Depot de la Guerre: Handcrafted Terrain for Wargames

I'm sure this is far beyond my budget, but it DOES give one some great ideas for 2-3mm terrain modules, no?

Depot de la Guerra

Just beautiful stuff!

Question: what do you all think he uses to get that field effect? I could definitely use some of that...

Is that washcloth material for the fields or what...?

And look at these Squad Leader boards! Now THAT'S how ASL should be played!!!

More Sci-Fi Tertrain Photos

Here are a few more photos of the 1/600 scale science fiction city, now completely finished, together with a few long-range shots of the jungle.

As you can see, the "towers emerging from the hatches" pieces became something else entirely. In thinking that they are city-sized shield projectors or point-defence systems. Or something. Yeah, that's the ticket. My old plastic and wood block-based buildings form a suburb to the left.

3mm Sci-fi Jungle

Mechas and infantry carefully pick their way through a tubetree jungle.

I wanted a suitable alien-looking jungle on the cheap. Inspired by adolescent memories of GDW's classic wargame Bloodtree Rebellion, I decided that I would do giant tubercular trees which catch water in their middles. Following C.J. Cherryh's sparse descriptions of "woolwood" in her Cyteen series, I decided I wanted the trunks to be a mass of tangled blue-grey branches.

So I bought a medium-sized loofa sponge for a dollar down at the SAARA and cut it up into chunks. I hot-glued the chunks to some old Mechwarrior cards I had lying about, then painted them black, using a fairly heavy black wash and squishing it into the sponge structure with my hands. When that dried, I dry-brushed the sponges with blue-grey. The result was the following:

I then painted the base terracota and did a tan drybrush over that.

When everything had dried, I glooped up the top upper 2/3rds of the sponge with white glue and dipped it in Woodland Scenics generic green flock. I then glooped more glue on the base and put down a layer of fine yellow flock, followed by more green flock. When that dried, I glued clumps of coarse dark green flock around the base and a layer of coarse light green flock along the top of the sponge. Finally, I laid a bead of white glue over the light green flock and dipped the top of the sponge in a tin of Gailforce 9's green summer static grass.

To finish it off, I painted the bottom of the hole in the center of the sponge blue, as if water was reflecting the sky.

Here's the result:

I made two smaller clumps like this and one big jungle piece, complete with path through the middle. Here's a top shot:

Total time taken for the project, maybe 2 hours all told, outside of drying time. Total cost, maybe 5 USD.

Big Red and Thor

Here are a couple of pictures of the House Möder-Fokker titans, Big Red and Thor.

These are Dream Pod 9 Earth Force Frames, done up as 60-foot-tall mega-walkers for my 1/600 sci-fi Furture War Commander project.

Building a 3mm Science Fiction City

Last Tuesday, I took a stroll down through the SAARA to my favorite bead and bangles shop, where I bought 20 dollars worth of wooden and plastic beads and shapes with which to build some sci-fi urban terrain for my burgeoning 3mm mecha armies.

My goal was to make suitably phallic-looking towers a la Dream Pod 9's rendition of the city of Peace River. (I was also inspired by the One More Gaming Project blog's recent Martian city.) I didn't want the buildings to be TOO detailed, as that would distract attention from the minis, but I wanted the to be more than simply painted shapes.

Anyhow, here are the results so far...

And here's a few action shows with the painted main citadel and a few city blocks. Note also the presence of Big Red, the House Möder-Fokker Titan....

Dave's Sunday Drive

In order to better test my new Massive units rules, I put together a wee battle on Sunday evening.

Dave has been tasked with clearing a desert road into the enemy's flank. The road is bisected by a low ridge line with some light cover and is held by a company of House Penn-Taylor main battle tanks. Dave has CV 10 from his off-board CO and the PT boys have a CV 9 on-board CO.

The Penn-Taylor company on the ridge. Note that the CO is within convenient command range of only two of the platoons.

Turns 1 and 2. Dave begins an oblique advance on the north end of the Penn-Taylor line. The southernmost platoons open fire and leave a nasty scratch on Dave's paintwork.

Turns 3-6. Dave closes the distance on the northernmost platoon and opens fire, doing sweet fuck-all. He launches his missile at the middle PT tank and catches the HQ in the burst, again, doing no discernable damage (Dave is preoccupied with an upcoming coumn deadline and a good part of his main processing unit is editing instead of aiming). On turn 5, the PT CO blows his command roll. The blunder sends the southern tank platoons charging straight towards Dave - a blunder which turned out to be sort of providential, actually, because it cut their range down to half.

