Get Real? Tabletop Battlefield Design.

I'm at the stage with my GF9 TANKS! Kursk project where I'm thinking about the design of my battlefield. Now war-gaming is such a developed hobby/industry now that - to be honest - you can get most anything you want to make a really fantastic and realistic looking miniature battlefield without having to do any real work (aside from clicking on an online store's  'purchase' button).

However, for many war-gamers, part of the enjoyment of the hobby is the crafting of scenery and accessories and making a little historically accurate piece of Waterloo or Normandy or whatever your choice of battle is that you wish to recreate. So, much crafting ensues!

Just how far down the rabbit hole of 'authenticity' you want to go is up to the individual and, certainly, I have seen some amazing examples of realistic looking and beautifully landscaped battle tables...

An wonderful example of some beautifully constructed and realistic landscape!

A magnificently atmospheric recreation of Normandy for
some war gaming, the town painstakingly crafted.

Looking at some of the breathtakingly intricate terrain models that some war-game clubs have taken months to build I find myself brimmed full of admiration BUT at the same time asking myself  this question - how 'realistic' does a game table need to be?

The Galeforce 9 TANKS! Battlefield Philosophy...
One of the things I liked about GF9T was that you could jump straight in with everything you needed by buying one of their starter sets. In the box you got all the bits and pieces you needed to start playing the game immediately, including some tanks and some flat 'scenery' with which you could make your battlefield...

My very first game of GF9T - straight out the box, with the 'scenery' provided
and the tanks aren't even painted yet! LOL

My first few games of GF9T were played on the dinning-room table with just a length of green felt thrown over it and using the flat printed 'scenery' that came in the box. This was perfectly adequate for learning how to play the game AND easily portable if you wanted to set-up at a friend's house.

However, I eventually found that ALL flat scenery had some disadvantages. As you can see from the above picture of my very first game the set-up leaves something to be desired by way of atmosphere - you'd have to really stretch your imagination to feel immersed in the idea that this was supposed to be France in 1944! 😂

Additionally, as I have mentioned in previous posts, GF9T's base mechanic is tank combat using 'line of sight' - in other words, if you can see it you can shoot it. Therefore, the intensive to add some proper 3D scenery becomes desirable, if only to help resolve instances of 'you can't see me from there' disagreements (which are a little more problematic when using flat scenery).

The most important view in GF9T...Line of sight to your enemy. But is that
flat 'cottage' tile blocking your view? Hhhhhmmmm...

So, 3D scenery was the way to go - for me at least - but then did I want to start building little miniature landscapes? The quick answer is 'no' and here's why...

Terrain building is an art in itself and once you start down that slippery slope you have to be very careful to balance your original intent - just to play a quick hour long game - against a project that could then blossom into an obsessive modelling project that could take up weeks of your time!!!

While full-blown wargamers who play games with rules that mean that their games could stretch into days long play (if not longer if they are playing a campaign) might want to have a immerse battlefield because they are spending so much time playing on it, I - on the other hand - just want a quick fix of blast 'em up fun and action.

I very soon began to add simple 3D objects to my games to make the task of
determining line of sight easier and to add some decoration. Adding objects also
adds an extra tactical element to the game as the intelligent use of 'cover'
becomes an essential aspect of the battle.

 I don't care so much if a certain house does't look like the one in the photo reference take in 1943 or whatever, I'm not - generally speaking - out to recreate an historic engagement in order to resolve some armchair general's academic 'what if'.Whether a building is of the exactly correct architecture or whether a particular model tree is exactly native to that particular environment is not so important... Me just want go 'boom boom'!!! 😈

Horse's for Courses...
So the driving force behind my need for scenery is simple, practical and is based on fun rather than on what is strictly factual. I'm make some effort to make my board look pretty - but I'm not going to spend enormous amounts of time planning and making a replica battlefield when I already have three or four (or more) ideas about the next battles I'd like to play banging about in my head.

I'm looking at scenery that can be quickly laid down to create a general sense of landscape but which can just as quickly be dissembled and packed away.

This attitude formed the fundamental requirements for how complex my scenery needed to be. It needed to be quick and easy to construct - I might only use it a couple of times so no weird and niche items that will just end up as draw fodder - and they should be rather generic and so re-usable.

