Club Projects - Leuthen: Building the Terrain

 
At all of our displays or Leuthen, the one element that has attracted the most interest was the terrain itself and more specifically how we achieved the realistic snowy terrain effect. Our challenge had always been to visually recreate this terrain in 15mm scale and not fall into the "all white" snow board effect. Hopefully the section of the article will reveal how we tackled this challenge.

After some careful consideration (or inspired guesswork) we decided a table size of 8 feet by 6 feet would give us the right size to be able to field all the units we were planning on painting. Our previous experience of putting on show games have long taught us that the boards need to be strong, so we settled on 2 inch thick styrofoam as the base, with 1 inch pieces forming the hills. Also to minimise the number of seams, we ordered 2 feet by 3 feet and 2 feet by 2 feet board sizes.

As a first step the boards were laid out and the map of the battle field was sketched out with an indelible marker pen. The finished map appeared quite busy with terrain features, so a number of roads and smaller villages were removed to provide for better playability. The key features were retained; we are wargamers and not Hollywood directors after all!

Each hill was created by first cutting its outline in card. This was then sellotaped to the 1 inch styroform and it acted as a template for the hot wire cutter. Once cut out the hills were chamfered using the hot wire cutter and glued into place on the main boards. They were then sanded with rough sandpaper to remove the sharp relief. Also, to provide balance and give a more mixed relief to the boards, a hot air gun was used to sink some areas of the main board.

Next came the roads. These were pasted on in polyfiller using a 1 inch paint scraper. They were then inlayed by dragging the reverse end of four paint brushes along then and additional pitted effects were added by dotting the roads with the brushes in various places.

The built up areas and streams were given a coat of PVA and sanded to give a textures effect. The fields near these terrain features were made from Dolls House carpet with additional grass glued onto it.

The streams were cut into the boards using a soldering iron turned side on to give an initial wide cut. The soldering iron was then turned thin ways to provide the deeper cuts for the stream itself. To give the raised "hang over the edge" effect, milliput was rolled out and kneaded along the edges of the streams. Bridges were scratch built.

Now that all the main terrain features were in place, the boards were painted all over with a Dulux emulsion mix of chocolate brown. The roads and built up areas were then highlighted with some judiciously heavy dry brushing. Everywhere else on the boards was covered in a neat coat of PVA and the first coat of scatter applied. The second coat of scatter was then applied as were the grass edges to the streams and hills. Everything was then sealed using a mix of PVA and water applied through a spray gun.

To provide the iced/frosty effect to the boards, we dry brushed all the roads, streams end built up areas in white. Candle wax was melted into the stream beds and marshy areas. The buildings, mainly from Hovels and Timecast, were also dry brushed in white.

The church, which provided the famous "last stand" for the Austrian's was scratch built using foamcore board covered in Tetrion. The churchyard walls were cast from a master made using expanded polystyrene to give the cobbled effect. The winter trees, which attracted so much comment at the shows, were in fact Super Trees from Scenery Express. These were attached to pins and they are inserted into the boards on the day of the game.

The final snow fall is also added on the day of the game. Woodland Scenics Snow is used for this. Not only does it look very good, but it does not leave behind a powdery effect when shaken from the boards.