Glasgow Copse - artillery emplacement insert

After the excitement of the TooFatLardies Games Day 2011 on Sunday, I had a quiet evening last night progressing the gun emplacement insert for the wooded terrain board, Glasgow Copse, I'd finished a weekend ago. I’d built this in the same way as the other inserts, starting with a Styrofoam square, mounted on a piece of 3mm marine ply of the same size. The “walls”, of the emplacements were built up with offcuts of Styrofoam, and revetted with Green Milliput sandbags, plastic corrugated iron and cardboard “planking”. In other words, exactly the same as the other inserts, with perhaps a little more in the way of sandbags to protect the gun crew.

I’ve been long tempted to try and built a more substantial gun position, with more of a wooden bunker look – and that may well be one of my next projects. However, here I was looking for a hastily constructed gun position, providing rudimentary cover for an artillery crew who would have manhandled a field gun into the front line to take on allied tanks advancing in the open.

I wanted to try and make the new gun emplacement insert as consistent with the other inserts and wood bases in the Copse. I used the same paints and also the same effects. As before, I used some very hand leaf scatter from Antenociti’s Workshop, really to try and “set a time and a place” – being an Autumn setting for the Wood, perfect for Cambrai and Bourlon Wood in November 1917.

The leaf scatter was glued in with PVA glue, each leaf being lifted into place. I’d thought of truly scattering the leaves, but somehow that didn’t look quite right. I was very much aware that there is no foliage on the trees (having been shredded by shellfire), and part of me is still nervous that a large dump of leaves on the ground might look a bit incongruous. Maybe the single leaves look a little strange – but on balance I thought they looked OK. Comments welcomed if you think otherwise !

When the glue had set I dry-brushed the leaves with some highlighted orange and ochre, and gave the leaves a wash with some dirty water from my brush-cleaning pot to dull the colours down slightly.

Next, I cut some brass rod for use as discarded shell cases, filing down the rough edges, and gluing these onto the edge of the base. I put the artillery base in position to check I wasn’t gluing the shell cases where they would be placed. Keen eyed readers may notice that I’ve tried, but not quite succeeded in getting the base of the artillery team to be quite the same as the base of the gun emplacement insert. Some re-painting of the artillery base to come later, perhaps !

Finally, I prepared some camo netting which I’d bought a while back. I usually like to make this a bit more “used” and dirty looking than the neat stuff which comes out of the pack.

I filled an old plastic take-away food tub with some more of the dirty brush water and diluted dark brown paint and gave the netting a good soaking, before stretching it out to dry overnight.

I’d be interested if you have any readers of this Blog have experiences with camo netting for 28mm figures. I have to say that this netting, when stretched out, looked a little fragile for club use and regular play – any comments and thoughts are very welcome !

Next stage, I’ll try and finish off the gun emplacement and the artillery piece, ready for a game in a few weeks.