Author: Jeremey

Work in Progress Wednesday – Coffee Stirrer Special

A little departure from our normal work in progress posts. We recently embarked on a coffee stirrer challenge. The idea being to make something for wargaming from wooden coffee stirrers. A few of us accepted the challenge and present the results here.

We start with my effort, I went a bit over the top and decided to make a small wooden boat.

Stephen decided to make something very practical for gaming with, in the form of some archer mantlets.

Meanwhile Tony F seized the opportunity to make a piece of scenery needed for an upcoming game. He created the gate to Bree for a Lord of the Rings game.

And our final entry was from Andy who created a couple of terrain pieces. The first being a barricade.

And to follow Andy made a section of fencing, but decided to keep going and ended up making an entire fenced area.

This was an interesting challenge and a fun one to try an see what wargaming terrain we could make out of something as simple as a coffee stirrer.

We hope you enjoyed this slight distraction, we’ll get back to our usual work in progress next week.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to a very rainy (well in our part of the world) Wednesday for some more progress by our members. Going to start with myself for a change and the box monster I’m currently working on. Someone asked me to make this for a game and I just couldn’t refuse.

Next up and John La has been painting up some Anglo-Dutch War 1/2400 scale ships.

Moving on and Mark H is beginning work on some aircraft. I’ll let Mark explain them better “Planes are four USN Skyraiders and four North Korean Yak9P – the latter minor conversions from the WW2 era version of the YAK9 that Tumbling Dice provide”

For this week Stephen didn’t have any miniatures or terrain to show but we thought we’d mention, he’s been busy putting paints from dropper bottles into paint bottles with lids. I’m undecided as I’ve only just started using paint manufacturers with those bottles.

And lastly for this week Tony F has been basing up a load of K&M trees that he didn’t know he had.

And some sand worm style miniatures that he has 3D printed. These we are assured will be making an appearance in a Stargrave game some time in the future (oh joy!)

See you next week.

Marshes, Low Ground and a bit of Scatter

Stephen takes us through some terrain building ideas.

Having just completed a correspondence course with the University of Magrathea I thought I would embark on a bit of world building.

Well, start small with some terrain at first.

This is about a few terrain pieces I’ve made over the last couple of weeks and I thought I’d share my process. There’s going to be three different kinds here – some marsh/swamp areas, an area of low ground, and some scatter terrain items (log piles). These are nominally for use with 15mm games (but the swamps could be used as smaller pieces for 28mm games).

Let’s look at the area terrain pieces first, the swamps and low ground. As a basis I use modeller’s light ply bought from a local modelling shop. This is mainly used in radio-controlled aircraft. I buy sheets of 2mm thick ply. They are cut into shapes and then the edges are chamfered.

Both the swamps and low ground need raised edges, but different kinds.

It’s hard to represent low lying ground on the wargames’ table. Realistically the only way you can do it is by placing something on top of the table and declaring it as sunken ground. So that’s what this is going to be. Since I wanted a more robust edge, to give the idea of looking up/down to anyone on the edge, I chose to use air-dry clay. I tend to use the terracotta colour so if it chips it doesn’t glare out at you. It also takes a couple of days to dry properly. Thing with clay is that it shrinks as it dries and when this happens I’ll fill the gaps with something – in this case, Milliput, because…

The swamps. I just wanted a shallow, thin, lip around the surface because I intended on pouring resin into it and it was just something to hold it in. I rolled a big ball of Milliput and then put a bead around the edges and smoothed that out. Then left that to dry.

Here’s a thing I do. 99% of the time you end up mixing too much putty. Rather than throw the excess away I make scenic items. Things like sacks, jugs, bowls, bottles. That kind of thing. It makes use of the surplus and means you have a ready supply if you want to put together some baggage elements or just as dressing around the bases of other modelling projects.

Let’s put the paint on. I gave the sunken ground an all over with a khaki brown. The two swamp pieces had the edges done khaki and the swamp area in a lighter brown.

Once the paint had dried the sunken ground got an all-over covering of fine ballast (bought from a model railway shop). When the ballast had dried I then flocked the sunken ground with static grass but left areas of ballast showing for texture and variety. The swamps had the edges done with static grass.

Now put that aside and let it all dry.

And whilst drying let’s move on to the log piles. These are to represent stacks of pine logs for east European WW2 games. Whilst out for a walk in the local woods I collected some sticks. In actual fact, these are just model pine stacks, they are actual pine stacks because I collected pine twigs. The things I do in the name of authenticity. They are given a good scrub to get rid of any dirt and then left to dry out. Once dry I got out the hobby tool and chopped them all to the right length.

