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WWI Belleau Wood Board Research

Although I have a number of books about the battle of Belleau Wood none of them really had the kind of maps I wanted. Something that would show the contour lines. This morning I finally found a French map site that could be shifted to a topographical view of the area. While I have no intention of trying to recreate Belleau Wood inch for inch this type of map will certainly help in determining how steep the slopes could be within the wood. It doesn't go down to the level of detail that I would really love to see, but that would probably require a visit to the area anyway, which is a bit impractical right now. Although its certainly an interesting idea.

I think a couple of concepts I'm working on for Calamity will work for Belleau Wood as well. The problem I'm trying to solve is the degradation of the foam itself as its constantly be slotted in an out. I'm considering layering on a very thin piece of styrene plastic around both the inside of the board cavity as well as around the outside of the insert. If I can make that sturdy enough I should be able to keep the foam from disintegrating with constant use. I was thinking last night that the inserts will allow me to show Belleau Wood in an immaculate form and as the battle progresses trees would go from full leaved to splinter masses. There are a lot of possibilities. The same would hold true for Calamity. I can allow it to grow or even reduce in size by having duplicate inserts that would show a given lot as vacant, with a building, or even with the ruins of a building after a fire has swept through town or something along those lines. It would allow me to continue to build models without having to rebuild or expand the board.
Posted at 7:09 AM
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WWI Marines Time to re-start

What I have found out over the last year or so is that I'm incapable of starting a project and carrying it through to completion before beginning the next one. At the moment I have one major project that has occupied my time over most of the last year, that would be my wild west town of Calamity. I have a bunch of buildings done for that and I have a good idea of how the board is going to take shape, but painting the miniatures has ground to a halt. Almost two years ago now, when I started this blog, the main project was my WWI US Marines. I finished 15 of them back then and I haven't picked up another one since. Last week I was catching up on some TV and I picked up the box of unpainted pewter and started to prep the rest of the marines for painting, and there are a lot of them. I sorted and bagged them in 15 man platoons each with 2 rifle grenade launchers and 2 chauchats (sho-sho) gunners. The impetus behind getting these back out is that my friend Scott just showed off his finished German force, so he could use an opponent.

I'm just going to concentrate on the rifle companies right now, a total of eight which means I have seven left to paint or 105 minis. I have also found that while I love competition painting I also need something to slide in between the competition pieces to relax a bit so I'm going to try and alternate one platoon of marines with one competition piece.

Now the town of Calamity has priority on getting finished right now, I have a lot invested in it and I'm pretty stoked to get to working on the board itself (time allowing of course). But after that is finished I do want to do something similar for the Marines, so I want to do a WWI board for the Marines, but more modular than Calamity will be. While I do want to do a trench board, I also want to recreate in some small way the terrain for Belleau Wood. This area is not only wooded its really a ridge and featured all kinds of interesting features. I plan on using a variation of something I found on the Roundwood's World blog:
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/03/winter-sports-terrain-abode-of-madness.html
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/05/no-mans-land-terrain-and-few-loose-ends.html
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/05/glasgow-copse.html
http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/2011/06/glasgow-copse-artillery-emplacement.html

I think I will have to go with larger base modules but I think Sydney's approach is very sound and will really help create the atmosphere I'm looking for. I may not be able to make my inserts as generic and still recreate the rugged terrain of Belleau Wood though but if I plan carefully I should be able to pull it off. The only other thing that I would like to do is make the inserts a bit less obvious. I'll have to figure out a way to help disguise the outlines a bit, just for aesthetic purposes.

A lot of this has also been driven by the book I hope to receive in late December or early January from one of the kickstarters that I backed: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deanputney/experience-world-war-i-through-a-german-officers-p

This picture of a quiet German trench system (obviously not a fire trench, there is no fire step) helped to get things moving again.




Posted at 12:16 PM
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Painting the Ultimate Halfling Team for Blood Bowl - Session 2

This really isn't a session 2 the way I had a session 1. This is the culmination of 3 or 4 days worth of painting, snatching an hour or two here and there. I have managed to finish off the red, add the purple as an accent color and get most of the leather done (I missed a few spots and one entire miniature during the leather process). They are coming along pretty good right now. I love some of the expressions on these guys, they have a lot of attitude. Here's a few pictures of the progress, they are closing in on being done, getting to the fiddly bits now. I haven't even started the three treemen players. I'm kind of at a loss on how to paint them.

I spent some time on another little project as well, but I have to get permission before I can post pictures (and I may not be allowed to).








I love this guy, but I see some paint splatter.
Posted at 8:42 PM
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Friendship 7 and mission MA-1

One of my favorite pieces of NASA memorabilia, from my uncle, is a picture of the launch of Friendship 7. This was the first Mercury launch and took John Glenn Jr into orbit, the first American in space. This evening while looking for an important piece of paper (naturally secreted in a "safe" place) I pulled out the cardboard folder/frame that holds the launch picture. This time I noticed that there was another black and white photo tucked in behind the launch photo. This is a black and white shot of Mercury capsule #4 which was part of mission MA-1. This was the first mating of the Mercury Capsule with the Atlas Booster and, fortunately, was an unmanned test shot. It would end in a catastrophic failure 58 seconds into launch. However, the Mercury capsule itself continued to transmit telemetry information until it landed in the ocean. I found the picture interesting as it shows the technical crew for the project which includes my uncle. A little bit of family history unveiled itself to me just a reminder that my uncle was involved with NASA from its very beginning with Mercury all the way to the Space Shuttles.

MA-1 Technical Crew
My Uncle, Very Young!
Freedom 7 Launch


Posted at 11:57 PM
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