It's been a quiet winter hobby-wise, with very little to write about. I have, however, recently embarked on making a table of terrain for 15mm Team Yankee.
The parameters for the project are:
- Covering an 8x6 table, because to me that looks and feels better for TY above about 50 points.
- To be made from scatter terrain that can be packed down for ease of storage and transportation.
- Provide sufficient visual clues to be readily identifiable as modern Europe.
- Provide a range of logical locations for objectives.
That last two points are key for me. This might sound strange to people who play for the game, but I enjoy games that tell a story. The table plays a key role in this: helping place the events in time and space, and answering the question "what is so important about this particular piece of dirt?" An objective in the middle of a wheat field doesn't make sense to me, but a town, a crossroads, a hill: it's easy to imagine someone having a reason to want to seize or defend them. My aim when setting up a table is to have key points in the objective zones no matter which scenario is being played. That's actually easier on an 8x6 than a 6x4, because I believe the best way to play a lengthwise FOW or TY mission on an 8x6 is as a double width 6x4 rather than adding 2ft of almost entirely wasted depth, so you don't have to plan to be able to play down its length.
Here is the progress so far:
I still haven't decided on what season to set the table in, as that will determine the direction I take with trees and agriculture. I had been hoping for more of an olive green basecloth, but the material is darker than it appeared under the shop lighting. Life, and the never-ending search for the perfect basecloth.
Nor have I settled yet on the built up area. The buildings in the photo are from Plastcraft Games' ColorED range, of which I have two kits still to build. These buildings look nice and are reasonably economical, but the range is limited. The church of Sainte Mère Église is an impressive model, but it looks a bit out of place without three times as many smaller buildings clustered around it, so it may not make the final cut. I'm slightly hampered by the general lack of Streetview in Germany, but there is enough photography on the internet to draw inspiration from, and the look of the Plastcraft buildings seems to be reasonable. I do need a few more, and some more modern pieces to go with them. I also need to decide what I'll build around the small railyard in the bottom left.
The autobahn is made from 3mm EVA foam - at $17/metre from a 1.2m roll from Para Rubber it's cheaper and easier to work with than MDF. I'm currently planning an interchange with the local roads (the white pieces of paper in the bottom right), with those roads to be cut from the same material, and I'm looking at options for modern touches like guard rails and lighting.
The railway line uses standard HO track, with the EVA as backing. With a gauge of 16.5mm, at 1/100 it is slightly overscale for the West German track gauge of 1435mm, however the commonly suggested alternative of TT scale at 12mm would be underscale by a similar amount. HO has the advantage of being cheap and readily available in NZ, whereas it looks like TT has to be bought in from Europe, so it was a simple decision that also opens up options for rolling stock and other accesories.
The plan from here is to finish off the rail sections, then move onto the interchange and the rest of the roading, and I'll post updates as progress is made.
