to explore the many different configurations that can be built with the Trench System.

Here are some pictures of a company of German Infantry fighting in the trenches.