Going to town...

What battlefield would be complete without at least something resembling a town or village?

For my 6mm Hex terrain I have constructed quite a few buildings and houses. Most of them while waiting for the post to deliver my Hex Terrain Toolkit... Now I am putting a good part of these on my first two multi-Hex town modules... All the buildings are made by hand and are cut from styrofoam.

Mind you, these are still heavily under construction...

WIP shot of the church module...

A closer look at the intersection...

I decided to place the church on a low hill. This would make the building stand out even more and offer the possibility of adding some flavour to the piece...

This picture sparked the idea of an elevated church, accessible by stairs... 

An overview of the first multi-Hex town module...

I want to create a town that wouldn't look out of place anywhere in north- western Europe, be it Northern France, Belgium, Holland or Britain... Furthermore, I want the town to be challenging to fight in and look reasonably realistic...

A look at the lay-out of the module...

This particular module features 11 houses/blocks. Most of these are situated on the main road but several can be found at the edges of the town...

Attending a Northern Wedding...

Whenever I start a new project I first do some research online. I search for inspiration and examples of what has been done by others. All of this helps me to formulate a plan.
In the case of the new 6mm Hex terrain I found a veritable treasure of inspiration on the following blog: NorthernWedding This blog was mentioned in the previous post, but warrants more attention and credit.

NorthernWedding is filled with pictures of hand crafted Hex terrain, both of finished pieces and work in progress shots. The blog also includes numerous battle reports, all featuring that amazing Hex terrain. The author also showcases his GHQ Micro Armour, another source of ideas and motivation.

The authors multi-Hexes in particular were an eye-opener... I made some already, but more elaborate ones are on the way.

On the pics below you can clearly see how this Hex terrain inspired me. Check out more on NorthernWedding!

Musings on terrain...

For this 6mm Hex terrain project I make everything myself, Hexes, buildings, roads and trees, all is made from scratch...

As all the Hexes are shaped by hand and are very versatile and flexible in use to start with, I decided to use as much fixed terrain features as possible. For example, roads would be drawn directly onto the Hexes, rivers would be carved into the Hexes and buildings would be glued in place. This appraoch has several advantages (for me at least), the main one being a cohesive look without many pieces of loose scenery.

At the moment only trees are made on separate bases (some of them, a large portion of the trees I made are fixed on the Hexes as well). For the trees I use a thin, flexible and strong steel wire... Almost 100 meters of it have been twisted into trees and another 200 meters of steel wire are in the mail, arriving tomorrow. I will be adding a lot more trees to the set...

Now the river is finished, the next phase will be to add some sort of village. Getting buildings and roads to fit together on a Hex can be a bit tricky, so I plan on making several multi-Hex bases. Most my buildings were made before my Hex Terrain Toolkit even arrived. I may have been a bit overambitious, as they are pretty big (I ended up making whole rows of houses)...

Below are two pictures from another Blog (Northernwedding), designed for post WW2 combat. The Hex terrain you can find here has been a huge source of inspiration for my own project. These multi-Hex village tiles are something I really want to try for myself...

Hexes, Hexes everywhere... pt. III

After finishing the river Hexes I thought it time to post a proper update...

This time I used the Snowflakes yo keep the Hexes close together.

The Snowflakes keep the Hexes close together, leaving almost no gaps but still leaving the Hexes clearly visible. Finally, the landscape is getting somewhere...

It's all water under the bridge...

Warning: this is a big post, it contains a lot of pictures and a lot of text!

I have completed the first batch of river Hexes to expand my 6mm Hex terrain... I have been working on these for a couple of weeks now, most of that time was needed to build up the layers of gloss varnish to represent the water...

The Hex Terrain Toolkit provides some very handy options to make river Hexes. Cutting the basic 15mm Hex in half to make the riverbed and bank and then using a mold to make bends or straights... This construction allows the river to be embedded in the surrounding terrain, rather than to sit on top.

Instead of using the molds to create bends and straights I decided to free-hand the shaping of the river. By setting the wire of the hot wire cutter at an angle it's easy enough and it prevents getting all identical pieces... With a bit of planning and careful measurement all the pieces lign up neatly.

What river is complete without a bridge? I only made one and really should make some more...

I also made a water mill. This was a little project all on it's own and I am very pleased with the way it turned out.

Years ago I also made a water mill and bridge for my 15mm Flames of War terrain. Despite working on a much smaller scale I tried to improve on the design. 

For this model I used the old water mill in Bayeux, France, as a source of inspiration. While I was limited by the scale of the model and the size of the Hex, I think it works well enough...

The entire set consists of 24 river Hexes, including the bridge and water wheel. That should be enough for now, but as the collection of Hexes and the surface it covers is growing I do plan to add more in the future.

The complete set of river Hexes...

And incorporated in the rest of the Hex terrain... Turns out I have plenty of river Hexes for now, I just need more Snowflakes and regular Hexes...

