Foundry 28mm AWI British

I managed to get around to finishing off sixteen of the Perry-sculpted Foundry 28mm British infantry. I bought these to add to my plastic Perrys, but when I saw they were wearing the 1768 warrant uniforms with the longer coats initially I put them to one side. However, while they are not up to the standard of more recent Perry sculpts they are not a bad set of figures. Some of the proportions, the heads most noticeably, are a bit on the exaggerated side, but not so much they won't sit comfortably enough with more recent sculpts.

For now I intend to use them for their original purpose which was to provide me with five groups of regular line infantry for a core Sharp Practice British force for early in the war.

This lets me free up some groups of my light infantry to form the skirmishers that make up the rest of that early war core force. These Light Bobs are also from the Perry sculpted Foundry range and once again they are a decent bunch of figures, even if their heads are on the exaggerated side.

Foundry British light infantry

For the British force for later in the war which is made up of regulars and lights, I had planned to use those Foundry light infantry to make up the two groups in that force and to use some of the Perry light infantry in round hats and roundabout jackets as the force skirmishers.

Perry British in round hats and round-abouts with the Foundry light bobs behind

Well, that was up until Brendan Morrissey kindly showed me the error of my ways (both uniforms would not have been worn at the same period of the war).  I'm pleased to say I can put that travesty of military history behind me. Help is on the way in the shape of two groups of Loyalist Queens Rangers who will be able to fulfil that skirmisher role. The bonus being those same Rangers can also be used for the mixed force of Regulars and Loyalists for use in the Southern Campaign.

Still some paint to be applied, but they are not too far off completion.

Perry Queens Rangers riflemen skirmishing

Making Paddy Fields

Starting the Chain of Command Malaya 1942 campaign had made me realise that one of the terrain pieces I hadn't yet considered recreating for the Far East was paddy fields. My focus up until now had been on more pieces suitable for Pacific island and New Guinea, like palm groves, village huts and jungle, but to play scenarios set in Burma, Malaya or China then I was certainly going to need paddies.

Paddies come in two forms - dry and out-of-season, and, wet and in-season. I wanted variety so I decided to make both. A paddy is essential a flooded field and the water is contained in each field by an earth bank, so it's fairly straightforward to construct. In-season paddies present a few more challenges than out-of-season as they need to appear flooded with water.

My first attempt was a dry paddy. This was based on a piece of MDF with the banks cut out of insulating foam and then textured with household filler. The banks were given added texture by sprinkling sand over a layer of PVA glue.

The whole piece was then given a base coat of Dulux household acrylic paint, in this case Deep Bamboo. This was followed by a dry brush in a lighter shade (Arava).

An out-of-season paddy is essentially a drained, fallow field where wild grass will grow. To get that effect I made up a mix of static grass including some longer pieces of wild grass as well as my more usual shorter green mix. The banks had a coat of Noch scatter, which is the base I use before applying my normal grass mix. As the paddy banks are used as paths between the fields I have left the tops looking worn like a footpath.

Finally, the banks themselves received a layer of my normal grass mix for static grass and with that the paddy field was finished.

It's completion was perfectly timed for use in the second scenario in the Malaya 1942 campaign. Here it is on the table with a Japanese squad making good use of the hard cover offered by the paddy bank.

The in-season paddies would require a bit more work to create the wet look and feature a flourishing rice crop. The basic MDF base and insulating foam banks were constructed exactly as for the out-of-season field. This time I changed the shape slightly. If you look at pictures of paddy fields you will see that they are rarely all of a regular shape and so I wanted to reflect this with mine.

In the case of these in-season paddies I left the ground in the field untextured and painted it with a green/blue acrylic to match the water colour I use in my streams and drainage ditches. To make it look like water I gave it a few generous coats of Mod Podge varnish which makes for an effective water effect.

The next stage was to decide how best to represent the rice crop, which is normally planted in regular rows with individual rice plants. While a little time consuming, my favoured method was to spot glue in lines and then add static grass. I found it easier to do this in stages before the glue started to dry.

I think the end result was well worth the effort. Once all the rice plants were finished, I then added static grass to the banks as I had done for the out-of-season fields.

This gives them a distinctively different appearance to the dried out paddy field. Here they are in a simple setting.

