This project was started in response to the series of articles and the free rules entitled "Tigers at Minsk" by Norm Smith. Norm's blog "Battlefields and Warriors" can be found here:
The look of the board I am going for is early Winter on the Eastern Front, October/November time, so cold/frosty with light snow and ice. I am looking do battles connected to the Defense of Moscow 1941.
Here is a view of my hex board (sorry in advance for my poor camera work).
As should be evident I did the filla paste in batches and have created, more by accident than design, a patchwork quilt effect of hexes which I very much like the look of.
The colour isn't quite right on my camera, those half hexes are not as light as they appear.
The brown speckling came through during the drying process and has given a mud/green effect that was quite unintentional but welcome never-the-less.
Moving on, here is the large hill. A different (cheaper) filla paste was used for textural effect.
As you can see I am planning on putting a curving valley through the hills.
Next up are some marsh/rough ground swap outs.
The different (cheaper) filla paste was again used for textural effect. The brown stones are from the garden, the grey from a Warhammer 40K basing kit.
The water effect was created by first cutting to shape and then painting very thin plasticard a porcelain blue colour. When dry dark blue ink was applied to the middle of the cut out and dark green ink to the outer edges, these were swirled together a bit for good measure. When dry a coat of gloss varnish was put over the top (sourced from GW). Finally, a piece of blister packaging was cut to match each bit of plasticard, a couple of blobs of superglue were applied and left to dry to give air pocket effects and then it was superglued over the varnished cut out.
To give you an idea of what I am aiming for as an eventual look to my games, here is a patrol of T34 tanks and a BT7 from Katakov's 4th Tank Brigade somewhere near Mtensk, October 1941.
There is a lot of work left to do, for instance I want to draw together the different greens a little by giving all the tiles a light dusting of "snow". I'd also like to add some clump foliage to many of the plain tiles and to Winterise (is that even a word?) the trees and also get some Pine trees so I can bulk out the woods a bit.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed having a look.
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