Thursday 5 May 2011

Into the Valley of Death..........

The Battle of Lake Trasimene is now taking shape. My 'hill stuff' arrived today; it was sunny; rain forecast for tomorrow; paint brush down and take up the saw. The hills at Trasimene are substantial and form three sides of a bowl - no 'cow pat hills' for this game.



The hill material is 50mm thick DOW Floormate by Sheffield Insulation. You can buy it online, but this means buying quite a bit - eight sheets, each 2450mm x 600mm x 50mm. With VAT and carriage this runs in at £123.00 a shot, but time is short and I had to bite the bullet. This job uses about half of it, though quite a bit is 'uncut filler'.

I cut the sheets in half with a normal saw (into 2 x 4s), laid some pieces on my table and began to mark out the forward slopes with some basic lines.

 

After remarking a wavy front edge I cut them vertically with a coping saw, marked out the top contour 3" in, then cut the slope by cutting on the angle between lower front edge and the contour line. This method gives a fairly uniform slope.



Coping saws are an essential, fairly cheap, tool for this kind of thing as you can vary the angle of the blade within the saw bow. In this case I shifted it through 90 degrees.



Once I had done the first contour - all 20 feet of it - I started on the summit pieces in a similar manner.




Once the cloth was thrown over it, the lakeside was added with a few trees and a few troops it began to look quite good. I still need to paint 36 Gallic cavalry and 48 hastati before Triples, and several units will need basing, but all is well in hand now. Also, my table is only 12 feet long and the table for Triples will be 14 feet, so imagine, if you will, two foot more hill between the central 'summit / knoll' and the hill on which the Numidian cavalry stand. 


I hope that this set up meets with the approval of those who know this battle.

17 comments:

Hendrid said...

Looks damn good to me. Well worth all the effort.

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

That's awesome!!!! Yes, the set up looks the part.

Christopher

Unknown said...

What is the cloth you use? And how do you keep it from shifting? Thanks.

James said...

Very convincing. Good looking game!

Bedford said...

Awwww...... I was expecting to see a fully painted one for one Light Brigade James ;O)))

Great work and I look forward to seeing the game at some point.

Darrell.

Phil Hendry said...

That looks just right - how I imagine the terrain at Trasimene at that time. The whole thing looks amazing - your usual brand of wargaming megalomania!

JAMES ROACH said...

Hi Ken,

It's a snooker baize, and for some reason it doesn't shift. Perhaps because it's wool, perhaps because its woven, perhaps because it's big and quite heavy (17 foot by 6 foot in this case).

Donogh said...

Exellent work James - for a perfect 10.0 how're you going to manage the fog!

BigRedBat said...

Golly, that looks amazing! What a stonking good setup.

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Excellent!

Ray Rousell said...

Great setup, well worth the time it took to make!

Anonymous said...

Spectacular.

Hetairoi said...

... 8-o

Sorry, I have no words.

Battlescale said...

Superb!!!

Glenn said...

Truly inspirational!

Wow! (said with my mouth agape)

Steve h said...

Looks great! I am looking forward to seeing it at triples soon
Cheers
Steve
Www1066campaign.blogspot.com

SoA Shows North said...

Great post, James ...

A good example of why I have cited you as a Stylish Blogger over on my P.B.Eye-Candy WW2 blog.

Keep up the good work - I am looking forward to seeing this one at the shows

Phil Steele
SoA Shows North
http://soawargamesteam,blogspot.com/
http://pbeyecandy.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/publicity-candy/