These are then all stuck together. I used a couple of different glues. The first one I did with PVA. But after doing it I realised it would take an age to dry (I went in thick to ensure it got all around the edges). So on the second two I used a cyanoacrylate. Much quicker drying time!

Back to the area features. I had some clump foliage and this was stuck in patches to the sunken ground to represent areas of weeds and undergrowth. That would be that for the sunken ground.

For the swamps I wanted to fill them with resin and then stick some clump foliage in that. The resin would give a nice shiny effect to look like water. Since I would only be using a relatively little amount of resin I used a proprietary two-part epoxy resin. Shop around and you might find a budget brand, but I already had some Araldite Rapid so that’s what I used. To the resin mix I added the smallest of small blobs of khaki acrylic paint. It really does only need to be a small amount, barely enough to cover the end of the barbecue skewer I used to mix it. Once that’s been poured in I just got bits of clump foliage and pressed them in the setting resin.

Once I complete a model what I do next is put it aside for a couple of days for everything to properly dry out. There’s always going to be some residual moisture in there somewhere.

But now I have some more terrain (you can never have too much, eh?) for a bit of variety on the table top. These were all very simple builds as well.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Despite over half of the membership regularly playing historical based games, this weeks progress is dominated by Sci-Fi. We start with Mark J and some more progress on his Legions Imperialis forces.

Next up and Stephen has been mixing various plastic kits to come up with some interesting characters. I think these are destined for a hive of scum and villainy somewhere.

Andy has also made progress with his various projects. The Werewolves have been primed along with a robot.

The Einherjar (space dwarves) have also been primed but Andy is also experimenting with zenithal highlighting.

That’s also been applied to his Sneakfeet (space halflings), will be interesting to see the results.

And last but not least this week, I’ve been painting some more of my 3mm sci-fi miniatures. This time some light mechs, just need to do the basing.

We will see you next week with more progress on our projects.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to another work in progress Wednesday. We start this week with Marcus who has been busy basing his 6mm miniatures for a sea based game. Above we have some VTOLs and below a mixture of naval units and hover tanks.

Next up Andy has been prepping a number of miniatures for various projects. Firstly some space dwarves.

Some halflings (called Sneak feet apparently) snipers.

And some werewolves.

Meanwhile Tony has created some turrets on what look like some sea based platforms.

And he’s also been painting up some new roads.

And finally for this week Stephen has painted a useful piece of packaging and created this sci-fi building.

And with that we will see you next week.

France 1940 – The Bridges – Battle Report

Alan takes us through a big game of Chain of Command set in France 1940.

The purchase of a Cigar Box Battle river mat on eBay sparked thoughts about the interesting challenges of a game with one side having to make a strategic withdrawal across a river and the other trying to seize the crossings.

This led to the purchase of not just one, but two bridges from Sarissa Precision, a road and a rail bridge. The latter then led to building the track to go with it and then a station. To make the game work it needed to be big both physically (a 12 foot by 6 foot table) but also from a Chain of Command perspective; this meant at least a company a side. This was the result.

It saw a rag-tag French outfit as the defender facing a determined German company supported by a platoon of tanks. The French were made up of a platoon of Foreign Legion and a platoon of Tirailleurs Sénégalais on one side of the river, needing to withdraw across the bridges and a Motorcycle platoon holding those bridges. The French also had some support in the form of an anti-tank gun and some engineers in a truck – the latter to demolish the bridges before the Germans could capture them intact. Along with two Bouteilles Incendiaires, two roadblocks and a couple of full Chain of Command dice for the withdrawing troops, this was the defending force. The Germans, in addition to their infantry company and tank platoon, had an Adjutant, a Pioneer team in a Kubelwagen, a SdKfz 222 armoured car, an infantry gun and a truck with four rubber boats. It wouldn’t have been an early war game without a Shabby Nazi Trick – the German players selected a fifth column sniper (Jean-Claude). We played through the patrol phase which saw some interesting jockeying for positions around the buildings on the German side of the board. With jump off points then positioned we were ready for the meat of the game.

The Foreign Legion were covering the French left flank and the Tirailleurs Sénégalais on the right. The Germans began their advance with the platoon on their right flank making serious progress until they encountered the Legion. The other German platoons soon found that the Tirailleurs weren’t going to be easily dislodged and put them under heavy concentrated fire. The roadblock constrained the easiest route for their Panzers and so the main armoured advance was through the farmland to the right of the road.