Your requirements may differ - it's a sort of sliding scale.

The basis of any tabletop battlefield is the battlefield itself - by this I mean the base on which you place any other scenic items. And for me, my ubiquitous green felt cloth (other colours are available) is the ideal multi-national, all-encompassing 'moderate climate' theatre of war. That said, I have of late been tempted by off-the-peg battle mats that have texture patterns printed on them...

Might one of these printed battle mats finally replace my trusty felt cloth as
my go to battlefield? This is a Deepcut Studio 'Grass Plains' mat.

These seem to have all the advantages of my old felt cloth (you can roll them up and stick them in a draw) while at the same time adding the illusion of real ground texture. The downside is perhaps the expense, although I have noticed that they are getting cheaper all the time. A 3x3' mat - the basic standard size for a GF9T skirmish - is 26 Euros plus shipping, a bit more than the £7 I paid for my felt cloth cut-off! 😊

KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid!
...And having established my preference for a simpler and more 'stylised' approach to making my battlefield everything else sort of just falls into place...

I have already desired that I really like the quick build paper-craft buildings I have been making, they fit right into my 'cheep and cheerful' ideal. Because of this pared-down 'psudo-realism' all my other scenic items sort of need to follow suit. They have to be...

- Cheap
- Easy and quick to make
- Preferably modular and usable in different ways
- Unfussy and simple (preferably not multipart things I have to assemble)
- Portable and kinda disposable
- East to store

Because of my new love affair with papercraft models I am keen to carry this on for different parts of my terrain, such as rivers, roads, etc. In this way I can have a sort of unified aesthetic, so I'm now on the hunt for different pieces I can collect to make a 'battlefield kit'...

I've already found a modular 'flat' printable river kit by Fat Dragon Games. Although this is a stylised 'fantasy RPG' scenery I'm fine with the aesthetic as GF9T is a sort of cartoon caricature of armoured warfare itself. Also, it fits in well with the tiled scenery items that came with the basic starter kit, all I have to do is print out the river tiles I need and mount them on card and place them on my battle mat. Simples! (Do people still say that?) 😆

And so the search for papercraft terrain begins!

1/100 Kursk Project - Scenery Pt. 3

I finished off the 'Rusgorov' paper-craft hamlet models yesterday, and I have to admit that I am quite pleased with them. I was a bit unsure about them at first because they seem to lean towards the fantasy rather than historical end of the hobby, being a little on the stylised and colourful side.

But, in the end, I don't think they look too outlandish or unrealistic...

Building these paper and card models was very enjoyable and I look forward to making some more when the opportunity presents itself. (Predictably, I already have an idea for another project in the back of my mind.) 😊

The purpose of these little buildings are to provide some scenery and tactical cover for my planned Battle of Kursk war-game. GF9 TANKS! is intrinsically a 'line of sight' game and therefore having scenery and objects that can obstruct a direct view between a tank and it's target can help to make the game more interesting and challenging. Well, at least this is what I have come to believe from the games I have played so far and this is why I wanted to include a little Russian hamlet as a key objective in my Kursk themed game.

Well, what else will I include on my game table? I can't just have a village in the middle of nowhere.

I've had a good look at a lot of photographs of the landscape on which the Battle of Kursk took place in 1943 and what strikes you most of all is how well suited the countryside was to 'The Biggest Tank Battle in History'! I suppose that's probably putting the cart before the horse as it was as likely as it was the flat and open nature of the region that made it a obvious choice for a set-piece tank battle.

Obviously, I don't think I'll add rolling hills, dense forests or lakes to my battlefield, rather I'll be constructing a pretty flat board with large grass plains interspersed with the occasional hovel and field. Therefore, any obstructions to line of sight will have to be artificial.

Natural landscape 'To do' list:

- How to make 1/100 scale fields.

- How to make some small dirt roads.

What these obstructions ill be will be the next challenge.

1/100 Kursk Project - Scenery Pt. 2

While still searching for all my tools and materials among the plethora of random junk in my attic I have managed to locate enough of my basic modelling tool set to have a stab at building something. Honestly, nothing is quite where I expected it should be which is very, very frustrating.

