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.
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.
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.
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.
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