Repeated exchanges of fire were telling on the French forces as they tried to hold the Germans long enough for their engineers to deploy and mine the bridges.

Eventually they began to fall back but not before taking serious casualties. Meanwhile Jean-Claude who had been placed in the church tower (it’s traditional!) was causing the French some unexpected problems.

With the French C-in-C desperate to blow the now mined bridges he ordered a full withdrawal but this was easier said than done with the Germans covering most of the routes to the bridges.

The Tirailleurs were aiming for the road bridge but when they got there the C-in-C ordered them to switch to the distant rail bridge so he could blow the former.

Meanwhile the German pioneers were making heavy weather of destroying the roadblock and the motorised elements of the German force were still held up as a result.

In the end only a single Legion section got to safety before the second bridge was blown and with neither side having been able to meet their victory conditions we declared the game a draw.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Giant stompy Titan kicks us off this week. Felix has been painting up a Reaver Titan for Legions Imperialis. While Mark J has continued work on a Marauder flyer.

Next up and Tony has started a new project, this time 10mm Dwarves for Lord of the Rings.

And another member for his Stargrave crew.

And finally for this week Stephen has been painting more town characters. This time the silent stranger and Daisy Chainsaw (don’t ask).

And an idol that members will soon be fighting over in an upcoming game of Stargrave.

See you next week.

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s Wednesday and the members have made a start of their various projects.
First up we have Stephen who has painted a 15mm patrol boat for Vietnam.

Staying with boats and Marcus has also been painting boats, this time some 6mm sci-fi craft

He has also been finishing some 6mm sci-fi hover tanks.

Next up we have Mark J and some progress on his Legions Imperialis miniatures and buildings.

Some Legions Imperialis tanks, super heavy tanks and a gunship

Meanwhile Tony F has been busy getting terrain ready for a Lord of the Rings game.

And as his opponent in the game Phil has been painting some Ring Wraiths to pursue those pesky Hobbits.

We’ll see you next week for some more progress.

History of the Society

2021 was the 50th anniversary of the society and we decided we should have a properly documented history of Maidstone Wargames Society. It’s taken a bit longer than we anticipated but we have finally managed to reconstruct the main highlights of the society from 1971 to the present day.

We’ve given our history its own page and we will add to it each year details of our show games, open days and other events of significance.

History of Maidstone Wargames Society

 

Work in Progress Wednesday – Christmas Special

While the society members ramp up their projects for 2025 we thought for this Wednesday we would have a round up of the hobby related gifts members received as a teaser of what to expect to see this year.

We start with Phil and a fresh supply of GW Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil. If these ever go out of production Phil will never paint again!

Next up and Marcus has some new Battletech miniatures as well as some John Carter of Mars figures. Marcus has recently been painting up 6mm sci-fi forces and clearly felt the need for something a bit heavier.

Now we have Tony F with some Mantic sci-fi terrain, which he says will be appearing in a game of Stargrave this year. He’s also got more reference material for Middle Earth to help with the campaign currently running.

We have some 40k and paint for Charlotte, and some intriguing diorama lights. Never come across those before so am really interested in how Charlotte is going to use them, as intended or as terrain features?

Mark J has just gone for more reinforcements for his WW2 collection. This time some US Airborne troops.

Mark K has a new ruleset to try out in the form of L’Art De La Guerre,

and some Desert Rats decals, so a real mix of periods there.

While Mark W (yes we have a lot of Marks) has the Arkham Horror card game, Dunwich Legacy and the Investigators. You can never go wrong with a bit of Cthulhu style horror in my book (and we all know what book that is).

We have more new rules now, looks like John La will be up for more naval action this year, we’ve seed WW2 and Ancient naval games from John. I can’t remember if we’ve seen any age of sail yet.

Now on to what I got from Father Christmas, I love reading older sci-fi stories and picked this set of three books of edited collections about power armour, super tanks and space fighters. I get a lot of inspiration from books like these for miniature sculpting and rule writing.

And we end our Christmas special with a typical gamer response from Stephen. He didn’t ask for any hobby stuff this year but one of his presents had this packaging, which is being painted up as a sci-fi building as we speak, so look out for that next Wednesday.

That’s it for this week, we hope you also got some nice hobby goodies over the break. See you next Wednesday when our normal look at the work in progress will resume.