Anyway, I found enough bits and pieces to try putting together one of the little houses from the 'Rusgorod: Russian Hovels' paper-craft set I downloaded. I just wanted to see what the little models looked like built and to check that my size reduction from the set's original 28mm scale had worked.

Now, I don't have a great printer, it's just a cheap home-office HP and the resolution isn't fantastic (even when set to 'Best Quality'), but even so I was quite pleased with print-out I got and got down to cutting it out...

This is one 'Russian Hovel No. 1' - out of a set of 6 buildings - and as you can see is a log cabin with a (very) high 'A' frame roof (I know nothing about architecture). I'm not sure how authentic this is, but it looks quite cute and kinda similar to some of the log buildings I've seen in photos of the Russian countryside taken during WW2... So let's go with it!

Well, as you can see, it ain't the most complicated model to put together, the ones I did for my 1/100 Normandy game were a lot more fiddly. But, LOL, I still managed to get myself covered in Pritt Stick! 😂

I put together the inner shell or framework using 3mm Kappa board (as we used to call it in art school) - that's foam board if you prefer - and pasted the print-out onto it. The roof, however, was heavy card stock instead as I didn't want it too think...

For once, all my measurements seemed to be spot on and everything came together without any gaps at the seams.  This may have been to do with my cutting the board fractionally bigger, sticking the print onto it and then trimming off any excess? (For my Normandy card buildings I stuck all the printout onto the heavy card stock AND THEN cut everything out. I think my new way is better.)

Finally, with the walls glued together to form an open box, I cut out a rectangle of foam board for the floor and ground floor roof and then stuck them inside the box. This gave the building extra rigidity.

With the roof glued in place to complete the model I could't resist taking a photo of the cabin next to one of my 1/110 T-34s (Early Model)...

I think the scale looks just right - although I don't have any 15mm figures to check for sure - and next to the T-34 the model really does give off that rural Russian vibe.

This - as you can see - was a very quick build and there are a few things I would like to do to improve these models when I start banging out the rest of the set. For example, the exposed white card under the roof doesn't look good, I'll need to colour that (maybe a dark brown. And, also, I'll put on a darker roof cap along the length of the point, just to hide the little cut I made so I could fold the roof.

But, aside from these little niggles I am quite pleased with the model. It's what I was after - something cheap and easy and quick to put together. And I do prefer using foam board in order to create an inner supporting box as I noticed that after a while my 'card only' Normandy houses did warp a bit after being in storage in a cold, damp attic. These new models should last a bit longer.

Now, onto the other five buildings!

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'Rusgorod: Russian Hovels' are by Finger and Toe Models and are available from Wargamevault.com ($5 download).

PS... I'm almost tempted to but their onion domed church (above) as well and they also have other houses in the series that are worth a look.

1/100 Kursk Project - Scenery

I'm pretty much clear on what tank models I need for my GF9 'TANKS!' Battle of Kursk scenario. And what's more I half almost all of them and about 60% of them built...So...

Just what kind of terrain, scenery and scatter should I put together for the battle table?

A lot of the photos I've seen of the battle makes the landscape of the battle look fairly desolate, with large empty plains. But, the battle was actually a series of battles over an enormous front so whatever I produce will simply be a generic representation.

That said, I would like to add some cover - my past games of GF9T! has proven that adding obstacles in a line of sight tabletop war game greatly increases the tactical aspect and excitement (in my opinion). Hills, patches of trees, buildings and even destroyed tanks all provide sneaky patches of cover for tank duels.

Photo source: German Federal Archive. Photographer: Britting

My first thought is adding a Russian hamlet as both a sub-objective and area of cover. And so, the hunt for 1/100 Russian buildings began.

Note: GF9T! comes with some generic flat printed scenery in the starter box set and technically flat scenery has it's advantages, for starters you can drive your tank right over it easily! BUT, while perfectly serviceable, I found in the games that I played having proper 3D obstacles took a lot of the guess work out of determining just what or was not in 'line of sight'. So I prefer 3D models.

So, then the choice is: 3D printed, MDF laser cut, scratch built, resign moulded or paper-craft buildings???

Some rather nice Red Vectors laser-cut village buildings, but £18? Hmmm.