Gearing up for CRISIS 2019... The CRYPE is real!

CRISIS 2019 (Mainland Europe's largest Wargaming convention, organised every year in Antwerpen by the wonderful people of TSOA) is just six weeks away, so it's about time to get a proper shopping list ready...

I have been to CRISIS for more than a decade now and it's interesting to see that my enthusiasm for Wargaming hasn't diminished in the slightest, but the focus is ever shifting...

All those years ago I was playing mostly Fantasy games (WFRP, Warhammer Fantasy, Mordheim), at that time I was already building the Dungeon, so I only bought stuff related to that. After that came Flames of War, and for several years I mostly bought 15mm miniatures.

And now there is this new project, 6mm WW2... I intend to give all the stands selling 6mm/1:285 miniatures my full attention. I am somewhat ashamed to say that in all those previous years I mostly skipped anything smaller than 15mm, writing it off as way too small. How things can change...

As always, I will be looking for furniture and other cool stuff to put in to the Dungeon. But this year I will be mostly getting some 6mm miniatures to use with my new Hex terrain. While I love being surprised by finding cool stuff I am not taking any chances and will place a rather substantial pre-order at a merchant who stocks GHQ Micro Armour...

Laying the foundations...

The snowflake Hexes I mentioned in the previous post will form the foundation for the rest of the Hexes I use for my 6mm Hex terrain.

To ensure minimal gaps between the Hexes I decided to glue several snowflakes together to form a larger piece. Easy to store, less edges to paint and, most important, almost no gaps between  the Hexes...

These 48 snowflakes represent several hours worth of cutting. Considering the entire surface measures only about 50x75cm I still have a long way to go...

Snowflake Hexes...

To prevent the Hexes from shifting (they are very lightweight so they shift at the slightest touch, creating gaps in the terrain and unhinging your carefully laid-out battlefield) the Hex Terrain Toolkit offers a very elegant sollution: the snowflake Hex...

These intricately shaped Hexes are designed to 'grip' the neighbouring Hexes, much like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. These Hexes are meant to be used as a foundation, a layer upon which you can build your terrain.

While the snowflake Hexes are absolutely essential to create a smooth Hex battlefield, they are quite tricky to cut. If done right, they take some time, but the result is worth the time and effort.

The snowflake Hexes all have a Hexagonal hole, corresponding with a smaller Hex, glued to the bottom of the regular Hexes. This is the simplified version of this system, the Hex Terrain Toolkit also provides a more complex version.

Making 6mm wire trees...

For my 1:285 (6mm) Hex terrain I wanted to make everything from scratch, and that includes the trees that can be seen in many of the pictures posted on this blog...

For my 15mm Flames of War terrain I simply used store bought trees, the kind you can buy in any model railway shop. If I recall correctly, these were suitable gor H0-gauge... Mixing different brands and colors made for a convincing effect. This sollution was easy, reasonably affordable and allowed me to fill a good portion of my 160x240 table with woods and single trees...

Where the trees suitable for 15mm were easily available, finding trees for 6mm terrain proved a lot harder...

After an experiment with some wire I had left over from a previous project I figured I could make my own trees. So, I went in search for a thinner sort of wire (yet still strong), ordered 100m of the stuff and set about twisting as many trees as I could.

At the moment I have used about 60m of the wire, resulting in a lot of trees! But there is always room for more...

I use my trees in three different ways: as a single tree on a separate base, as a cluster of three trees on a separate base and fixed onto a Hex module.

The bases for the wire trees are shaped in such a way so that they can easily be combined into a larger forest...

I use three different shades of foliage, light, medium and dark green, all from Woodland Scenics... These colors, when combined, create a very nice and quite realistic effect. On most of the trio bases I only combine two of the shades as three different kinds of trees so close together would be somewhat improbable...

The picture above gives a good example of how the separate bases can be combined into a large wooded area while the separate trees can be used to dot the landscape...

Hexes, Hexes everywhere... pt. II

A quick update on the complete 6mm Hex terrain collection, but mostly showing off the new Hex modules... With the new additions there is a lot more variety, roads, fields, buildings and trees. This is getting close to the generic North-West European look I am after. Not just strictly Normandy, but also suitable for the battles during early 1940 in Holland, Belgium and France... And to take things a few steps further, a what-if Seelöwe campaign (the proposed invasion of Great Britain).

Farmstead finished...

A new addition to the collection of 6mm Hex terrain. Another multi-Hex module, the farmstead, is finished... I am quite happy with the results.

I kept the painting relatively simple, but the layered colors give a reasonably weathered look to the building.

As an extra layer of detail, I made and added telegraph poles and milestones. These will be added to other pieces, too

I also finished the other piece... I experimented a bit with the color of the buildings, I want all the buildings to look similar without them being completely identical.

These Hexes work very well together, but they can obviously be used in a number of different ways...