Detailing the trenches: reinforcing and sandbags

This next step is probably going to be the most time consuming. I'm focusing here on detailing the walls of the trenches with a variety of materials. All that saving and storing of bits and pieces over the past few years is about to pay off.



For the corrugated iron that was sometimes employed to line the walls of trenches I've used the packaging from light bulbs and florescent tubes. This is really easy to work with and is just the right scale for 25-28mm gaming. I cut the cardboard into sections and then paste it onto the sides of the trenches, sometimes overlapping the pieces. Initially I used a wood glue, but found that the cardboard began to bow slightly, so I switched to a combination of wood glue and cyanoacrylate, using a spray on accelerator to tack the pieces in place. With the Styrofoam base sealed with the elastomeric roof coating there is no chance of the superglue eating into it.





I also worked on fabricating sandbags using some self-hardening modeling clay. My initial efforts produced bags that were way too big for the scale I was aiming for. I checked out a few web pages with advice on how to make them and came up with a more consistent method. I worked the clay into long rounded "strings" and then cut it up at regular intervals. I molded the edges of the bags with my fingers and then piled them on top of each other beginning at the bottom of the firing step. Once I'd produced something resembling a wall, I pressed the bags into the base a little more tightly, hoping the pressure would seal them together. Once they had hardened slightly I got a piece of cheesecloth and gently pressed it over the surface of the clay to try and create an appropriate texture.



There are a few things I'd probably do differently next time. I had measured and cut the firing step, and indeed the entire front line trench to accommodate standard base sizes. I hadn't taken into account the width of the sandbags. There's still enough space to mount figures comfortably on the steps, but next time I would probably make sure the steps were wider. I noticed once the sandbags were in place and dry they tend to move around a little. In other words they have not adhered well to each other. I'll use a watered down solution of scenic cement to wash over the wall and hopefully this will seal the bags in place. With the next wall, I'll work on lining the bags up better and getting a more uniform feel to the wall.



The other type of trench reinforcement I've used is to model the wooden retaining walls employing a combination of pre-cut basswood strips and rounded toothpicks. I lined up a series of the strips on a horizontal surface and then ran a bead of wood glue over them. You can manufacture a number of sections at a time. When the glue is fairly dry, the wall can be erected with the glued side next to the molded contours of the trench wall itself. Glue the prefabricated walls in place and then glue vertical braces on the sides facing the interior of the trench. I used rounded toothpicks for the interior braces just for variety. This method produces walls with boards scaled accurately to the figures on the battlefield. However it also uses up a lot of pre-cut strips. I'm going to experiment with cutting thin balsawood strips and bristol board to see how that looks too. The next step will be to prefabricate duckboards for the trenches.

I'm going to need more paint

Its at this point that the terrain project is really starting to take shape.  Adding color is a little like bringing primed miniatures to life, but on a larger scale.  I've used Games Workshop's How to Make Wargames Terrain for inspiration and techniques.  In between  waiting for things to dry, I'd thought about the sort of color scheme I wanted.  For the Great War period of course, color photographs are hard to come by.  An interesting selection are found at this website. My recreation is based on reviewing other websites that have done similar projects, color illustrations, contemporary photography, museum dioramas, as well as film elements from both documentaries and dramas.

Above: a shattered landscape, pock-marked by water filled craters is the abiding image of the First World War battlefield

Above and below: color images like these show life in a well-ordered training trench and the devastation wrought by artillery bombardments

Above: The highly-detailed and animated dioramas conserved at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra provide both inspiration for the modeler, and a reflection on the savagery of the conflict that claimed so many lives

 The challenge here is to create something that is not too far from reality, but nevertheless engaging and inviting to play on.  "Inviting" probably isn't the right word for trench warfare.  Other websites have talked about this as well, in terms of modeling the First World War.  I decided on a two stage approach, by initially focusing on producing a ruined landscape, and then experimenting with the addition of color to bring it to life.