Out of these scratch built and paper-craft are the cheapest (maybe I should add 'can be the'), while unless you have your own 3D printer (I don't) the other formats mean forking out some dosh (boooo)! That's not to say it would cost a fortune to buy a set of 3D builings in 1/100, the resin ones, in particular, are pretty good value...

Peter Pig's Russian Timber Church (supplied unpainted), just £3.50! Not bad!

But, I'm of the mind that why should I fork out a sum of money for a set of buildings I will only use a couple of times and then have to store away. I'd much rather go for a cheaper and slightly more temporary solution. But that's a matter of your own opinion and choice.

As if to prove me a lair Paperterrain's Russian Hamlet is $20! For a papercraft
set...Mind you, it is a good one, but still. Phew!

After much Googling I eventually came across a rather nice little papercraft set that was definitely in my price range. On Wargamevault.com I found Finger and Toes Model's 'Rusgorod: Medieval Russian Hovels' PDF in 28mm scale.

Now, despite being in 28mm and being described as 'medieval' buildings this attractive little set was a very satisfying $5 - I could go for that, I thought! 28mm 2D models scale very nicely at 50% when printing and even though it says 'medieval' I didn't see much that differentiated them from a 20th century Russian hamlet...

I like the style of these particular models. Yes, they a bit more 'creative' in their decoration, more akin to a fantasy style than a historic one, but I appreciate that extra splash of colour. Some of the 'more historically accurate' models I have seen are a wee bit dull. I concede that's just a realistic fact of life as it was in Russia at this time, extreme poverty saw to that, but GF9 'TANKS!' isn't a serious game - it's war-gaming lite - and a bit of poetic licence in style is in keeping with the spirit of the game.

Anyway, I bought and downloaded the 'Rusgorod Hamlet' set and have done some test printouts to ensure that the scaling from 28mm - 50% - works, and it does.

The original 28mm scale design filled the A4 page. This is what the 50%
reduction looks like, it is now 15mm (1/100) scale and ready to cut out.

Battlefield Deleterious - Scatter Scenery
Quite apart from terrain and buildings, 'scatter' items give the tabletop battlefield a little flavour and provide some extra obstacles or cover.

From the beginning I knew I wanted to maybe add features like a railway line, a fordable stream or a road. While not obstacles in the true sense - being transversable - each of these features does have an effect on vehicle movement. Crossing a wide stream or railway line would slow down tank movement and a good road would speed up movement. However, these are not the the only reasons I wanted to add these - they also allow for the opportunity to add additional 'scatter' objects to the table...

Burnt out GAZ truck convoy by Peter Pig.

Again by Peter Pig, a knocked out Russian T-34 tank!

Something I really fancied putting together was a burnt out truck convoy on the road, this would be very atmospheric, provide cover BUT also stop either participant from doing a rush all the way up the road. Similarly, a destroyed train could provide a good means of tanks crossing otherwise open countryside.

How cool is this? A 15mm derailed train transport. 26 Euros, but so tempting!

This is all going to sound like it's a LOT - houses, destroyed trucks, etc - and there is a danger that I make the table too 'busy', especially if I start adding trees and small hills. So, there will have to be some thought put into what I add with a view to game balance - remembering that the Soviets fought defensively so they will probably need some in-placements for their AT guns and maybe some mine fields.

A lot to think about... (But THAT train, eh?) 😁

Next: Sketching a battlefield plan.

Nostalgic Model Making - Paper Houses

As I'm a bit skint at the moment but wanted some 3D house models for my new 15mm tank tabletop game. I also didn't want to get into building and painting scratch models as I have a sizable cue of projects on my workbench. So, what to do?

GF9 supplies some flat scenery in its Tanks game to get you
started, but the houses - in particular - just didn't feel right
during my first game.

I had considered making plain featureless 'blocks' to represent buildings, the point being that these scenics provide obstacles to 'line of sight' in the game (I had a problem with the flat 2D scenery that the GF9 Tanks game provided as I felt they sometimes gave a false impression about what was and was not behind cover). This would have been very quick to make, but a bit lacking in 'realism'.

Then I remembered the printed paper models that my father used to make for his model railway layout, some of which were very good indeed. The advantages of these are; they are cheap (sometimes free), they are pre-textured so don't require painting and they are relatively quick to put together (though there are some very sophisticated paper models out there).

