The People's Revolutionary Industrial Council and Syndicate takes the R5 Refinery

The People's Revolutionary Industrial Council and Syndicate is an armed workers' movement on Smade's World which fights to take direct control of the means of production away from the Noble Houses and Corporations which currently run unobtanium mining and hyandwavium processing facilities.

Following a surprising string of recent victories, the PRICS have recieved off-world support in the form of the New Vistula Legion. The Neo-Poles hope that by supporting the revolutionaries, they will gain a foothold on Smade's World and a small but lucrative chunk of the handwavium trade.

Here we see the rebel column of Commadante Ima Ben-Dayo as it forms up in front of the recently occupied R-5 refinery:

The column's infantry is equipped with serviceable extruded plastisteel body armor and small arms. It's backed up by a large Plasma Infantry Gun. Re-purposed heavy trucks with hastily applied armor panels carry the company. Ben-Dayo's trucks are also equipped qith heavy mortars, thrown together in liberated machine-shops and mounted on their roofs.

The column also contains a squadron of rail-gun armed "technicals" and a re-purposed heavy construction mecha, armed with seriously up-graded industrial plasma cutters.

Here's a close-up of the column:

Finally, here's the R-5 refinery from another angle. It was made out of parts of a deoderant stick, a plastic pinbox, chunks of balsa wood, beads and many bits of plasticard, tubes, and greeblies.

The PRIC miniatures are all from Oddzial Osmy's Modern range except for the Mecha which is a Risk "graffiti" piece. When I pulled it from the game, I noticed that the Chinese factory that put the casting model together had obviously stuck its legs on backwards. I had to cut them off and turn them around.

3mm sci-fi set-up

Here's a quick set up for a battle showing my new terrain system and some of my 3mm sci-fi miniatures.

The system is built on half-meter square, 10mm thick "foamies" that can be linked together. One side of the foamie is flocked spring green, the other yellow. My old canvas modules have been dismounted from the frames and cut up. They are pinned to board with tacks and stick-pins disguised as rock piles and vegetation.

Here, you can see me holding the foamie with all the terrain pinned to it at a 90 degree angle compared to the floor. As you can see, this stuff is on there pretty firmly...

 

 Here's a top down shot of the foamie with miniatures and buildings in place....

 

.

 A shot of the R-5 handwavium refinery. The Lafitte Regiment's Fire Support Squadron currently occupies it. In the background, we can see a Lafitte titan guarding the road. It's screened by two squadrons of heavy mecha.

 

The Lafitte's titan is a monster. One of the heaviest and best armed in the Human Sphere. In reality it's a 28mm Tau power armored trooper repurposed from Games Wankshop. You can see some 2mm Germy power armor troopers on its base, put there for scale. The heavy mecha are Ground Zero Games 6mm infantry walkers from their "Not-Votoms" line:

 

Two companies of local House Penn-Taylor militia hold a trench line to the north of belt of Ramen Trees.

 

The Lafitte's anti-mecha squadron, made up of four troops of Stalker mecha, hide just below the crestline of the hill. Behind them is their HQ unit, mounted in Sloth command mechas.

 

Titans from the Third Combined Arms Combat Team, preceded by two companies of IFV-mounted infantry and a recon troop, advance on the woodsline.

 

Shot of the Laffite titan from the rear, showing its escort squadron, with Sloth-mounted HQ:

 

Another angle showing the 3rd CACT's main line of battle:

Assault Gun Brigade in Ambush

Here are some pictures showing German assault guns set up in an ambush position along a road in northern France. The figures are all O8 3mm and the terrain is homemade.

Two companies are deployed forwar along the tree line while one company is held back in reserve with the engineers and recon  in a small hamlet. Here's an overhead shot and a view of the main defensive position, from the front.

3mm German Infantry Kampfgruppe, 1944

This is another of my holiday projects: a 1944 German kampfgruppe. This one is built around an infantry regiment with support from an assault gun brigade and a field artillery battalion..

I'm doing a new basing system for Blitzkrieg Commander here which is a half-company per stand. BKG works best at 1 HQ unit per 6-8 combat units and I enjoy using it to conduct division-sized actions on my coffee table. An infantry stand is thus about 50-100 troops - or half a company. Tanks represent 6-10 vehicles and crewed weapons around 3-5 weapons. 1mm = 10 meters and 10cm in the BKC rule book = 1 inch of table space.

