The World Turned Upside Down - Terrain Build (Snake Rail Fencing & Field Works)

As an historical wargamer of a certain vintage, I have built many collections over the years, and as well as being one of those folks who tends to build a collection of figures around all the factions that took part, not just focussing on one in particular, I also have come to appreciate the need to build in a plan for developing the terrain requirements around the figure collecting, to facilitate the games I want to produce.

My first foray into the delights of a 28mm collection of terrain started with the basics for my Romano-Dacian collection, equally applicable to my growing AWI one.

Some terrain pieces are common to all eras and themes such as terrain mats, trees, rivers and roads, with a few exceptions, but other pieces speak specifically to the theatre and theme one is hoping to portray on the table, similar to a theatre director dreaming up the most appropriate stage set for the actors to play their scenes in front of.

Much more theme specific, my Roman era set of wall fortifications are not likely to be seen in 18th century America, but never say never!

Over the years I have tended to simplify the terrain collection by sticking to one scale no matter what the era or theme, and in the past that tended to be 15/18mm for my figure collections, but in recent years that has progressed to 28mm with the start of the Dark Ages and then my Romano-Dacian collections and now with my American War of Independence theme.

With my previous collection of AWI figures being composed of Polly Oliver 15mm figures, now passed on to my old friend Steve M., I had built a collection of terrain to compliment them, that included some snake rail fencing from 4Ground that I put together in 2014 and featured here on the blog.

These 15mm snake fence kits from 4Ground were built for my 15mm AWI collection, here displayed in a more War of 1812 look, with the 15mm AWI troops and the fences now under new ownership, Steve M.

So with the new 28mm AWI collection well under way and with the start of a new year, I decided now was as good as any other time to take a pause in the figure building process and turn my attention to my growing collection of unbuilt AWI terrain items, and where better to start than with an item such as the snake rail fence, that immediately tells the viewer where a particular battle set up is taking place, before they've even got around to looking at the figures.

My 15mm Snake Rail Fence production line back in February 2014
JJ's Wargames - Snake Rail Fence Build

For my 28mm fencing I decided to use the base kits from Charlie Foxtrot Models, where Colin Farrant has provided an excellent build tutorial along with a painting scheme borrowed from John Bond's website and liked to both below.

https://www.charliefoxtrotmodels.com/blogs/news/tutorial-american-snake-fence

As the tutorial outlines the unique design of these base templates with laser marked guidelines for placing the rails, not only produces a very attractive irregularity of base on the table, which is very easy on the eye in my opinion, but is done in such a way to allow easy storage in a suitably sized Really Useful Box, with the bases designed to tessellate and thus take up less space when boxed up.

My new balsa splitter in action, courtesy of Mel the Terrain Tutor and Carolyn who got me my fun new toy for Christmas.

However for my build, I decided to dispense with the use of 'Cook's Matches' as the suggested option for the timber posts, but instead opted for using up some 3mm balsa sheets I had had in the modelling stores for a few years and that needed to be used appropriately.

The idea for using balsa and indeed my new Christmas present from Carolyn, my balsa splitter, came after watching Mel, the Terrain Tutor building similar fencing for his 'What a Cowboy' build on YouTube, link above, and having never used such a device before was keen to give it a go.

First part, was the cutting of what became a very large pile of balsa timber posts that also needed a bit of weathering to make them look less like the precisely cut sections seen above

As with my previous 15mm build, you have to get into the production line build process which, as I had four packs of straight fences, one pack of double and one pack of single gates, plus six sets of corner sections to construct, required a methodical process conducted over several evenings over two weeks.

In addition to the main sections of the fence, a smaller pile of supports, lower left, is required to complete the snake style pattern, using the laser template on each base to guide their placement. The more you build, the process becomes very intuitive and I was soon rattling through the basic construction. Note Mel's suggestion of a masking tape pattern, to speed up cutting the balsa strips to the required lengths.

The initial build process is complete, with each set of four seven straight sections now built together with four of single and double gates and the corner pieces which just need terrain-scaping. 

A weekend and several evenings later I was able to enjoy the sight of multiple straights, twenty eight, 18cm, or just over seven inch straights, eight similar lengths of gating plus some corner sections, all ready for the next steps, painting and terrain-scaping.

The close up shows the fencing has been weathered with a modelling knife to make them less precise and a few sections have had leaning post braces added. Note also the tessellating base designs locking nicely together

To start the painting process, I sprayed on a base coat of acrylic matt black, and it was during this process that I decided to unwrap my set of Ironclad Miniatures small and large redoubts and the revetment set I had picked up at Partizan last May, ready for a similar base coat preparation and to include them in the terrain scaping.

The gate sets have been primed in their black base coat and are drying off before getting some builders ballast added to the bases.

My revetment set and redoubts ready for a black priming.

With the black primer on and dry, the next step was to add builders ballast to the bases to add some ground texture, a simple process of smearing PVA onto the bases and sprinkling on the ballast before putting aside to dry.

All the gates are now ready for painting.

