Terrain 13 ancient trees restored!

Here we have the rusty trees from Terrain post 8 , restored to being pretty much functional.
They were made in the late 1980s/ early 1990s  ( which, I'm reliably informed  by Stew, was a long time ago)on hardboard bases that haven't warped too much, I made them for 40k but they're still usable for historical .
The slate came from the gardenof the  house I was living in as if you dig in almost any garden in London you will find broken slate from previous buildings or that has just fallen off roofs, together with bricks and bits of rusty metal, but no wargaming use for those!
The trees were made out of pipe cleaners( in those days lots of people smoked pipes and cigarettes ) twisted together and what I found (as detailed on the previous post) was that when they got damp the tiny wires rusted and I ended up with Mirkwood as the trees collapsed,so that they got replaced by plastic trees on recycled CDs and round MDF bases.  However inspired by Dave Stone of Wargamessculptur blog  in his terrain challenge I decided to refurbish them , so bound up with copper wire, they have become trees again! They once again got a coat of olive green/grey masonry paint,I haven't disguised the wires as I'm calling them vines! I've also brought the basing closer into my current finish and am happy enough with them.

Here they are with a 28mm monk for scale, they do have a bit more character than the plastic ones, but I will happily mix them all on the table together.  I haven't been painting much recently, I'm just prepping figures so that I can prime them before it becomes too cold,it'll probably be some Pictish cavalry of one kind or another up next.

All the best Iain 

War of 3 kingdoms (ECW) 7, 3 units of horse.

The recent games of For King and Parliament have pushed through some terrain (all those hedges) a pair of commanders and now some troops, 24 horse organised into 3 units of 8 for pike and shot but broken up into units of 6 in For King and Parliament, so 3 or 4 units.
They're (all bar one) Essex figures, cutting edge in 1986,which apparently was a long time ago, how did that happen?!
 I rather like them, possibly also because they were my most successful foray into Ebay,  £18 for an Essex army of 32 horse,a cannon and 60 plus infantry, I think the £10 postage must have put people off? Never to be repeated sadly!
 Either way it has made me indulgently disposed towards them and they can do little wrong in spite of their age, it also helps that they are easy to paint .
Unusually for me they were primed in an old army painter spray brown and then washed in Windsor and Newton  burnt umber diluted ink that I usually only use on terrain and then highlighted in the colour I wanted,it's a fast and dirty finish but,I cry ,it's good enough!
The only non Essex figure is a Foundry command figure waving his hat that I was given by my nephew as he has an aversion to duplicate figures, as I already have this figure I have no qualms about using them in different units!
All the standard bearers and 2 of the musicians have plastic arms,spare from the warlord cavalry sets. Two units with red sashes and one with blue,at the moment they all have Parliamentary flags from the pike and shot rule book blown up ,printed and touched up.

So I was prepping 2 units of cuirassiers and 2 units of dragoons, however, late Roman/Romano Brits are now being prepped and Pictish cavalry are on the painting tray, I would think it's more terrain next but who can be sure?! Legacy blogger still seems to be working on my phone, for how long who knows?

All the best Iain 

War of Three Kingdoms (ECW) 6 A pair of command stands

You need a  lot of command stands for pike and shot and you need a few for For King and Parliament.
Here are a couple of warlord games mounted commander's, Essex on the grey and Wallenstein, who I know is a thirty years war commander but I like the sculpt and he's close enough for me, plus in moments of megalomania I plan on expanding into the 30 year's war so he will be fine and it will be Essex who will be pretending to be Swedish or Spanish or French or some kind of German!
I rather like both these figures from warlord, it's the extremely dynamic ones I have trouble with ,their Fairfax and Gustavus Adolfus I  have real problems with as they just seem a bit silly!

A useful pair,next up ,pike and shot horse units or some trees,not sure which!

All the best Iain 

Terrain 12 14' of hedges! Wargames Terrain Workshop Challenge

I agreed to take part in Dave Stone 's( of Wargames Terrain  Workshop) terrain challenge at the beginning of July, two months to get stuff done, easy,maybe not!
 Going back to work in July probably impacted and of course starting a number of terrain projects was probably not the way to go. I also realise that the majority of my hobby time is in the evening sitting in front of the TV ,which tends to preclude terrain, really just prepping and painting figures, so shed time becomes limited, however I have managed to finish before the deadline, last minute, me? Yes!
For the ACW and AWI you need lots of fencing, for the WOTR and War of three Kingdoms (ECW), got bored of initials! You need lots of hedges, the hedges I had for our King and Parliament games were inherited pan scourers or makeshift bits of door matt, neither cut the mustard as far as I was concerned.  Driving through the highways and byways of Hertfordshire for work ( what is it about satnav and single track roads ?) I got to see a lot of hedges this summer, mostly they're pretty messy and I wanted a fast ,easy ,cheap way of doing them. I had a look at the lead adventure forum and a chap called Charlie did some nice messy hedges but they looked time consuming . I ended up on Erik the sheds blog showing his hedge making, which didn't appeal to me, however there was an anonymous comment saying, pretty much"you don't want to do it like that, glue wire wool down, spray it green, cover in clump foliage, job done" I  suppose that's what I've done more or less.
I cut up a load of mdf off cuts of varying widths uhu'd bits of wire wool down ,did my usual pva/ sharp sand basing,sprayed it all with some halfords matt camo green ( although I could have used black looking at the results) and then sloped pva all over and chucked some clump foliage, some of the basing that had been swept up from the floor when I based my boards and then topped with my usual basing material. I quite like that you can see into it in parts and that it's pretty messy.

 Sprayed on sticks ,then roughly based.

 Basing materials, it got messy!

 You can see the basing tray underneath.

 Variation with some bits of doormat and fake grass plus stuff on top

 Some of the cut off Christmas tree bits found their way into the mix to give variety.

 I stuck some little sticks in to be dead trees etc

 With some Irish riders for scale

 Looking along you can see the variation in width as well

It's fast and dirty but it still seemed to take up a load of time at least I've managed to get done in time,just!

Next up, probably ECW cavalry, it won't be tomorrow, it's only the deadline making me post today!

All the best  Iain