Shedquarters is unavailable for games

It is rare for Shedquarters to be out of operation as a wargames room. This is deliberate policy. All that is normally allowed on the wargames table is wargaming.

Every so often I have to make an exception, and these last few days (and for a few days more) have been one such exception. Shedquarters is currently being used for a construction project for the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society. I am trying to build a model of the Battle of Middleton Cheney to take to Partizan in May. I chose the battle as we haven't done it before, and I reckoned I could use my normal 15mm ECW figures, rather than buy and paint new stuff. It's also manageably small. And Gregg Archer, of both NBS and the Battlefields Trust, is currently researching it like made, and has shared some useful findings with me.

My initial idea weas to repurpose some previously used polystyrene terrain blocks and chuck a sheet over them with painted on roads and so on. Alas this fell apart as an idea as soon as I started work on them. Previously applied PVA, Polyfilla and Polytex have rendered them rock solid, and quite unsuitable for reuse.

I headed over to Amazon and found out I could pick up a good sized pack of packing tiles for a tenner, so I thought I might as well start from scratch.

The layout is going to be 3' x 3', with a figure scale of about 10:1. Here's me working out that I have enough tiles. The battle was fought, probably, on a re-entrant, so the hilly bit will be round about three sides, and the middle will be flat.

Sort of like this. You can see the bit I'm going to cut out. It'll break down into three sections for ease of transportation. It will be three of four tiles deep, and will be bound together with PVA, masking tape, gaffer tape and Polytex for durability.

Here we are with a couple of layers. You can see my Games workshop (TM) hot wire cutter in the bottom right corner. It was fun to get that out and use it again, but it can be a bit tricky at times.

I got to three layers then thought that was enough, especially when I started mapping out roads, streams and troop locations.

The troops fit on the board okay, and don't slide down the slopes, so three layers will do. You can see a stream incised into the right hand edge. The stream then snakes across the valley floor. I have decided to paint a mat to go under the files, rather than put a cloth over it all. The tiles will be painted the same colour as the mat. I'll just have to live with the stream being painted flat on the valley floor for now. The other markings are roads/lanes and a cross hatched area for Middleton Cheney.

I've probably got another four or five days work on this bit of the display, and that's down to the weather, as glue and paint won't dry that quickly when it is so cold and damp, and I'm not going to run the heating fans in there at current costs. Experience suggests each layer may take two or three days to set. I also need to reinforce the edges to stop them chipping away or snapping off.

I need to give a thought to whether or not I show any field detail, like ridge and furrow or hedges. The historical field maps imply the area is mostly open, but the banks of the stream are probably hedged. If they were, then that would interfere with the Royalist cavalry charge across the valley floor. So perhaps not. I might bring along the odd free standing tree for a bit of relief from the openness of it all. Of course the village will have some buildings, so perhaps that'll be enough.

I think that's a good start.