Hereford1938AVBCWtng: Terrain

Showing posts with label Terrain. Show all posts

Sunday, 3 December 2023

PAPER TENTS - AND MARK'S LITTLE SOLDIERS

Earlier in the year, Mark Copplestone put on a "Mark's Little Soldiers" game at the Partisan Wargames Show. Given that "MLS" originated as a "faux nostalgia game of imagi-nations" set in the 1930s, Hereford1938 has always had a fondness for the Copplestone-sculpted figures (see the "Shiny Stuff" blog label to the right):

MLS Game at Partisan. Highly stylised terrain - but the presence of sheep
clearly indicates a distant link with Hereford1938.

Railway track and oil refinery in the centre of the table. Wider shot of the
highly stylized "mountains".

Interesting as photos of the game itself were, even more interesting was the MLS method of representing HQ Sections, Hospitals, Casualties, Prisoners of War and Off Table Artillery:

A separate, off board tile with all necessary components represented

The question then arose - where did those rather nice tents come from, including the already marked-up hospital tent ? A bit of searching of Mark's various sites provided the link (the French National Archive) to WW1 paper soldiers, and an even greater variety of paper tents:

General Joffre's Command Tent

An army marches on its stomach - a bakery tent

Infantry Tents - in this case, British Imperial infantry.

That nice hospital tent

These tents may or may not need a little resizing for the purpose of 28mm figures - but, subject to that, are pretty much instant pieces of card terrain for those blessed with a printer !

One last one we particularly liked, even if we had no immediate use for it
- the Kaiser chained in a cage !

Note:

(1). "Partisan" photographs snitched from Alys Toy Soldiers Blog (see HERE) Aly Morrison needs no introduction, and the blog is well worth keeping up with for figure/period variety and (obviously) painting tips and recipes.

Wednesday, 15 September 2021

VBCW Villages - of Card

After these experiments with VBCW Villages made out of tin, together with Roo's experiments with "Superquick" buildings, another potential source of "cheep" (really cheap) VBCW buildings - the Kelloggs Village. Produced in 1989 (although it may be that this series was a repro, with the originals dating back to 1948), the Kelloggs Village consists of nine "classic English" card buildings - church, petrol station, thatched cottage, butchers, etc - certainly more than enough for a tabletop VBCW village.

These card buildings (about 1/76 or 1/72 scale) still occasionally appear in the original on Ebay, where they can be remarkably inexpensive. However, scans of the originals (plus photographs of the made buildings themselves) appear on this 'Toys and Stuff' blog and can be downloaded, resized if preferred, and photoshopped as you wish. For those who have already invested in tin, this is an excellent way of adding at least a church at approximately the same scale - for those with larger houses, it is at least a source of inspiration, plans and possibly more. Whichever way you look at it, they'll all be worth more than you paid for them!

Monday, 5 April 2021

28mm VBCW VILLAGES - OF TIN!

Following this post on VBCW Villages, the question arose (somewhat out of order, as usual) - what would be the best way to make a 28mm VBCW village to defend? The answer would seem to be neither resin nor plasticard, but creditably old fashioned tin:

Three novelty tin boxes, shop or house shaped, pre-coloured and tabletop ready. 8cm long, 9cm high, 5cm wide. Different designs front and back for maximum flexibility (and each gable end, too):

Available on Ebay at about £6.00 each, with free P&P. Search "Dana Kubick tin" or check THIS LINK

Six of the tins grouped together make a reasonable sized VBCW village:

with a small "footprint" suitable for the average sized tabletop. Further Ebay searches on the theme of "tin houses" or "tin shops" turn up some further, slightly larger (and usually slightly more expensive), VBCW gems:

Above, next to a Dana Kubick tin, a 1930s station tin. Below, and very necessary for the VBCW, the same 1930s station with a 1930s pub:

and the same station and pub with a thatched farmer's cottage:

Now to establish how they look with 28mm figures. A BUF patrol with a Lledo "command car" incautiously ignores the pub on their search for Communists:

while the same patrol then passes through "the village":

Excellent value for a small investment - a robust, space saving, pre-painted VBCW Village to defend!

Wednesday, 31 March 2021

SAINSBURYS GOES VBCW

Well, not quite. But for those living in the UK, Sainsburys have produced, as part of their "Easter retail offering", this rather interesting "Grass Table Runner":

Grass Table Runner (with Bunny Ears Easter motif)

For those of a 1938 mindset, quite why anyone would wish to decorate their dining table with an artificial grass "table runner" is unimaginable. An aspidistra in the corner of the dining room, perhaps, but really.....

Unrolled "table runner" on a standard GW battlemat

Nevertheless, the artificial grass certainly deserves to be rolled out on the wargames table. 4ft long and 1ft wide, the "table runner" is plastic backed and can be converted easily (with nothing more than strong scissors) into four acceptable "arable fields", or such like:

A BUF Section ignore the well rolled lawn of a GW Battlemat
and choose to plough through an arable field.

Just £4.99 on Sainsbury's shelves at the moment, probably to be discounted after the Easter holiday. Worth having a hunt for on the next visit to the supermarket....

Thursday, 25 March 2021

VBCW Section Attack

Following this recent post ("VBCW Villages"), Tradgardmastre published a post on his own blog with photographed extracts from a similarly beautifully illustrated 1930s/1940s book titled "Britain's Modern Army". Here is the illustration of a section attack after it was run through Photoshop:

It may sometimes be noted that while this illustrates a textbook section attack, it has 'the enemy' doing nothing but sitting there waiting - not a usual occurrence on a VBCW tabletop.....More illustrations on Tragardmaster's own blog HERE.

Wednesday, 3 March 2021

VBCW Villages

As the BUF "Mailed Fist" Battlegroup advances along the Tewkesbury - Ledbury road (blogposts passim), these are the kind of village defences that they fear:

Hereford1938AVBCWtng