The Last Transformed Trench War Crusade

I decided to have a break from terrain and had a look at some of the miniatures I am going to be using. I don’t tend to go for flavour pieces in armies, but decided to make an exception for this game. Even more to paint, yay.

The painting pile is building up and I have barely touched the rank and file troops. I have also been waiting three weeks for Mierce, who despatch in stock items in two working days according to their website….But enough about first world (war) problems.

Tuesday saw me returning to the terrain, having flocked all the boards, I wanted to add a bit more interest to the slopes and try and tie them to the mat I plan to use, still in two minds about beveling the edges, or doing something cunning…but not for Terrainfest.

I mixed the two colours from the scatter terrain with the brown I used for the mud slopes and applied a layer onto the slopes of the trenches. I hadn’t planned this out, I kind of approached it the same way I approach a canvas when I am abstract painting. Slap it on and see.  Naturally it looked terrible at first, but I have painted enough miniatures to never panic about the first coat!

I had a bag of fine sand kicking around so I put some of that on the wet paint, a lot of it changed colour but that rough texture looked good, I put more sand on, then some watered down pva, followed by some IPA . Then repeated those three steps. It gave an impression of sand blowing from the sandflats onto the earthworks thrown up by the warring sides

Last thing I did was spray up some greebly bits I picked up, they are a mix of  Roman legion banners and some Mongol banners. I plan to add a few wreaths of lucky heather to the trenches too. I went through the bits box and found a few bits (unsurprisingly). I knew those spare deer skull from Verrotwood might come in handy.

Out came the airbrush for a few lighting effects, I also decided to add some flocking. The game describes nature returning with wild abandon and it was an opportunity to add some colours.

According to legend when the first settlers reached Doggerland, they encountered this statue  and a hermit living nearby, he told them according to his great great grandfather that statue has always been there.

Latest findings from the Royal Geographic Society estimates the statue pre dates the ice an the level of erosion is startling, given the statue has been underwater for thousands of years.

So a while back , I acquired a bust of Keith Richards, with the intent of using it for Verrotwood. But I never quite got round to it. It seemed a shoe in for A War Transformed.

I set about the boards with my trusty pan pastels, the plan being to keep the colours pretty muted and low key. There is a reason for this that will come apparent later on . It was fairly quick work and seemed to match the colour palette from the book art. I decided to leave the airbrushing for another day, so I took a few pics, then moved onto more scatter terrain.

I experienced some kid of reaction from the propellant in the black army painter spray primer, causing some areas to whiten and crack, it’s not the worst effect, but not what I wanted. I plan to add flock to add some green to all the mod as one of the features of the book is nature returning at a magically fast pace.

Putting the trenches aside for a while I wanted to get some colour on my scatter pieces

Still some shading to be done and I may need to adjust the sandy tones to fit the mat I intend to use these on, but that’s far in the future when I finally clear the table and lay these out.

So I had this daft idea for a bit of scatter, so I scavenged the interwebs for some naval mines and some seagulls.

I was happy with the result , the sand came out pretty well over the modelling clay.

Having finally finished the sand bags I moved onto the last two sets of flooring, same technique of cut up coffee stirrers applied, then I went in and added a few more greebles and decided to go with candles as well, I had plenty left over from my idols of torment terrain build.

Finally I was able to spray it all black for dry brushing and weathering.

The rules referenced the ‘bones of giants’ in the art and flavour text , so I added a little nod to that with an old STL I had kicking about.

Taking a breather from the trenches I set about creating some barbed wire, I decide it would be easier to have this as a separate entity from the board. Especially when it came to storage.

The book also references vines growing through the wire , so I made a test piece.

So, another day, more sand bags, only of one quarter of one board out of six left to do. The printer has done itself proud.

So I decided to line the trenches with sandbags down both sides. So thats 24 feet of sandbags at 4-5mm each, so roughly 17-1800 individual bags.

I plan to spray the whole trench area black, then drybrush in features and add weathering and so forth.

I used the weekend to get some paint on the final two sections, I added 3d printed elements with hot glue, just need to cut up yet more coffee stirrers for the flooring and then get the sandbags down.