Nev's Wargaming

  I have made progress on somethings since my last update, I gave up on fur fabric grass, for me it was not working. I have seen some amazing faux fur grass mats, mine was not one of them. I may use bits of the fur in future projets. The brown faux fur never made it as far as my officce, it got used to cover a chair, I am glasd as i am not sure it would have worked for me. I decideed the next attempt at creating a board would be using the old realm of battle boards that Games Workshop used to produce. About five years ago I decorated them for Warhammer 40,000. They did not see much use and had become a big expensive white elephant in my office. My original painting was lazy, I more or less painted them the same colour as they were before I decorated them, I was aiming for a blasted landsccape that could be used as the wilderness and for city fighting, they worked well for the three games I played on them. I moved onto other things and the boards hung around like a mill stone ar...

I thought with the country and most of the  in general in lockdown I would have more time to do my hobby and blog articles, I was wrong. It would appear with a combination of medication and not actually having to go anywhere I have been sleeping more (getting between seven and eight hours sleep a night now), I actually have less time to do things. It has also taken sometime as I decided to make four different types of tree and planned to do four different articles and then decided not too, then I decided too and now I am not sure which way to do it. I am still favouring a number of articles, but that a decision for when I have made the last of the trees. I decided this week to redo the lichen trees I had been working on as I did not like how they were looking, they looked far too much like the clump foliage trees and I also nearly finished the coco-fibre trees, I have quite the forest slowly growing on my desk (by slowly growing I do not mean as slow a real forest though, or at lea...

Just a quick update this week, to demonstrate that things are moving along, if a bit slower than I would like. No completed projects recently, but I have been following tutorials on how to make fairly realistic looking trees, the project is taking longer than I anticipated. After injuring myself with my glue gun on numerous occasions the project is moving along now. I am rather impressed with how effective the clump foliage looks on the armatures. 'Growing' trees on the desk This week a new piece of Faux Fur Fabric arrived, a darker brown than before and shorter. I am hoping that it will turn out better than the previous one, I just need to find better coloured paints than I used before, this may be rather tricky considering the Corvid-19 lockdown. I will also have to find time to create the next mat between the building and painting of 300+ Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. New dark brown Faux Fur Fabric Thats about it for this week, not a lot going on and only slow...

I decided that with my Ashdown project I needed to create some nice new terrain, I have already done a faux-fur fabric grass mat so I decided I also needed some realistic trees as I have literally spent years using trees that are mass produced and pretty much look identical. I thought this was going to be fairly difficult, I kept finding blog articles and YouTube tutorials about getting wire and making my own armatures, though these look good I neither have the time or patience to make them. I discovered a good tutorial on YouTube to make realistic trees but using plastic armatures made by Woodland Scenics, and one using barbecue skewers. The tutorial demonstrated five methods of greating trees, with each type looking significantly different. The different types of trees were as follows: Clump foliage trees Lichen trees Coco-fibre trees Coco-fibre pine trees Twine trees I decided not to make the coco-fibre pine trees, the simple reason, at the time of Ashdown, there were no european ...

Rival Anglo-Saxon forces clash a grassy plain by some ancient stones. After some careful consideration I decided that the Ashdown project required a new grass mat. The grass mats I have are produced by Citadel Miniatures and are good however they do not conjure images early medieval Wessex. Some time ago I had discovered that some wargamers make grass mats out of Faux Fur fabric. These mats look amazing and the Ashdown project appeared to be a perfect opportunity to try it out. I watched a few tutorials on Youtube and read a few blogs to learn how to make a faux fabric grass mat. The Red Beard Baron and Terrain Made Easy are the two best youtube channels for faux fur grass tutorials. My biggest concern was sourcing the supplies I needed to make the mat, and with coronavirus spreading across the globe I felt time was short, so with a recommendation in Terrain Made Easy 's tutorial, due to both of us being in the UK I ordered (with help form my wife, who knows about fabric...

Anglo-Saxon warriors advance towards the Danish forces at Ashdown, 871 AD Having decided on the battle of Ashdown, it was time to begin researching the battle. I am going to research the battle, learn the history and work out what I need to recreate the battle on the tabletop. Myfirst port of call was to consult the Shieldwall book for Hail Caesar  which has a nice section and scenario for the battle of Ashdown. The next thing I decided to consult was some contemporary accounts of the battle. Forttunatealy for me, my son had bought me Asser,s Life of King Alfred and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle  for Christmas (how did I get through my University days without copies of them?), now I am fully aware of the bias behind these sources as one was written by Alfred the Great some years later and the other was written as a biography of Alfred's life. The research begins in the Cave I realised quickly that this research was not just about learning about the battle of Ashdown...

Top row, Left-right:  A replica of the Seax of Beagnoth, and a drinking horn,  Bottom row: Leather scabbard Items from author's own collection The first stage of recreating my battle is actually deciding upon a battle to recreate, it has to be something that really interests me and will be fun to research, I am not happy with just recreating the battle, I need to learn about it and understand it, after all this is not a Space Marine chapter fighting against Space Orks on a fictional world, these are real battles fought at real locations, or real reasons, and most importantly, real people were killed. At the time of typing this I have already decided which battle I am going to recreate, however I wish to show the process of deciding so I shall discuss some of the battles that I pondered before deciding upon the battle I eventually settled upon. History is rich with battles that can be recreated, and the classical and medieval periods are no exception, so tryin...