Below can be seen the painting job well under way using the colour suggestions from the tutorial for the fence posts and an acrylic raw umber applied to the base texture, wet brushed over with Vallejo Green Brown and Iraqi Sand to highlight.

The fieldworks had a similar base colouring of raw umber, to which I used various shades of Vallejo browns on the timber work and gabions in preparation for flocking with Peco 2mm Spring Static Grass.

 

The fieldworks painting is done and the corner sections for the fences are similarly prepared for the next step.

This close up of the gates shows off the hues achieved on the timber work recreating a weathered fence with various shades of flat-earth, grey-green, middle stone and a light dry brush of ivory. Note the groundwork is yet to get a final dry brush of Iraqi Sand.

All the PVA gluing, wet brushing, dry brushing and static grass flocking, not to mention the odd bit of clump grass adding, finally reached a crescendo one evening this week, when I was finally able to survey the results of my production line, and a solid collection of snake rail fencing and field works prepared.

 

Of course these models are seen still on my workshop table as I have not taken the sea cloth of my wargames table yet in preparation for my first game with the AWI collection, but I'm aiming to get the toys out soon in the not too distant future for some trial games, and to have these fences and field works taking centre stage among the figures.

However to give you a better idea of how these items will work on the table and with some figures to compare them against I arranged a few pieces to help set them off and illustrate why I'm verry happy with these pieces of model terrain.

The field arrangement helps to better illustrate the use of the corner sections to better facilitate fence connections at various angles, here using the 90 degree sections to make a basic square arrangement, but with other angles available to set up different patterns, perhaps lining a road.

Militia safely ensconced, no doubt claiming rested muskets!

Revetments and redoubts are a common feature of AWI battles and can make an interesting challenge to overcome if part of a specific historical scenario or tabletop encounter game, and these Ironclad redoubts together with the sections of revetments allow plenty of flexibility to any arrangement.

I plan to add more options to both my fences and fieldworks in time, but this initial set provide a good foundation for the collection.

The Ironclad redoubts, this one the small option with the complete revetment set will make prepared defences look just that bit more formidable.

https://www.ironcladminiatures.com/

I should conclude this post by stating that both Charlie Foxtrot and Ironclad Miniatures will be under new management this year, with the former being taken over by Blotz on March 30th 2026 and the latter by Pendraken from I believe this month.

Next up I will be returning to the figure collection with HM 15th Foot and the 15th Virginia Continental Regiment on the painting desk as I type, so as always, more anon.

JJ

Terrain Build Update - Breached Walls, Finished

The final 'table test', seeing how the completed model looks on the terrain mat

OK, so picking up where we left off in part one of this series of two posts looking at creating breached wall sections from Warbases excellent range of MDF Roman walls we now move on to finishing off the prepared breaches together with the bases for them and the rest of the wall sections and gate house designed to marry the whole thing together.

Terrain Build Uupdate - Breached Walls Part One

This next part of the construction uses all the skills and techniques covered in other posts I have done recently, looking at creating scatter terrain and modular sloped hills, namely the application of and sealing down of the coats of ballast and scatter that create the final terrained look and just as importantly sealing the whole model against constant handling by wargamers.

I will just cover off the basics here in this post but if you want to get a fuller description then you will need to go to my Labels tabs in the right hand column and find 'Terrain' and start with my series of posts looking at trees and scatter terrain from December 2018 entitled similarly to this post 'Terrain Build Update' and follow the series where I go into the basics of terrain work.

Ballast and sand added to the breaches to create the rubble look

So with the breached sections carved into shape, bits of large chunks of masonry added and a coat of plaster smeared on to lessen the larger, stranger looking air pocket holes formed in the expanding foam it was time to add the different sized pieces of sand and ballast to the coat of watered down PVA and allow the the whole thing to dry thoroughly.

It is now that the large pieces of masonry start to stand out and add that extra level of detail

In addition to the breaches the wall section bases got their texture added to their bases

As well as working on the breaches I needed to add texture to the bases on the other wall sections designed to help marry the whole thing together.

Note the little areas of grittier ballast designed to allow me to leave areas of the ground work showing through the turfed areas - I don't want this to look like a golf course when its finished!

Strictly speaking you would expect a gate house like this to have a 'cobbled stone' entrance but that would have required laying down a textured approach and sanding back the bottom of the gates so I decided on sticking to a more 'new build' look and plenty of dirt.

Once the ballast has dried thoroughly it was time to apply my trusty mix of PVA/water/chocolate brown house paint to apply the first sealing coat to the model and to provide a nice shadowy undercoat to the rest of the paint job.

You can be quite liberal with the brown and not worry about covering the detailed bits of masonry as all that detail will still get picked out by the next paint coat and areas of brown left give an impression of shadow in the recesses and great depth to the overall look.

Once the brown undercoat is dried thoroughly it is on to the first west-brush coat of highlight for the breaches where a going over of dark grey, dry brushed light grey was the first step.

Then the lighter chunks of stonework were picked out with the Coat d'Arms Field drab, highlighted Horse Tone Roan, as for the wall tops and pavement stones and I used a bit of both those colours to lightly dry brush areas of the rest of the breached rubble to add variety to the grey colour overall.