Here we see the full array, with the two infantry battalions in line and the assault guns to the left, back:

This is one of the infantry battalions. Three rifle companies, a machinegun stand, an 81mm mortar stand, a 120mm mortar stand and an infantry gun stand, led by a headquarters:

Here we see the regimental support units: a CO, an extra HQ, a 75mm ATG, and an engineer stand. The KG also has an attached 88 FLAK gun and 2 additional 50mm ATGs, picked up from somewhere (they're stock OoB if I add another battalion and ditch the 120mm mortars to get an falschirmjaeger regiment). They're waiting on their horse-mounted recon unit, which should be done tomorrow (yes, I just noticed that I gorgot to flock the 75mm ATG...:

The assault gun brigade. These will get another two infantry units to make up the escort company. One of the company's armed with Stug III F8s while the other two companies have Stug III Gs. The brigade has been promised Stug 42s in place of its F8s, but these haven't arrived yet. An engineer and a motor-cycle mounted recon platoon accompany the HQ:





Finally, here's the artillery battalion, armed with 105mm cannons. They are accompanied by a halftrack-mounted FO and a 20mm quad anti-aircraft battery.

All figures are by O8, distributed to me with excellent service by Picoarmor.

Making 3mm terrain modules, Part 2

Once you've got the basic flocking down, you can get creative. If you've got a lot of glue bleeding through your initial flock toos, you can go directly to this step. Otherwise, it's time to lay down more glue. Now you toss on a contrasting flock. In this case, Ive decided to go with a finer, darker flock.
 

 

I also throw down some coarse flocking and patches of static grass to break up the monotony.

  

 Here's the result of final flocking on two boards. Occasionally, you'll find, after all this work, that one of your boards isn't as straight as you thought it was. Here, I discovered that one of my new modules had a corner that was about 3 millimeters off. You can just ignore this, if you like, and always make sure that the off side is never jutting up to another board. Here, however, I've built a plastic shim to correct the error. I then painted and flocked it. Good as new!

Above you see the final 80cm x 80cm layout of all four modules. Some of the roads need to be completely painted yet, as I discovered that I needed a few extra ones. All I did in these cases was strip out the flocking with a knife, lay down more Vallejo earth paste, paint and re-flock the margins. My two feet will give you some idea of the scale of all this. Suffice it to say that, gamewise, this is the equivalent of a 2 meter by 2 meter table. And it fits in my breakfast nook.

Here you can see two modules close up. The top one has a couple of fields built into it while the muddy area to the left of the river on the bottom one marks the margins of a village. Houses, of course, will be laid down seperately so that they can be moved to accomodate figures during the game. Of course, you could also claim the brown area is muddy ground and hard going, or just ignore it.

 

Two more modules,  marsh and a defile.

...and, finally a river.

Completed module next to two blank boards

Here's a quick post to show you what a completed module looks like. This one's sandwiched between two blank frames...

This is a board with a swamp and a hill built into it. The swamp came about as a bit of serendipity. I left it out over night to dry and found, the next morning, that one of our cats had been walking about on it.

After I finished cursing the cat, I noticed that he had pushed up bits in complete rolls. TYhe stuff was still a bit wet, so I took a brush handle and pushed up even more. I then painted it dark, shiny black for water. I flocked the area again with a darker green flock, put in some pushes and some red fall foliage. I mad sure to make a few water areas in the region where my other modules' rivers can connect to. This thing can thus also be dropped into a stretch of river as a marshy bend.

Of course, depending on the scenario, you can call the dark green flocked area marsh, forest or just plain old clear terrain.

The hills, again, are done up wedding cake style in order to clearly show where the elevation lines are.

Terrain Modules for 3mm Black Powder Games: A Tutorial, Part 1

One of the most interesting things about the relatively new microscales (2mm and 3mm) is the fact that they require new ways of thinking about and dealing with terrain on the tabletop. 1/600-1/900 is simply too small a scale for one to use normal terrain modeling approaches: the figures will be drowned out by the background details.

On the upside, no scale is more amenable to terrain module building. A normal terrain module for 15mm or 28mm scale would measure some 3x2 feet at least. In 2/3mm scale, you can easily make (and store) modules that are much, much smaller.