An example of some nice historic paper models by PaperTerrain. Unfortunately,
they charge $18 to download this set, so had to look elsewhere!

Downloading these type of paper designs seemed to be a more satisfying option, and with only a pack of card to buy from my local craft store they exactly suited my budget.

Sourcing The Models
This is one of those areas where the Internet shines after a short Googling session I found a few likely sources for free paper models, but I was most impressed by the range of buildings by Wordsworth Model Railway and their 'Townscene' collection.

WMR's 'Townscene' series of paper models and well-designed models which
represent standard British building types which suit most periods, from the
1930s to present day.

The Townscene houses maybe ostensively 'British' but several of their more rural models - their cottages and stone buildings - are fairly generic and could pass for WW2 era French buildings...

WMR's 'Stoneacre' model is a nice 'two up' house model and was the first
I downloaded and made.

The 'Hannah' cottage kit is their simplest of WMR's model and only takes
minutes to put together!

Making the Paper Models
The only real issue is scale, the WMR models are in 'OO' railway scale (1/76), so I had to do a bit of math to work out the size reduction necessary to make these models suitable for a 15mm game (1/100-ish). In doing so I discovered that 15mm is actually an equivalent to the 'TT' railway scale which is about 1/120 scale, in the British way of calculating it (apparently it varies around the world).

My way of calculating was a bit more 'guestimate' as I happened to find an actual 15mm house model - a particularly badly drawn one which I couldn't use - which gave me the standard scale height for a doorway in this scale. I then used this measurement to determine that I needed to scale down the 'OO' models by 72% (so the doors were 19mm high by 10mm wide, roughly).

A couple of evening later I had these...

I was a little slow at making these as I have never put together a paper model before. But I did get a bit better as I went along and the lovely little garage building went together pretty quickly. There's a bit of a knack to building paper and card buildings and you soon find you own best technique for doing things.

One thing I would say is that your choice of glue and card thickness has a lot to do with how easy you will find these models and how good the end product will look. I tried ordinary 'school' PVA glue and this 'wet' glue soaked the paper and deformed the card, this is why WMR suggests that you use PRITT sticks. I used heavy 410gsm card stock, but this was probably overkill taking into consideration the rescaling I did, so I will try out a test using half that thickness for 15mm in future.

Finally, always use a sharp craft knife blade for your cutting out. A dull blade can drag and tear the paper which is glued onto the card, so you will have to change blades every so often. I used two craft knives, one with a new super sharp blade for cutting and the second with a used and duller blade for scoring the card for folding.

Sod's Law Strikes Again!
When I was searching for suitable buildings for my game I did really want authentic continental house models, but aside from PaperTerrain's costly WW2 French village models I couldn't seem to find any. Which is why I made do with WMR's more rural houses instead.

However, as thing always tend to happen, when I sat down to write this blog entry I was doing some additional web research and guess what? Yes, I found better examples of WW2 rustic building models!

The Perry's Heroes website has a set of 'Western European Buildings' which fit the bill exactly, the only catch being that they seem to be in 28mm scale I think (so I ended up scaling these down in my print dialogue by 48%).

These are actually simpler - so quicker to put together - designs than WMR's, and I had the cafe example put together in about ten minutes (there are no fiddly chimneys, etc). That said, I did take the design into Adobe Photoshop and add some of the French cafe signs that I used for my earlier MDF French building project that I did a week or so back.

I did like the rather more grubby rustic look of these models and the fact that they only composed of two building sides (front and side and a back and side) plus a roof meant you could knock out a whole village in an evening if you want to!

Conclusion
I'm really happy with these little models, they fit my current needs exactly. They are cheap (free), simple and quick to put together and look OK from a tabletop distance. However, one caveat is that if you are playing a wargame like 'Flames of War' you might not find these models useful as the game requires that you be able to place figures inside your buildings!

This wasn't a problem for me, as GF9's 'Tanks' game does not include infantry units, so houses are no more than obstacles to the tanks movement and line of sight, so they can just be solid models.

And, one more thing, I actually found these little models very satisfying to make in of themselves! So I would be happy to look into using these again for when I gat more into 28mm Bolt Action gaming, I would just have to devise a method fro making the roofs removable for placing my little soldiers inside.

NEXT: I set up a test game of Tanks using my new houses!