Sarissa 20mm Far East huts

I have quite a few buildings from the Sarissa Precision 20mm range and I really like them, but up until now they have only covered Western and Eastern Europe. There seems to be a real shortage of 20mm buildings for the Far East and Pacific, where as other scales like 15mm and 28mm seem well served, so I was pleased when Sarissa announced they would be producing some of their 28mm Far East buildings in 20mm. Timing could not have been better as I was just starting a Chain of Command campaign set in Malaya 1942 and I would need more than the two huts I already owned - the very venerable Airfix Jungle Outpost buildings which have been long out of production.

The Airfix Jungle Outpost

I purchased a couple of the Sarissa buildings and chose two that were on stilts, to try to match the look and feel of the Airfix huts.

They both went together very easily, but did look particularly chunky and very much like MDF laser cut buildings. In this state they weren't going to fit in with the Airfix huts.

I wanted to find a way to give them a similar thatched look to the Airfix buildings. A few years ago I had considered scratch building some tropical buildings and bought several textured A4 sheets of decorative paper that I had seen in an art supplies store. I had tucked these away and almost forgotten about them, but it has turned out they may be perfect for this job, particularly the roof.

I selected the one that most closely resembled the Airfix buildings. Once cut to shape I scored it down the middle with a sharp knife and then bent it. I used interior PVA wood glue to stick it down onto the MDF and cut out a smaller piece for the balcony roof.

I thought that worked well, but felt it could do with some more embellishment and character. Firstly I wanted to line the main ridge so I cut out a section, scored it lightly and folded it before sticking it down.

I also cut some thinner strips for the edges of the balcony roof.

One of the ugliest parts of any MDF model is the plugs that are visible from any of the joins. Nothing screams out 'MDF building' louder than the appearance of a few of these. I didn't bother with these with my first MDF buildings and I regret that. One day I will go back and rectify those, like this Normandy barn.

The huts have the same issues. So far that was solved for the roof, but I wanted to do something about the side walls.

The MDF joins aside, the wall lacked any character and so I decided I would try to use the same roof material for the side walls.

That worked well. I did the other side, but left the end walls, as these are engraved with wooden planks. Something still seemed to be missing from the roof so I added a strip of wood from a wooden skewer to run along the top of the ridge.

This was all coming to life nicely and that inspired me to replicate the window shutters that feature in the Airfix huts. I cut squares to size from the same material as the walls and roof. I mounted these on some card to give them more rigidity and glued them into place.

Finally I add some texture to the hut floor using one of the other sheets of textured paper.

This was a relatively quick and easy job for a very pleasing result. It almost seems a shame that I plan to paint it, but I will need to if they are to blend in with the existing huts. The scale works well, as you can see here with a Eureka 20mm Australian bren gunner.

And here was how it looked before the textured paper was added:

The difference between this hut and the other hut before it got a makeover shows what a difference the extra material makes.

I followed the same process for the second hut.

As this one already had the texture of wooden planks on the exterior walls I've decided to leave them as they are, that way each building can have a slightly different character. Here they are together.

I think they bear a reasonable similarity to the Airfix buildings, particularly when they are both seen in their unpainted states.

I wanted to have them on bases to match their Airfix counterparts, so I cut out a similar sized piece of MDF and then took the Dremel sanding tool and smoothed off the edges of both the MDF and the bases that come with the huts before gluing the hut bases to the MDF.

Both bases were then given some texture with sand, sprinkled over a layer of PVA glue.

Once that was dry the entire base and hut was covered with a grey primer from a rattle can.

They were then given a base coat using Dulux emulsion household acrylic paints, in this case I used Log Cabin as the dark brown base colour. I buy these in sample pots from one of the major hardware stores. It's an inexpensive way to cover a large area.

Next I dry bushed the thatch on the roof, window shutters and the walls in a mix of Deep Bamboo and Arava.

I then dry brushed all the wood in a dark grey (Western Myall) and then a light grey (Timeless Grey) and applied some of this to the thatch work to tie all the colours together.

I was trying to match the faded wood effect I had on the Airfix huts.

I gave the ground work a dry brush and applied my first layer of flock, some Noch scatter. I like to put this down as a base on to which I will apply some static grass.

I added static grass and a few shrubs, before the final touch of a couple of palm trees that I had left over from my Pacific Palm Trees project. With that I'm calling them done.

While the Airfix buildings don't look as chunky as these from Sarissa I think I've done enough to make them look reasonably compatible together. This should give me enough huts for the scenarios in the Malaya 1942 campaign, not to mention other Pacific settings.

Here they are with my new paddy fields and some additional jungle terrain.