My wife and I had our first game of Bolt Action the other night – needless to say my wife’s Germans defended the village well, winning her the game.

Sooo…. I need more hedges for cover!!!

Thanks to my wife, she pointed me in the direction of a webpage with a guide on how to make some hedges. The page was Six-D-Six. I used it as a guide – kind of – to make some of my own hedges. The main difference was that they flocked theirs. I painted mine. The main reason was that I only have one colour of flock and I couldn’t flock the hedge the same as the ground. D’Oh. Anyway, a quick trip to the craft store got me 50 large lollypop style sticks – 6 inches long – for £1.  The bargain shop next door had a pack of 8 flat scourers for £1. The only other thing was to dig out the glue gun.

After cutting the scourers to size, I glued a core piece to the centre, then folded them over. All I had to do then was glue them to the “lollypop stick”. Glue gun essential.

Once this had dried. All I had to do was spray them brown – I used Halfords Camo Brown – although I’m sure there are much cheaper sprays – that was the one I had in the garage though.

To finish, all I needed to do was use a large drybrush to drybrush on the following colours working my way higher up the hedge each time; Castellan Green (GW), Loren Forest (GW), Goblin Green (AP) and Desert Yellow (AP).
The base was re-touched up with brown then flocked.

A few glue-gun sticks, some brown spray and £2 worth of parts made 10 hedges. There were 8 made from folding and I used the leftover parts to make a pair of triple-ply hedges.
60″ of hedging for £2. Bargain. 🙂

EDIT: I’ve added a pic of the Stone Walls I’ve just finished painting and varnishing. I used the last few pieces to make a small fenced hedge section that will connect the other hedges up using the last ends of scourer.

I’ve had a chance to finish building and start paint work on an M3A1 US Half-track transporter.

I wasn’t sure if the points price of the extra MMGs on it would be worthwhile in game, so I sorted out a magnet system so the 3 guns can be removed for any configuration. Not quite a historically accurate gun attachment but it doesn’t look too bad.

You can see the magnet system pretty clearly on the unpainted version here. It also makes packing it away in a case a lot safer without all the guns poking out.

This photo’s after a spray with Halfords camo green spray, some base colours and an ink wash. (And an embarrassingly bad decal to fix.) No weathering yet… My wife says I should leave my models “factory fresh” as she prefers them looking cleaner. 🙂

Nearly finished for the last 2 photos. All that’s needed is the driver and a coat of varnish. I’ve still not got the skill with the weathering powders yet to get the look I really wanted, but I think it will look decent enough for a game.

Now I just need the humidity to drop (and the thunderflies to sod off) so I can varnish it safely and paint up the driver to glue in.

I had an evening to play around with some basing bits and (nearly) finish off a Bolt Action US M1 57mm AT Artillery Gun. I’ve still got the 3 crew to paint.
I decided on basing the gun alone (it can stay in game even if the crew are removed). It fit quite nicely on a 50mm by 100mm piece of 3mm thick mdf – which is the same size as the chariot bases I was using for Kings of War.

I’ve never used model barbed wire or clump foliage before so next time I use either, things will hopefully be better – I learned a few pitfalls to avoid and mistakes that make me cringe a little when I see the model now.

Anyway, here’s a photo of the gun on kitchen paper on the paint table still. Mobile camera for the photo. 😦

And for the record…. Even a slight coat of anti-shine matte varnish kills the nice lumpy effect weathering powder had on the wheels and turned it smooth – even though I used very little varnish and the powder had been set with Isopropanol. All a learning curve for me 🙂