INDIA Work-in-progress: Artillery

Artillery for SYW in India, the artillery park and crew for indian allies, plus a couple of french officers, painting is in progress on these; also waiting for the brush are french and british gun crews.

Photo backdrop for India

Below is a shot of my photo backdrop for taking pictures of completed figures and units for India. It is simple and neutral as possible, showing a temple and part of mughal style fort. I used a printed large sky paper and a couple of printed photos, and painted in the foreground; then I added a couple of flat plastic trees and some spongy green stuff to give some dimension.

go and tell Edna we've got another one of those thing-a-ma-jig's in the back garden again

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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...