French Harbor Town – Part II

I’ve decided to work my way from the town toward the U-boat so I can knock out some “low hanging fruit” to motivate myself. While I had the draft layout setup, I measured and trimmed an old fleece blanket gaming mat I had to use for some grassy areas. This was my first attempt at having a blanket printed and it ended up with some flaws, so I didn’t feel bad about chopping it up. Here’s the first section with the church, Dr’s house, cafe and small house on it. These buildings are from Grand Manner as are the sidewalk sections.

 

When I run convention games I usually bring a shaker of flock with me that I’ll use to dress up the transition areas, like the one below. I guess I’m willing to trash a convention hall floor, but not my basement.

I like to add some detail pieces to my boards to dress them out, so here’s some shots of my proposed minutia.

MBA Woodpile and Table and Chairs from a Dollhouse Manufacturer

Tomato Plants from Scenic Express and a Cold Frame from Petite Properties

Cross Plinth from Grand Manner

Diecast Repaint and some Flowering Hedges from Scenic Express

I had some empty space by the Dr’s house that I wanted to add a greenhouse to. I already had the piece from Warbases and decided to detail it a bit. I covered some of the seams on the structure with cardstock, and then fashioned some potting benches out of Renedra bases and plastic rod. The flower pots are from Scenic Express, the tools are from true2scale and the other bits came from the spare parts bin.

 

Some paint slapped on and voila. I decided to add a plant that I hacked together with a pot from the craft store and a small scale Woodland Scenics tree. The brick on the floor is cardstock. I downloaded the texture from Paperbrick. I added in some “glass” by cutting an old sheet of inkjet transparency.

 

Here’s the final product with the base flocked. I added a few garden tools on the outside, also from true2scale.

Next I’ll be ginning up a small memorial park for the town square.

French Harbor Town – Part I

“Wait, what happened to the rest of the Fall In! prep?” If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a shitty blogger.

Fall In! has come and gone, and unlike for Historicon I didn’t take enough pictures or notes to write an AAR. I can however report that I had an enjoyable time, the Host is making some marked improvements and the Lardie Days was a great success. So much in fact that the group is making preparations to host another series of TFL games at Cold Wars.

I’ll be running a few games of Chain of Command that feature a section of British Commandos assisted by a group of Franc-Tireurs mounting a raid on a U-boat moored in a French town which is garrisoned by some Heer and Kriegsmarine. I’ll be making the conning tower of the U-boat the objective under the guise of sabotage or Enigma Machine retrieval.

Knowing that my schedule can be up-ended at a moment’s notice, I’ve decided to start working on this early. I laid out what I thought would be a reasonable board and sketched a map.

I want the bulk of the town surface to be cobblestone, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of resources, including time, to create something. I decided to go with a fleece photo blanket from Walmart Photo. I purchased a cobblestone mat file from Wargames Vault, and then resized it and manipulated some color levels using Affinity Photo. Here’s what the final product looks like.

The level of the town needs to be about 2″ above the surface of the water, and I happened to have some 2″ foam in 2′ sections. It isn’t the best solution, but I scabbed together a 4′ x 5′ section of 2″ foam using some toothpicks and painter’s tape. I then wrapped the blanket around the foam and secured it with some straight pins.

For the water I had a piece of variegated blue fabric that was close to the correct size. My wife ironed on some interfacing to prevent it from fraying, and then I cut it to size. In the past, I’ve coated fabric with Liquitex Gloss Gel to create a nice water effect so I may give this the same treatment.

Next I’ll be working on some smaller detail pieces for the town.