Terrain and some Hungarian-Slovaks

I have been fooling around with putting together some terrain and decided to experiment this holiday. I used an approach inspired by Mhluther as he has demonstrated on the GHQ forums. If anyone is not familiar with his 6mm games take a look at some of the stuff posted on this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/6mmgaming/sets/ absolutely amazing.
I started with a plain tan bed sheet put down some cloth elevation and then used some pastels to draw in a road network and river. I do not have any felt strips so decided to just throw down terrain flock mostly from my mixed terrain box (this is just the mixed leftover after I flock things). I tried to go for a Russian steep look although I had to much dirt and green terrain mixed in. Overall I think the experiment worked out well. I will have to try and find some good cloth to use as well as a good green color bed sheet. Still a work in progress but I think with practice I may be able to produce some good results.

Workbench

Okay I am slowly getting some 6mm 1938 Slovak and Hungarian forces put together. I decided some time back that this was a small manageable WWII project for 2011-12.

GHQ has most of the tanks and guns needed for both sides and I have been able to do an adequate job converting Adler infantry. The Hungarians were an easy choice just WWII Germans painted appropriately. At 6mm the helmet differences are not very vi sable (actually used WWII Germans for Chinese as well). Slovaks were a bit more problematic but I finally settled on Italians. You can judge for yourself how successful the conversion has been. I know that in 38 they did not have the blue striped helmets but this makes them stand out and I will probably use them for 41 at some point.

GHQ Terrain Maker: What is to be done?

Those following the Blog are aware that I have been experimenting on and off with GHQ terrain maker product. I am good with Google and consequently have probably found all positive and negative reviews and comments about this stuff on the web. Some people do really amazing work with this stuff as evident by the picture above of someone else work I found online (sorry about not giving credit not sure where I found it saved to my PC years ago). The biggest criticism I have encountered is that the hexes do not fit together well.

In the last few weeks I put together some extra plain hexes I had laying around and finally decided to take a real look at my terrain maker stuff. I was hoping to make some real final decisions; do I invest in more of this stuff? Should I put the blank hexes and finished hexes away in long term storage? Is this a real terrain option?

As you can tell from the hexes I did above my stuff looks fair at best. I highlighted the big problem areas and you can really see some of the hexes just do not fit together well. That being said I just can not bring myself to abandon this stuff.

I do have several terrain sheets made from old blankets. I also have a terrain mats sheet (can be seen in my 15mm SCW photos). And there is also the great looking stuff from TerraScapes problem is this stuff seems to have shot up in price!!!!. I also do not want to use above ground roads and rivers. Terrain mats has no rivers or roads on the sheets themselves and TerraScapes have great rivers but no roads built into the boards and $100 for a river board now!!!. So far looks like no real option yet. I may end up trying to paint some roads on my terrain guy mat as an alternative. I have seen the new old glory mats and they look interesting I may think about them as an option.

Random Update

Only one random picture today. I saw this picture of my Grandfather in my Grandmothers apartment as a little kid and always thought maybe I had imagined it. I was shocked about four months ago when I found a copy of it hanging in my Uncles office. He had no idea where the original was and would not part with his copy so I had him scan it. I then printed and framed. So I at least have a copy of it. My Grandfather was probably about 17 when the picture was taken. The note on the bottom reads Grandfather Shlomo in the Polish Army 1935.

Now back to business, well toys that is. So what have I been doing? I have been painting a lot and buying to much with no real plan or purpose. Looking at my desk I see 20mm Hungarians (my two year old nephew came over last week and destroyed most of these so they have to be repainted and based my brother was like well looks like he likes your toys), a bunch of 6mm Adler Seven Years War that I am painting as an imaginary army, some 6mm Adler Seven Years War Prussian and Austrian artillery I plan to add to the existing armies and a mess of GHQ WWII German and Italian vehicles. My hope is to use most of the GHQ stuff for planed Hungarian and Slovak force three days war style. Thinking about some of the Germans as Chinese to fight my Japanese. I have also realized I have been reading like crazy last few months mostly Cold War histories. If anyone is into books on tape I bought and have been listening to The Rise and Fall of the Third Rich by William Shirer which is amazing. I tend to put my headphones on when I go for walks with the dog and he is now going out like six times a day.

As usual no real armies just painting a bunch of stuff. I am also starting to look at my old Volley and Bayonet rules again and may try a solo game with my Seven Years War stuff. At some point I will take pictures of some of this stuff and post. Let me know if anyone wants to see anything in particular.

Downtown fighting

Just some pictures today of Peter Pig Israeli's, PLO and some new terrain. A fight in a strangely lush part of Lebanon.

RCW Madness

Finally an update!!! I took some of the Russian Civil War stuff out and snapped a few photos of a pivotal part of the battle, the white drive at Red held village. The buildings are mostly paper terrain trees timecast and mat itself is made up of a few rugs I bought at Target. The figures are all Peter Pig and one picture features my fearless White commander waiting for the game to end so I can take him out.

Trees, Italians and waisting time.

Finally back to posting sorry about the hiatus. I was actually working non stop for about three weeks, 14 hour days, but that's over and good since I now have some extra cash for miniatures. I already made a purchase for some WWII figures from Adler and took advantage of the GHQ sale at the start of the month.

Last weekend I did have some time to work on some trees from Woodland Scenic and finally paint the 15mm Eureka WWI Italians. The trees were not that difficult to put together however, do to my impatience I used way to much glue and now some dried glue is unfortunately visible on some of the trees. I tried to cover this up with limited success. So the trees came out fair usable but not great. The 15mm Italians are great looking figures and as far as I know the only early war 15mm Italians around.

15mm SCW

After writing the last post about my 15mm/10mm Spanish Civil War dilemma I ventured onto the miniatures page and found a post noting some new sculpts in the Spanish Civil War range. This is a very interesting development, aside from making my choice of scale more difficult, as the range is well done however, several of the sculpts are older and could use a recasting. I hope that the new figures are the start of several new additions to the range. I would love to see some CTV.

Above most of my SCW nationalists. They consist in majority of a Moroccan force. I have the foreign legion still in their bags from Peter Pig but they will be added shortly. As a note the tanks are from QRF and Peter Pig and the buildings from a company called Monday night productions.