Flames of War skirmish report

 
After both sides occupying high ground over a ruined town, 

German reinforcements engaged American Paratroopers in fields. 

The Germans inflicted light casualties in hit and run raids but then failed to press home the element of surprise or to use a nearby platoon gone to ground in a wood to overwhelm the paratroopers. 

Then those Eagles accurately reduced the German forces by 66%, pinning them down. Quickly the Eagles mopped up the stragglers. The skirmish ended with the Screaming Eagles happier than Das Reich.

Getting entrenched - Building trenches for Flames of War FOW 15mm part 1

On the back of an amazing trip to Normandy, to see the D-Day landings, I'm beginning to model a little of the Atlantic Wall myself. There are some great Flames of War scenarios so I hope my trenches get well used.

I'm hoping to make trenches, bunkers, artillery and AA batteries, but let's start with a simple set of six one foot (30cm) trenches.

I'm basing the trenches on 6mm MDF. After some chats on the ferry home with my gaming mate, it's clear that the trenches must be wide enough for a medium Flames of War base to sit with its longest side parallel to the length of the trench. 

The trench begins with polystyrene strips being glued down with PVA. I used a marker to ensure there's enough room for a Flames of War base - allowing extra for the filler and the wood I'll use for the trench sides. 

I then added the brown window filler to the edges of the board, covering the outer side and top of the polystyrene. Of course I sloped the attackers edge of the section, so hopefully it'll make it look good for skirmishes. On two of the sections I've added exit points, another two have ends that I hope are big enough for a medium base to face out - seems like a good place for an MG42.

On the picture above I've also added kebab skewers on the sloped side, they may end up with barbed wire on them.

Once that was mostly set I put more filler in the trench. Into that I put planks, otherwise known as coffee stirrers. I built up the outside walls with three, the floor has various sections. The filler makes for excellent mud everywhere. The only thing I currently don't like is the thickness of the 'planks'. You can cut them down, I did a couple, but I already have very impressive Stanley knife scars, so I'm

reluctant to do that too much.

Originally I added a number of vertical pieces of 'plank' that held the horizontal 'planks' in place (on the real sections we saw in Normandy). This looked great, but the width of the trench became too narrow for the medium base. Using a wider MDF base would allow for more room in the trench, but the whole thing would take up more room on your gaming board. In the end I removed all of them except at the ends of the sections. 

I hope to sandbag the edges of the trenches - I'm going to get very bored making all then from green stuff! The main consideration there is ensuring the trench sides don't get too high and stop the soldiers (and their arms) seeing outside the trench.

Hedge clumps, smoke markers etc Part 1 - (for Flames of War FOW 15mm)

Over on the Flames of War forum there was a discussion about making explosion markers (http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=126&aff=52&aft=554059&afv=topic). I haven't got there yet, but as that idea got me thinking about a load of little bits for my boards.

Therefore I've used that idea and made some hedge clumps and smoke markers. I might develop this idea some more, but for now here's what I did.

I purchased some 2mm thick, 20mm diameter MDF pieces. These are available on ebay for only a couple of pounds.

On each of them I added some brown window putty. As I was experimenting I tried a few different finishes with the putty, but the main style I wanted was a cratered finish. Seems like craters are likely when shells and artillery go off and also it makes it very easy to put something in the crater because the crater edges cradle it and hide the glue.

 They dried and then I spray painted them with Plastikote brown. As these markers are very small I'm not going to paint them again to get a dry brushed effect. 

I took two different packets of Javis clump foliage. It's hard and far less malleable that the Woodland Scenics, so it's great to have a use for it because I couldn't seem to use it to make the much larger explosion markers. I put a good splodge of PVA in the crater, added the clump and then waited for it to dry. Then today I added a second liberal coat of PVA, just over the top to seal the hedge down.

I think these will make great little pieces of randomly placed scenery on a board. Put a few of them close together and they might be able to break line of sight between infantry teams.

Then the other type of marker I made this time are smoke markers. Another good blob of PVA goes in the crater well, then a lump of pillow filling, rolled and shaped. Using the pillow filler isn't my idea, I saw someone using it on Youtube for smoke markers.

I hope these work out, I literally finished making these before dinner this evening. I'll try and get some photos of these on a terrain board or in use soon.