We wants a SHRUBBERY! - Making bocage

I think has came across, that I like to play Normandy battles, so there has to be bocage for those games. I started the project last year, have played almost every homegame with them, and today I finished. I think.

I bought two kinds of wood profile, triangle and half-round, for about 6 metres of 20 feet. Yeah, it was a lot, and theres still half of them in the first and second stage... But the half of it I finished.

At first, I drilled holes in the half of the profiles and then stuck a bamboo barbeque sticks in those holes. These would be the tree-trunks, because some of the bocage have, not only bushes, but trees too. Then I added some various grains to make the stones.

On the foreground, adding tree-trunks; in the background, stoned bocage.

After that I sprayed them brown.

And had a beer.
(Yes, it's lite, deal with it - even Homewargamer should look fabulous)

Next I forgot the sprayed and dry-brushed bocage outside - as I had sparayed them outside - and  came to realize, that birds don't mind if the grains have poisonous paints over them.

Notice the absence of stones.

 I didn't mind much about eaten stones, because I was going to add the bushes and it would not show.

Just turfed.

The only problem - that I later learned - was that I had used turf, that made really cool looking bushes, but all the loose turf fell off, leaving only a thin coverage.

Turfed bocage.
Notice the big clump of turf, that - and it's kind - lead me to believe it was okay.
It wasn't.

After a year of gaming, the turf had come to a really thin layer. The bocage didn't look like bocage. So this, time I added clump foliage.

Lots of PVA before adding clump foliage.

Finished. Looks a lot better.

Oldies goldies 1 - Omaha Beach

I went nuts (pun intended) when I saw Saving Private Ryan in the cinema last century. That left the desire to make a huge diorama of Omaha Beach and I went so far to buy tons of subject related Tamiya, Italeri and Dragon models and figures in 1:35 scale. Still have them all.

Later on I had found Flames of War and I started to design my own table pieces - modular 60 cm x 60 cm (2' x 2'). About the same time Battlefront lauched the D-Day and I split the books with a friend. I got Overlord and he got Atlantik Wall. Anyhow, the Bloody Omaha came back to my mind. This was way back in the Day - 2013 or something.

I started with cutting the table pieces out of 3 mm hardboard that had been used at my parents and sisters house building site as a floor cover. Free material!

Then I went to a hobby store and got me some L-frame plastic rod that I cut to about 25 mm (1'') long pieces.

Some L-frame sticks.

After that I glued them as crosses.

Some L-frame crosses.

...And kept on gluing. Ta-dah! Czech hedgehogs that I spray painted (now that's a technique I use a lot) .

Paintjob not pictured.

Next I took some bamboo barbeque sticks that I cut to two sizes, longer and twice as many shorter.

Cutting lengths drawn on the table (don't tell The Wife!)

After that I glued them to be those barricades I don't remember the name of, but you know, those that were put on the beaches so that the landing crafts wouldn't take off so easily.

Saved! It wasn't the table I drew on...

Barricades done, I went to work on the beach itself. I took some styrofoams that had came with bookshelves for our livingroom (I hoard styrofoam - great buildingmaterial), glued them to the hardboard to get a little rise on the beach, and added ice cream sticks (it was awful getting those - someone might had bought them cheap from a hobby store, but being as dumb as I am, I forced my way through numerous ice creams, that are more expensive than sticks bought from a hobby store) as a beach wall. I also drew two lines to the table piece, for the surf area and for the sea area.

I used renovation filler - a leftover from our renovation - to smooth the styrofoam edges and also for surf. For the surf I took a reasonable lump of filler and swept the spatula "out to the sea" starting with little spatula pressure and ending up cleaning the spatula going outwards.

Added the barricades, too.

Added some sand.

Adding sand.

For the cobblestone road behind the sea wall and for the shingle I used various grains from a local supermercado.

Even when painted, the birds love these.

 The table piece was ready for painting. That time around I used normal furniture paints, because that way I could get the shade I wanted and they were reasonably priced.

We there yet?

I painted the sand with two shades of light brown, the cobble stones and shingle two shades of grey, and the sea with grey - drybrushing the tops of the surfs with white, brushing again "out to the sea".

There. Done. Let's get some beers.

A couple of months later, we played the beginning game of Band of Brothers Total War Campaign - Normandy. More of that later in a future post.

"ALL YOU CAN DO HERE IS DIE! COVERING FIRE!"