I took my How to Make Wargames Terrain book down to the local hardware (Home Depot to be precise), and used the back page and some of the illustrations to match with color chips on display there.  This is something the publishers actually suggest doing if you have a lot of surface to color.  I was aiming for a combination found in some of the terrain projects in the book: a base coat of Bestial Brown, followed by highlighting with Vomit Brown and Bleached Bone.  I got a quart of each and took them home.  Now on to the painting.

I picked up each terrain piece and gently shook the loose sand and gravel off.  You can also tap on the backs of the boards.  Once I was satisfied that most of the loose stuff was off, I laid the boards down and got to work painting the base color.  The first thing I noticed was just how porous the sand mix was.  I'm going to need a lot more Bestial Brown substitute.

I let things dry and then proceeded with the highlighting steps, allowing four hours of so between the second and third coats.  I have to say the result was even better than what I had hoped for.

But next comes the moment of decision - how far should I go to make the board a little more attractive with some grass texture?  More about that step in my next blog.

Detailing: adding some texture

The second stage of making the terrain boards is well under way.  With nine boards now crafted and glued down to the MDF bases, its time to start adding some texture and work out a paint scheme.  I thought that rather than putting paint down on all of them at the same time, I'd work on just two, using them as a sort of test run for the techniques I'd employ for the entire collection of terrain squares.  In this way, if the color turned out to be a disaster, at least I wouldn't need to go and repaint the entire series.  I chose the two simplest boards - ones without prominent features like trenches.
Last week I spent some time thinking about the sorts of colors I wanted to use and the overall impression I want to make.  These boards will represent the mid-to-late war period.  The more reading I've done on the Great War, the greater my appreciation for the evolution of the battlefields, strategies, and tactics from 1914 to 1918.  As the centenary approaches, I think we will see a renewed interest in the period heralded by publications, rule sets, miniatures, and conventions.

General perceptions of this period tend to revolve around the stark images of trench warfare produced by the photographic and narrative records that have been handed down to us. Understandably, the generation of enormous casualties through the mechanization of conflict, has become an abiding memory that tends to mask the actions and fates of individuals and small groups.

While we are not gaming the vast sweeping tank battles of the Second World War, or the masses of colorful infantry fielded in the Seven Years' War, this period does have something to offer, particularly I think on the level of skirmish encounters and smaller actions.  Recently published rule sets have grappled with the challenge of illustrating the impact of technological innovations like the tank, poison gas, and the machine gun, in the context of small group actions.  In the process they have produced some engaging gaming mechanisms.

How does all this play out in my terrain project?  To sum up my reflections, I want to produce terrain pieces that have both a realistic feel to them, and that can fit in with a variety of scenarios and rules sets.  For some scenarios based on Through the Mud and the Blood, by Two Fat Lardies, six squares giving a total area of 6 ft x 4 ft might well be enough for a game with 30 - 40 figures per side .  For larger actions out of the pages of Warhammer Historical's Great War, the game designers recommend a playing surface of about 6 ft x 9 ft to generate a sweeping battle involving many more figures.  The beauty of well-planned modular terrain is that it can fit with both these gaming paradigms.

So on to painting the terrain squares.  Once the first coat of Elastomeric roof coating was dry, I added a lighter second coat to the surface.  Then I spread a thin layer of sand (play sand from my kids' sandbox) and gravel (from our old aquarium) over the area.  I also embedded some twigs to represent the shattered remains of copses of trees (cf. the black and white photographs above).  I put more gravel mix around the rims of the craters to simulate the earth torn up by the explosive force of bursting shells.  Then I gently pressed the texture down with a folded piece to paper towel, to ensure it would settle into the contours I'd already crafted.

Terrain making is a slow process if you want to do it right.  You have to be patient to allow things to cure and dry before proceeding to the next stage.  So it was that I waited 24 hours before starting to color the landscape.  More about that in my next blog.