Lentini - progress on the waterways

A couple of WIP pictures taken just before heading off to Salute

The Lentini river with both sides fringed with reed beds, another village base bottom left


The minor streams with culvert style bridges.

Salute 2015 - the other games

Rather a short report as my time was almost totally taken up by umpiring the Agincourt game.

TFL Afghan Chain of Command game

The opposition - another Agincourt game

Nice idea for a backdrop.

Our neighbouring game - Star Wars



Austro-prussian in 10mm

Ron Ringrose's assault on Fort George (some ideas for my AWI games, when I get back to playing them again)




Roman civil war - Cremona

A different way of doing vineyards


ACW action

Another nice backdrop from a Napoleonic skirmish game

The Old Guard in action at Waterloo!

Very effective snow terrain

An interesting way of depicting a Stuka attack, note the bomb dropping

My (limited) booty. The Battlegroup books were a pick-up from an earlier purchase as the postage would have been horrific, they were a pretty heavy carry as well.


lastly a picture of me in action taken from Lee Hadley's Salute report

Salute - the L&L Agincourt game

Attending Salute 2015 suddenly became possible when my daughter arrived back from six months in Latin America and the dates coincided (success). I sorted transport and a hotel and then on the morning of departure - disaster a puncture! - no way could I shift the overtightened nuts, so the pre-booked train would be missed. An hour later the wheel was changed, but I was about to give up the whole weekend, but luckily found some cheapish tickets were still available on another slow train - hurrah plan back on again.

Saturday was one of those great wargaming days, I didn't stop from arriving at 8:30 till the finish sometime just before 17:00. The Agincourt game with Simon Chick's figures was great and the players all pitched in to keep me, as umpire, on track. We all enjoyed a great game, even if the French won (blame the umpire). As a result I didn't see much of the rest of the show except during short breaks, so please use other blogs, etc to see what else was happening.

The plan was to refight the battle as per the French theoretical deployment, which assumes all the contingents arrive as planned.

The English position






The French deployment






Agincourt itself a lovely piece of modelling


From here on there is an incomplete record as I didn't get the chance to take many pictures

The French vanguard of Crossbowmen with Cavalry on the flanks suffer heavy losses while the Men at Arms on foot struggle forward


The French Men at Arms falter under the rain of arrows


Quite a gap in time, the French Men at Arms had assaulted on their right and defeated the archers before being driven back by the small unit of English cavalry. In the centre Henry V is being driven back despite catching the French at a disadvantage


A close up of the central scrum


then the French left managed to launch an attack and defeat the English archers, the Oriflame surges forward.

At this point it was obvoius that the French had won the day

A scenic shot through the flanking trees


The "final glory" - three awards!

Lentini - another progress check

Another sunny day so I took the opportunity to check on my progress and also measure up the various bits still needing to be done. There's nothing like checking it out on the laid out terrain to find any flaws.

Axis end, The Lentini river and Ponte Malati still need to be built, I've just used existing terrain to check. The marsh on the left is still just some chalk marks.


Allied end, lots of hills in sight, hopefully I'll add a few more fields to visually break up the flat expanse,, but not effect movement.


Carlentini and Lentini, while laying out I also marked up and cut the village bases (cobbled wallpaper). These will then be mounted on hardbaord.


Lots of orange groves around Lentini, still undecided about whether to model the railway


Finally a view from above


One of the small streams has been positioned, the others are still chalk marks. Luckily the check revealed that some adjustments were need to the small culvert type bridges crossing them while they were still part assembled.

Lentini - hills finished

The hills are now vegetated with scatter material, so they are done unless I think of anything else to add to them. work in progress on Carlentini can be seen bottom left.


And another large batch of walls completed

Lentini - progress on the hills

The hills have now been coated in kitchen paper and PVA, then with builders sand. They were painted Wilco Coffee emulsion and drybrushed with Wilco Lemon Sorbet (not quite as bright as the City Light that I had been using). Since the rain hadn't washed away the chalk I checked them on the layout.

From the Allied end


From the Axis end


My reworked Carlentini base, this seems to be cursed I I had trouble with the foam crumbling on the new version!


A view from above

next step is adding vegetation to all the hills

Another day - more Sicilian terrain

The terrain building is getting a bit intense as I see the deadline approaching and SWMBO starts talking about holidays!!

Still at least another back of vines have been completed. All built as per my previous post, although is doesn't show in the picture there is variation in the colouring of the clump foliage that gives a dry brush effect.

and my car passed its MOT without any remedial work

Lentini - hills on the production line

After two days of cutting and shaping the hills are now being covered with PVA and kitchen roll. Of course typically I've run out of PVA part way through

The big beast at the back will be Monte Pancali