TERRAIN TIME: EARTHWORKS & GABIONS

Old Figures Posing With New Terrain 

Greetings, fellow shut ins!  In this post, we stray into very familiar/unfamiliar territory.  Familiar in that everyone's collection, mine included, contains an array of wargame terrain.  Unfamiliar in that I am definitely in the "buy it painted and assembled" category when it comes to my terrain.  However, I have been wanting a substantial set of earthworks for some time to use with my 28mm Thirty Years War figures. It was not just in 1914-18 that there were extensive lines of earthworks stretching across the landscape. In the wars of the 17th century there were also extensive lines of works laid down to control territory and frontiers.  But I digress.  After coming up dry on finding ready-made versions of these, I finally gave in when I saw the Wicker Earthworks by Daemonscape Terrain offered on ebay (as opposed to the producer's site)...

...and lacking impulse control, I picked up four sets of them. That's 16 pieces, each of 4 inches:  so I now have 64 linear inches of earthworks which I can use in any number of configurations, to include a long line of works stretching across a table. Being my slow self, and not accustomed (okay, even averse) to painting terrain, these took me three weeks to complete.  Below is a study of each of the four pieces found in a set, front and back (clix pix for Big Pix).

I used a black undercoat and did the major parts in acrylic paints (instead of my usual enamels).  The brown for the earth turned out to have a slight red tinge to it, which turned out to be a happy coincidence, giving it a nice "turned up" earth look---which also helped to differentiate it from the browns in the wicker and the dead logs embedded in the earth. I added a few washes of black here and there, and I highlighted the brown with a drybrush of Humbrol Yellow Brown (another very handy color I employ for such uses).

For the wicker, I used another old stand-bye: "Dark Tan" (Testor's Model Master). I brushed the Dark Tan over the high points on the wicker weave, leaving the black to show through in the gaps. I finished it off with a drybrush of white to give it that weathered look--and to help the wicker stand-apart from the brown of the earth. 

The rocks are a dark gray, with a black wash, highlighted with lighter gray and then very lightly drybrushed with white.  I represented the gabions as filled with rocks: gray brushed over the black undercoat, a wash of black, and then drybrushed with lighter gray. 

I'm looking forward to games of my own Smalle Warre system and Pikeman's Lament using these earthworks, which will expand the options and allow for some very interesting scenario and campaign situations. 

Excelsior!