Sunday, May 30, 2010

West Indies: Pirate Island (4) - Having a look round ...

I finished off all the trees and jungle pieces, including some rocky outcrop sections (small pieces from Javis scenics; the large pieces - don't know). The beaches on the island sections have been done and painted so here it is ...

Colonists (?) unload in the bay ...
Another of the little boats surveys the island from the sea ...

Saturday, May 22, 2010

West Indies: Pirate Island (3) - going green

I made up my terrain modules with 3mm MDF board on top and bottom with an interior fill (or frame) or 20mm/30mm wood battons. That gave the modules some height. Then I covered the modules with the remains of the green curtain I used for my gaming table surface; I'm thinking of doing the beaches using plastic wood and painting them a simple sand colour - we'll see how that turns out - I'm currently working on the trees/palms.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Blog layout tweak and useful reference book ..

I've been tweeking the layout of items down the right hand side of the blog. Mainly to have a separate Carnatic wars list; to which I've added some links to the FibiWiki for each of the Carnatic wars.

A useful book for SYW India and the Carnatic wars is 'An Account of the War in India: between the English and French, on the Coast of Coromandel' by Richard Owen Cambridge 1761. Its available online here,  also available to buy from Amazon - have put a link to this in the India references.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

West Indies: Pirate Island (2) - Jungle and Palms galore

A few shots to show the work I've been doing since yesterday. I've added to all the existing tree/palms bases with about 10 more and split up the 'plastic tree' mat into smaller sections. The aim has been to get a reasonable coverage of  the island; but not too much to make it so you can't move figures around on it.

Some idea of scale of, with a couple of unpainted figures .
One of the coastal modules; with a couple of turtles ..
Next phase to add some height to the modules where needed and get some terraining done. I'm going to try to do this in the simplest way possible; I have my thinking cap on.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

West Indies: Pirate Island (1) - Module Bases

The 3rd post today. phew! Unable to do some gardening becuase of the poor weather [shame :)], I set about making up the module bases for my pirate island - ideally somewhere in the carribean. I had some 3mm MDF sheet left over from an old model railway backscene; after sketching out some ideas I opted for the following:
  • 2 narrow coast modules
  • 2 land modules
  • 1 inlet or small harbour module
These were cut to fit onto my gaming table. For the surrounding ocean effect I used some dark blue curtain lining material. Here is my gaming table with the module bases for the 2 coast and 2 land modules - gives a land gaming surface of about 6ft by 2ft4ins.
and alternatively with the inlet/small harbout board...

Naval - some little ships

While browsing for some useful bits for my 18C rooms for the palace of Wittenberg, I came across some nice little ships in the local dolls house emporium; the are about 5-7cms in length. The models shown below are Mayflower and a HMS Victory.

Although a bit crude they make great models for naval warfare. I'm going to try and find the source of these and see if I can order couple more for evaluation.

India: Mighty morphing volunteer battalions

To get things rolling on my SYW India project I've finished morphing two of my existing units by changing the command bases. Firstly the Monrovians volunteers who will be supporting the French ..

and the volunteers from Wittenberg who will be supporting the British....
The dense jungle behind the pictured units is a raft of plastic foliage for terrariums, each bit can be detached and used separately - so a session of jungle making is on the cards.  Oh and for a bit of light amusement ..
Where did they tell me to meet them for the tyger hunt ?

I have also accumulated all the initial figs and guns for the artillery of the french, british and indians; these are next in the painting queue for my India project.