The Battle of The Alma

 One of our group is hosting a game at the Trumpeter's Salute convention next month and we decided to repurpose some of the panels from our Wagram game as - like Wagram - the Battle of The Alma, features a small river (the Alma) at the base of a hill. 

This is the map I am basing the panel layout on:

For this game I needed to make three more panels to extend the heights beyond the Alma as Russian reserves will be parked there, along with two redoubts (the goal of the attacking allies). 

The boards were covered in sanded grout and sealed with white glue:

.As part of the hillside was steep and rocky, I made use of some Woodland Scenics rock moulds:

Two layers of static grass (2mm Woodland Scenics and 4mm Peco), followed by scrub brush (Woodland Scenics foam bushes and Scenic Express SuperTurf) matches the new panels to the old ones.

The village of Bourliouk will be placed where the road meets the Alma, utilising the Battlefield Accessories buildings I made earlier. Although I am tempted to extend the roads as on the map, they do not play a key part in the battle and limit the new panels. 

There is still a bit of tidying to do of the original panels, and the redoubts and some vineyards to make before the battlefield is complete. 

Sarissa Precision's European Timber Framed Town Set

 I have some more 15mm structures for my Napoleonic terrain collection; this time from Sarissa Precision, their European Timber Frame Town set.

This set is more complex than the Battlefield Accessories buildings in that all the buildings are at least 2 stories and have the necessary etched timber framing. Like the Battlefield Accessories buildings I textured the walls with Polyblend grout. 

Even though I was careful, I still got grout in the lines, and had to go back over the buildings after texturing to scribe out some lines.

I decided to do all the texturing and glue the card shutters onto the walls before assembly and priming; it was definitely easier to do that on the flat. 

The way the chimneys are cut means that two sides have no scribed brick texture. I scribed some bricks into some .5 cm foamed PVC for the exposed sides.

Handsome little buildings even before paint is applied.

2 of the 5 buildings in the set are urban town houses:

One has a bar or shop on the bottom floor:

The other is a typical town house:

There are also two larger buildings, a little more rural but still suitable in a town:

One is a barn:

...and the other a farm house:

For the church I chose some fish scale tiles from Slater's Plastikard for the roof. I also filled in the MDF of the dome with wood filler to smooth it out, and added strips from styrene.

I like my buildings based so I plumped them down on some MDF and added pavers scribed into some foamed PVC sheet to give the buildings a bit more a urban look.

I paid a little more attention to the rooves when painting as that is what we will be looking at the most when war gaming. 

Due to various embellishments and the more complex nature of the assembly and painting, these kits took quite a bit longer to do than the Battlefield Accessories kits. Between the two sets I imagine I will have enough buildings for most games as most towns and villages will consist of two or three structures. Having said that, I still have a couple more buildings I would like to add. Thank you for looking.