Thursday, August 21, 2014

Figuring your bases for both summer and winter

I'm tired of waiting for Baccus to produce me some napoleonic Swedes so I'm starting my Russo-Swedish War 1808-1809 project using Heroics and Ros figures. There's one problem however. The battles I want to play took place both during the winter and the summer of 1808. I either have to play the winter battles using summer bases or vice versa OR I can design the basing so that they can be easily rebased.

Now, the battles that took place when snow was on the ground are not terribly big, none of the R-S war battles were. I won't have to rebase a huge army. As the winter battles are the first ones of the war, I can do those first, then rebase the models and reuse them for the summer battles. As a bonus they will be in the chronological order. So I'll need a temporary winter basing scheme.


First you paint the models obviously. It's better to have the bases of the strips painted in brown as white is more difficult to paint over for the summer phase. Put some white acrylic caulk on the base and just stick the models on top. The stands of Heroics and Ros figures are quite thin so there won't be such a big "step effect" to cover as with Baccus figures. This works to my advantage. Paint the sides of the stand white.


Now, sprinkle baking soda on top of the stand (no glue!), remove the excess and brush away any left on the figures. This is what you should end up with. You see a little bit of the brown base underneath but I think the result is quite acceptable. The soda might shed off a bit in use but the effect is wintery and non-permanent.
 

Now, after the applause on the blogosphere after seeing your winter battles have died down, it's time for the spring to come. I blast the soda away with an air compressor, but had to use a brush in addition. Take away the rear strip using a knife. As the models were not glued on, but stood on the caulk, they come off easy and with no fuss. The next step is to paint the base brown, maybe glue on some sand or whatever you would normally do.


Here the same base has been painted, flock glued in the space between the strips, the models glued back in and the rest of the stand flocked. The white showing through the stand is just undried PVA, not snow residue. Now the models have served in both climates. Maybe I'll add a tuft or a bush there...


7 comments:

  1. Interesting. One thought would be to drizzle soda (or some compatible snowy substance) on the summer bases, and just clean it up when need for summer rises? I have't tried snow in practice, but have used similar method to turn arid landscape to greener pasture. Now that it came up, I might actually experiment to turn some summer bases to temporarily autumn ones... :)

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    1. I wager it will be difficult to clean the soda off the summer bases once there is no longer need for it..

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  2. Hmm, granted. If you have static grass in place that may be hard. Have to test that though. Meanwhile, perhaps intermediary solution where base is essentially build to arid/rocky surface, ready but not flocked / grassed? Of corse that would make bases essentially single use for winter though. On the other hand, I think I saw long ago someplace small snow flock that was not quite like baking soda, but more like white flock that actually comes off relatively easy and it was used on top of summer bases.

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  3. I've been thinking about doing this conflict in 6mm* for a while, and whilst I have trees for the Summer campaign I've hit the buffers when it comes to deciduous trees in the winter. Any ideas?

    * I was thinking of utilising the Baccus Russians I already have on permanent loan and then buying various odds and sods to make do as the Swedes. Spanish inf in hats with a little modification, maybe some Austrian jägers and so on. Wouldn't satisfy the purist but good enough for me in that scale.

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    1. Dedicuous trees during the winter are definitely difficult to realise. I think if one would fins suitable twigs that kind of look like birch trunks, then glue a thin veil of something something and then some white flock... It might be better for your sanity to stick with firs and pines for the winter scenarios, the forests of Savo and the Oulu region are dominated by 'em anyway. I saw these on ebay and they look acceptable: http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NTAwWDUwMA==/z/zf4AAOxye2lSYiNx/$(KGrHqQOKpMFJWO(gBYrBSYiN)H0lQ~~60_12.JPG

      For the figures, I long looked for suitable proxies from baccus but nothing quite satisfied me. The Heroics and Ros line is simpler in molded detail which makes it easier to do paintjob conversions. They don't really compare well to Baccus though, I know.

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  4. Thanks for that. Those ones on e-bay look good. Might have a go at making something like that.

    I wanted bare broadleaf trees for other winter campaigns in the south and in Europe, e.g. Leuthen, so they'll be dual or triple purpose.

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    1. No problem! Don't forget to let me know how your project progresses..

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