Dry brushing the detail into the rubble and the facing stonework just showing at the edges of the cracked plaster

Finally some of that lovely creamy white wall plaster would likely show especially at the outer reaches of the rubble spill where the top of the wall would have fallen out furthest from the rest of rubble spill.

Not too much though as most of it would be in among the core stone rubble.

This is also an opportunity to dry brush and accentuate the parts of the facing stonework revealed at the edges of the broken plaster which was created using the foam-board in part one.

One other touch that I didn't mention in part one was that I carefully scored crack lines into the MDF around the breached areas implying the stress to the remaining sections of plaster work still standing.

Note the areas of cracked plaster work showing around the breach, together with a few small pieces lying among the rubble

Once the rubble work was done I simply painted the wall that remained in the same colours as the standing sections (you will need to refer back to my posts from early 2018 to see the first build of my Roman wall and buildings to see what I did).

After that it was simply a case of dry-brushing the ground work with my light golden brown craft paint as per the scatter terrain posts.

All the painting done and left to dry overnight ready for the final coats of scatter to create the turf work

With all the painting done and the sections brought together to be left to dry thoroughly overnight you can already get a sense of how the walls will look once the turf scatter and clump grass tufts are applied.

Needless to say I went to bed satisfied with a good days work and really looking forward to the following day to bring this project to a close.

The next day was all about getting the ground work finished which means applying the three colour ground scatter, grass tufts and sealing with a final spray of PVA and water to lock the scatter down and blend the colours.

Again the detail of doing the scatter terrain work is covered in the post looking at the modular hills, suffice to say I was primarily looking to put the darker shade turf in close to the wall footings, along the border of the road entering the gate and around the broken groundwork.

Once that was done I applied a few areas of lighter scatter around randomly to create some variation to the turf, followed up by an overall finish of the mid green.

The colours when first applied can be quite a contrast, but a spray of water and PVA through an atomiser, the ones women use for perfumes and such like, will cause the colours to leech into each other and bring the whole thing together to create a more natural look.

Darker shades are applied around the foot of the wall with a few lighter patches randomly applies on the open turf. Then finished off with tufts. Note this turf has just been sprayed and already the colours are starting to blend as it dries.

One important thing to remember when applying the turf is to let the pieces dry off above any flat surface. The picture below shows all my sections drying on top of paint tins. This is really important as excess PVA/water can run off under the bases and will dry, firmly sticking your sections to the surface they are left standing on if you are not careful.

A little grass texture was applied to the inside section of the breaches to imply an internal grass verge

The base I planned for my gate house did not allow for the steps projecting from the back of the two towers and so I added left over wall capping to make a new layer of paving to go under each step

Once the turf was on, I allowed the bases to dry out a bit before adding the grass tufts and a few meadow flowers for variety.

The picture below shows all the sections turfed and now dry allowing me to put them out on the table together without any concern for them sticking to each other or the table cover.

Grassing the breached sections was a little different in that the bases had internal parts as did the gate house and I wanted to imply a small grassed area between the outer wall and the internal streets so added a small amount of turf on those internal parts of the base.

However in the wall is not the same as outside it and so I did not put any tufts on the inner parts, implying a better kept area of grass than that outside the wall.

Another consideration is that I intend to run battering rams and siege towers up against this wall and so I decided to be sparing with the grass tufts to allow plenty of room to get models placed on flat ground up against the wall.

My games are all about large scale battle with multi-figure bases and I am not really a fan of the individual figure based rules popular with WAB and some of the fantasy sets.

The breaches will accommodate individual figures placed on them to indicate the struggle when fought over, but are principally designed to show when a breach has been effected and where on the wall it is.

Finally we have the new walls and their bases displayed on one of my mats to show how they will blend into my table set up.

The next stage will be to populate the interior with other suitable buildings most likely from the Warbases range of Roman buildings and I already have an idea on how to create a road surface to place those buildings on, within the walls, to have it looking quite different from the surrounding countryside outside.

I am really pleased with how these walls have turned out and have confirmed my own thoughts when Warbases first released them about how suitable they are for scratch building and conversions, with the price making them very competitive with other resin options.

MDF is a very flexible product to work with but I am a firm believer that to make it look good a little work, preparing it and painting it, is still required just as you would with resin or most other materials.

The rear of a breach section next to my improvised paving supporting my tower door step.

With the amazing selection of excellent quality MDF buildings now available and with manufacturers wowing us with even more amazing things they are able to produce and at a price that is very affordable, good looking terrain to compliment good looking armies has never been so possible as it now is.

The next time you see the walls from inside I hope to show you my new set of internal buildings and internal road base

So that's the breached walls done  and I now have a mind to have a look at other types of hills together with a bridge or two, not to mention some roads I have my eye on, so a few more Terrain Updates to come going forward.

Lots of stuff to come on JJ's with my visit to Taunton and the Museum of Somerset, Steve M and I get some practice reacquainting ourselves with Dux Bellorum and the Battle of Pinhoe 1001 and I and a few of the chaps are off to Crusade in Penarth this weekend so lots to, no doubt, tell you about from there.