When I first started out with microscales, I went with the old-green-sheet as backdrop and pastels for terrain details route. You can see the results here. Not pretty, but certainly serviceable and with the plus that all the terrain involved can be stored in one toolbox. I still use this method for "away games" when I don't have access to motorized transport. I can pack all the terrain and figures in one big backpack and bike to the game venue.

But I quickly wanted to do beautiful, awe-inspiring terrain like the stuff here. I knew I couldn't get my stuff to equal that, but I wanted to get close. Using 30x30 cm composite wooden squares, then, I did these. These looked nice enough, but quickly warped. Furthermore, they were TOO detailed. In a battle like this one here, the terrain often got in the way of the figures.

So, back to the drawing board...

One day, walking through my local art supply store and musing, I ran into some cheap pre-stretched blank canvases on frames that were about 15mm deep and 30x60cm wide and long. I bought a bunch and began to experiment. So far, the results have been really good and you can see my sci-fi desert modules here. After my recent trip to London, however, and my purchase of the Black Powder rules (and a boatload of O8 ACW figures - with Napoleonics on the horizon), I knew I was going to need some 19th-century-ish generic European terrain.

So, to work! I thought I'd document the process so that y'all can learn from it, such as it is, and use or modify the tecniques here to your own satisfaction.

The basic idea is this: cardboard or styrofoam-backed artists' canvases with roads, rivers, hills and a smattering of other terrain, with the rest of the terrain features being pinned in place by map-pins flocked to look like bushes and trees. The pins go right through the canvases and into the underlying foam/cardboard and hold the terrain down. This is important because moveable 2-3mm terrain is very small and light and easily jostled during play. If you pin it in place, however, it stays put until you want or need to take it up.

This system works extremely well and looks great, so I'm very pleased with it so far.

STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR CANVASES
I recommend 30x60 cm canvases, because this will give you 1x2 foot modules. The ones here are 20x40, however, because when I started the project I couldn't find any in the size I wanted. The ones here are el-cheapo brand, at 5.00 reais (2.50 USD) apiece. I could have bought some pricer ones at 12.00 reais (6.00 USD), but I wanted to keep costs down. I'm not pleased with the look these 20x40 canvases give, however, so I'll probably be doing some 30x60s some time in the future.

There are two considerations you need to keep in mind in Step 1:

1) Make sure the canvases aren't warrped. Line them up one the floor next to each other in various configurations. They won't jut up against each other with no gap at all, but you want to avoid out-and-out abysses.

2) Make sure the canvases are all the same thickness. Try to buy a common thickness here - like 15cm or 3/4th inch - so that you can easily find new canvases for further modules later.

STEP 2: STUFF THE CANVASES
Glue styrofoam or multiple layers of cardboard into the backof the canvas. Seal the back with a piece of cardboard.

STEP 4: LAY DOWN THE HILLS
I use 3mm thick cork, glued down to the canvas. Of course, you could simply make all your hills seperately, so that they can be moved, but I'd rather have the main landforms solidly down on the modules, myself.

STEP 5: DRAW THE ROADS AND RIVERS
Make sure you carefully measure where the roads and rivers come in on each board. Mine all come in 5cm off the corner on the short end and 15cm off the corner on the long end. They are 1cm thick.

STEP 6: PAINT THE ROADS WITH TEXTURE
In this case Vallejo Dark Earth paste.

STEP 7: PAINT THE MODULES GREEN

Including the sides.

STEP 8: PAINT AND DRYBRUSH THE ROADS
This is ironically one of the hardest things. You need to record what paints you use so that you can get your roads to look the same on later modules. I didn't do this between the first and second batches of modules I built, so things look a bit off. Make sure, in this step, to paint the sides of the module where the roads come in the same color as the roads themselves.

STEP 9: FLOCK THAT FUCKER!
First, however, re-mark your roads as they exit the module so you can flock their borders precisely. Brush a thick load of white glue over everything, shake a thick coat of flocking down on top, let stand for a minute, shake the excess flock off onto newspaper and pour it back into your flocking jar. The big thing here is to not let the glue drip down the module's side or get on the roads. If you mess up. take a wet brush and push the flocking off the roads and sides before it dries

You could let the flock soak up glue for several minutes if you want. To me, however, that's a waste given the next two steps. I just wait a minute, shake it off and let everything dry. Note: do not do this where the wind or a fan can reach you, unless you want a very pissed-off significant other hacking up green foam for the rest of the weekend...