Project Kursk 20: Terrain Boards Take Shape

Over the past weeks a small group of dedicated Terraformers and I have been working on some terrain boards for Kursk on Wednesday afternoons after school. We have been particularly fortunate to have great support from the Applied Arts department, who have let us make all sorts of mess and use their glue.

The boards are all based on 600mm x 600mm mdf boards, with terrain built up from extruded polystyrene. Basically, we just glued a layer of the polystyrene to the boards, except where we cut in what will be a dry creek bed, then attacked the polystyrene with files and knives to give the ground some hills and troughs, adding some extra layers of polystyrene for taller hills.

The boards are designed to be modular, and can be arranged in all sorts of configurations, like this:

With the basic landscaping done, the next step has been to add sections of towel dyed and painted green for grass, sections of cut up doormat for wheat fields, a couple of ploughed fields made from DAS and grit in the creek bed and tracks. Then we'll do a fair bit of overspraying to blend the colours and make it look a bit more summery. Sadly exams have intervened, but once they are out of the way we'll get this finished in time for a big holiday game.

God I love my job!

Project Kursk 19: The Quality of Quantity

Despite a 'challenging' month or so the wheels of production are slowly starting to turn again. I've just finished two boxes of Plastic Soldier Company T-34/76s - that's a whole company of tanks in Battle Group Kursk terms.





Extra crew and stowage are from Skytrex, with possibly a few bits and bobs from SHQ chucked in as well.

Think I'm Back Now!

Well, it has been an arid month on the blog. I haven't being having a terrific time, to be honest, and have also largely been without communications because we are STILL waiting to have our broadband connected (after 8 weeks). Anyway. I have lots of catching up to do on what people have been up to. I haven't been doing very much, although the club at school has been going great guns. More on this soon, but amongst other things we now have a club badge:



I'm very privileged to work somewhere where I can say to my boss 'Boss, can we get a badge for Wargames Club with Thor's hammer on it?' and he doesn't bat an eyelid. The club motto is NON MALLEUS BELLI EST, a response to the single most common question I get asked about the club. Special virtual hugs for whoever can tell us what it means.

I heard a great story today too from one of my colleagues. His father had been the driver of a Sherman through the whole Italian Campaign, and used to tell my colleague about how terrified they all were of ambushes going into Italian villages. To keep their courage up they installed a fishtank inside the turret filled with red wine, with tubes running to all the crew positions. Such a great image!

Hope you are all well, and I look forward to catching up on all your news when my comms improve.