Sunday 2 December 2018

Boatswain's Creek and Boatswain's Swamp

Boatswain's creek and Boatswain's swamp have been modeled. I did the creek first; I made a few mistakes from which I learned when it came to making the swamp:

I didn't quite get the colour right; it is too beige. Boatswain's creek is an orangey-brown and - in reality- not very wide. As the ground scale of the game is approximately 1"=40 yards, a thick pencil line would have sufficed. The valley that it is in is shown as wooded on the scenario map so I have also made a number of trees. 

Another problem I have is that the creek does not want to sit flat. It is on painted canvas, coated with 3 coats of high gloss paint. All those layers have cased the edges and ends to curl up.
I have a few possible solutions for that.


Here is the view from the rebels' side of the creek. They will have to assault Yankee positions on the other side; nice eh?

The swamp turned out better I think. Although the water is too brown now it is closer to actual colour of Boatswain's creek.
This area too, the rebels will have to cross. The hill on the right will be defended by Yankees in hastily prepared defenses.
The wider breadth of the canvas has prevented the edges and ends from curling too much I think.
I used a ton of different materials for the swamp: tufts from Gamers Grass and Army Painter; static grass from Heki; shrubs of my own construction made from War World Scenics Static grass and both Scenic Express Superleaf and Woodland Scenics coarse turf; Woodland Scenics clump foliage and Scenics Express Superturf as well as shrubs made from 3M contour sanding pads with WS coarse turf.
I am nearly finished this project (it was only going to be the hills but I got a bit carried away...); a few more trees, two bridges, some field defenses and (possibly) a couple more sections of split rail fencing. 




6 comments:

  1. You don't often see wargaming swamps this verdant. But I suppose it's the way it actually is in nature. Why did you choose to go with canvas over some type of wood/board substrate?

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  2. I thought the canvas would be easier to manipulate and that, as the tributaries are less than an inch wide, I thought breakage might be an issue. In the end I screwed up the measurements for the stream and had to cut it up to get it to fit between the hills. In retrospect though, I think you are right; what I should have done is cut a piece of MDF to fit between the hills and left largest areas for the banks. I could have been more creative, letting the stream meander more over the wood. Lesson learned though. Once I committed to canvas for the stream I had to do the same for the swamp.

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  3. Oh yeah, and the pictures I've seen of Boatswain Swamp suggest that it is mostly soft, grassy ground with quite a few trees in it; not a lot of open water like most of the swamps we have here.

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  4. that looks wonderful! Working on some figs for the battle right now actually

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  5. Awesome! It's going to be great once we put it all together.

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  6. Great looking terrain; just needs the stands of troops to sink into the ooze! :-)

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