Wings of Glory

My two sons have become fascinated with biplanes, and so I surveyed available rule sets to try and find a simple game system that we could play together.  I got plenty of advice via The Miniatures Page.  The consensus was heavily in favor of Wings of War, or as its now known, Wings of Glory.  Next up, I bought their introductory rule set and we tried it out.  The basic rules were very easy to learn, even for the youngest.

The set up was very simple on our dining room table, but of course I wanted more.  I contemplated buying the commercially produced gaming mat.  But then I got the inspiration to scratch build one.  The process went something like this.  I used a method I've successfully employed before to produce flexible and durable game mats.  I had a sea mat that I'd never gotten around to painting up, so I decided to recover it and make it into a bleak Great War No-Man's-Land, viewed from a few thousand feet up.  Those who've followed my previous blogs will realize that this was not my first foray in Great War terrain making.

First up, I reapplied a coat of Elastomeric Roof Coating.  I wasn't happy with the texture, so I decided to try something different.  I sprayed on a coat of the sort of texturing used on drywall.  This looked good, but tended to be unstable, so I applied another layer of roof coating over the top.  Then while it was still wet, I used the hard end of a paint brush and marked in the front line trenches, communications trenches, and second lines as well.  This was left to cure overnight, aided by some very dry atmospheric conditions.

Next we applied a coat of paint - not the darkest color I'd used to produce trench terrain in 28mm, but rather the second, lighter color.  This seemed more appropriate for the scale.  Then I brushed on a light cream color to highlight the broken ground.

Next I traced the outline of the "green fields beyond" with soft pencil and then I blocked in a variety of greens and browns to create a patchwork effect.  I painted the ragged lines of the trenches with a heavier brown and delineated the fields further with GW Dark Angels Green representing small copses and lines of trees on their borders.  I'm contemplating making this into more of a three dimensional representation using flocking material to represent vegetation and possibly some smoke and shell bursts.  But for now, its ready to game.