(These accidental charges/retreats which turn out for the best are beginning to get to be a habit with the PT boys. See their last battle report here.)

The PT tanks change tactics to firing to damage and manage to whittle Dave down to two damage points. A critical hit also tanks out his secondary battery, leaving him with only his main gun. Dave manages to suppress the northenmost tank a couple of times, but that's about it.

Dave finally wakes up to the fact that there's a serious problem here and sets aside his editing work. Taking full stock of the situation, he decides that a full-fledged charge is in order and goes straight in on the northernmost tank. (Being that he has 9 assault dice and an additional die for charging versus the MBT's 3, this is not a bad idea).

Dave weathers the closing fire well enough but skunks out completely in the following assault: only two unsaved hits out of ten dice! He suppresses the tank, but that's it.

Meanwhile, cognizant of the fact that Dave's now down to only two hits, the Penn-Taylor commander urges his crews to fire for effect. All four of their shots hit and two make it through Dave's armor, finally bringing the nig cybertank to a halt on turn 8, the last turn of the game.

Luckily for Dave, a Möder-Fokker battalion is coming up the road behind him and will probably have their support echelon salvage his brain box. If the upcoming battle against House Penn-Taylor is won, Dave's chasis will also probably be towed back to the Fokkin Castle for refurbishment. Dave may be old, but he's tough and waste not, want not.

Dave waits for a tow.

The battle showed me that the system works fine, but needs a few tweaks yet. Principal among these si that I've decided that "fire to damage" hits will also carry over throughout the turn. Other than that, though, the game went well. Dave really stunk on his rolls and, to be fair, the odds were against him from the outset, what with having to chrage an equivalent force in a prepared position.

It was a fun little game for a half hour!

Shamelessly stolen from The Onion, no copyright challenge implied

I'm Prepared To Give My Life For This Or Any Country

By Curtis Stalbank

THE ONION, March 28, 2007


As a true patriot, I would gladly die in battle defending my homeland. I love my country more than my own life. But I would also be more than willing to give my last breath in the name of, say, Mexico, Panama, Japan, or the Czech Republic. The most honorable thing a man can do is lay down his life for his country. Or another country. The important thing is that it's a country.

Like those heroes who spilled their blood fighting for independence against the British Empire, I, too, would forfeit everything to win for my countrymen the right to be governed by politicians in our own capital instead of in a capital located further away. Nothing is more profound or more sacred than to die for one's country, an adjacent country, or some other, foreign country.

The truth is, there are a lot of countries, each of which is the most noble cause possible to die for. I only regret that I have but one life to lose for but one country.

I would not hesitate to give my life for or against any other noble nation. Come to think of it, I would even die for a neutral third party caught in the crossfire during a heroic peacekeeping effort, just so long as my death would be in some way related to a country of some kind. That's how committed I am to the concept of nationalism.

The bottom line is that the current boundaries of a nation are worth protecting at all costs. Otherwise, what would so many brave and patriotic souls have lost their lives for?

I was lucky enough to be born in one of the 200 greatest countries in the world, and I promised myself long ago that I would never forget it. I can only hope to someday have the privilege of protecting this great land against whomever may seek to do it harm. Or to defend some other country against whomever may seek to do it harm. And vice versa.

Ideally, I'd like to die for a country that was at least in the Western hemisphere but it'd be just as heroic to expire bravely on the end of a pointed stick deep in the jungles of Africa. My wife would be widowed and my children orphaned, but they would take solace in the knowledge that I had given my life to a cause that the people of some nation believed in.

I only ask that I be given a soldier's funeral so that I may be buried holding the flag or flags of wherever it was I was fighting for.

There comes a time when all of us, no matter who we are, heed the call to the battlefield. It is a call we cannot and should not ignore, no matter where it is coming from. And if I must die, in the service of this or that country, I only hope I can at least take as many of the enemy with me as possible before I fall and breathe my last. Unless of course, they're also fighting for a country. In which case, their deaths, at my hands, will have been honorable—because they, like me, would have died for a country.

Without nationalism, our deaths in the countless wars we constantly wage to defend our own nations against others defending their own nations against us would seem arbitrary, almost meaningless. But as long as we have a higher purpose—the love of whatever country we happen to be fighting for—we will always know we did not lose our lives in vain.