Seven Year War Star Fort

These are some photos of the progress of putting my 25/28mm Star Fort together on a 4 'x 4' tile.

I built a frame and filled it with foam having a raised portion in the middle upon which I glued the fort. I bought this fort back in Christmas 1994 in New Zealand on a visit there. I cut it in half to allow me to fit it to 2 two foot tiles. I found this unsatisfactory and embarked on restoring it to it's intended position, dominating a battlefield!

I sprayed it with Army Painter bone and gave it a hit with the strong wash to give a sand stone finish.

Tentage

Here are a couple of photos of my tentage. I have tried to make it generic so I can use them for more periods.

Rust covered beach obstacles

Here are the beach obstacles painted in a rust colour but still to have a black wash put over them.

Beach obstacles

These are some beach obstacles that my friend Brett Miller recently made and posted to me for completion. I textured the bases with beach sand. These are for a D-Day landing game that we are planning for the future, the future being a long way off. I have since painted the steel X's in a rust colour and will take a photo tomorrow and post it here the same night.

Some redoubts

These are some old redoubts made by a good friend, Brett Miller, some 20 years ago. But they were never finished so after finding them in a box, he stores things at my house, I decided to finish them so that they could be used by all of our wargaming group.

Old tiles

This is the jig I used to keep all the frames square.

Here are a couple of photos of the old tiles where they have been cut ready for the frame to go on.

Some photos of the revamping of the tiles.

These photos are from my old Blog http://realisticminiatures.blogspot.com/ which I have placed here to give an idea of what we are doing.

With the help of my friend Scott Robertson of http://wab-ramblings.blogspot.com/ and my then 13 year old son Ayden we got to work revamping the old tiles.

The old tiles were made of 1 and a half inches thick and 2 foot by 2 foot foam pieces that had a 3 mm piece of ply stuck to the bottom. This was then given a coat of plaster of paris and moulded to any shape I desired. The tile was then painted a green colour and that was all that was done to a plain open tile. For the rivers and roads these sections were cut out and painted the appropriate colour and that was all we did.

NEW TILES

As you can see we are framing each tile with a frame of wood that is nailed to the ply base and the gap filled. This mixture of Plaster of paris, wood glue, sand and water which is moulded into the hills and ponds etc as required. This mixture sets rock hard and is very durable.

Once dry I paint the tiles a brown colour that resembles dirt and add the flock by painting a wood glue and water mixture to the areas that require the grass and then I sprinkle the said grass flocking on. After removing the excess grass when dry you have a finished plain tile.

Where to begin?

I have been doing this wargame thing now for longer than I can remember and have slowly developed my own style of doing things in that time. This is an attempt to get some perspective in regard to what I currently am doing.
THE STORY SO FAR.
Some 20 odd years ago I, along with a group of friends decided to develop our own terrain tiles in the form of 2 foot by 2 foot individual tiles.

These tiles, whilst good for there time started to wear with time and the constant moving from house to house. I have my own house now with a shed that is purpose built for my wargaming needs. This wargames "bunker" is 12.5 x 8.5 metres in dimensions and affords me the opportunity to redo and indeed expland my current portfolio of tiles.

What follows is a photographic rendering of my efforts.

So sitback enjoy, occasionally revisit this site, perhaps maybe even leave a comment or two to keep my inspiration up.

Mark