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 

Dux Bellorum 9 Ordinary Irish riders

Here are the Irish riders that I needed to complete my basic Irish force, they had their first outing in the last battle in a semi painted state,together with the zombie slingers, I found out riders are pretty brittle in this ruleset!
As I'm on an economy drive I had to  build them from lead mountain stock ,so they started out as Newline Spanish cavalry that I picked up some time ago on Ebay as part of a weird DBA army that included a Numidian onager and cavalry and some EIR, a black tree design shield swap and I cut all the heads off and stuck gripping beast plastic dark age warriors heads on. I think they're good enough.

As they've already failed in their semi painted state I have high hopes for them! I've got to make a sabot base for them, which will be good practice as I have a number of mounted units to finish off my Pict army.
Next up,some terrain before the end of the month, eek!
All the best Iain

Dux Bellorum 8 village raid AAR

It's been a while since we had a Dux Bellorum game but we fancied a change from the 17th century and inspired by Stew's dark age game on his A terrible  waste of time and wealth blog , we had another go with Dux Bellorum.
Once more it was early Saxon versus Irish,  Des chose the Saxons again, up to strength this time with 8 units,Leader and companions, 3 units of noble warriors and  4 units of ordinary warriors the Irish this time had Leader and companions, 4 units of noble warriors, 4 units of foot skirmishers (slingers) and a unit of ordinary riders which had been rushed to the top of the painting queue and had almost  been finished in time!
We chose the village raid scenario and worked out that the Irish would be the aggressor as they had more noble units, making the Saxons the repellars,its what they're called in the rules (lets call them defenders it's easier!)
I chose a side and Des set up a very poor village on the edge of his board( must build some dark age buildings!) I had to have a unit in the village at the end of a turn to win,maximum of 12 turns or for an army to collapse.
He set his troops up,I set mine and off we went!

The coins are leadership points that you distribute each go, we set a limit of 1 that could be used to offset a hit

The lines crashed into each other, as they were noth warrior troops this happened automatically, we didn't have to roll below our leadership on 2 die like we would otherwise to activate.

Having inflicted first blood with some skirmishers, they were caught unfortunately by some Saxon nobles, only one result really, we both agreed that skirmishers could shoot and then move,which seemed to work well, they could be quite irritating but they wouldn't win you the game. 

My (almost !) Newly painted mounted unit await the inevitable result 

Companions versus nobles, companions lose and fall back

The ordinary Saxon warriors are(mostly) pushed back

Yep, evaporated cavalry!

 Nobles supported by companions

 Noble Irish about to steam into a noble Saxon unit

 After it's been softened up by lurking slingers

 Saxon nobles returning to the fray

 Lots of units on both sides have very low hits left

 Des hits 75%loss just before I  do, plus I could get my last noble unit into the village next turn

Really, it was a draw as I had just hit 75%casualties as well.  It was great fun and nice to try out new troop types, skirmishers ( which worked out well but I haven't got the best out of them yet) and riders( lost them too early to find out much about them other that they are pretty fragile!) 

Next up, probably the Irish riders as they are almost finished, then I've got lots of ECW cavalry partially done but for some reason Pictish cavalry have shoved they're way in,next game WOTR  I think, maybe Barnet, a hail Caesar game, should be fun. 

Next post needs to be terrain as I have one week left to fulfill Dave's challenge!

All the best Iain