Sunday 17 September 2023

Indian War Elephants & more 3mm terrain !

I could not resist painting the 3mm Elephants for the 3 DBA Indian bases, I have learned a huge amount on the subject from research, for example I was unaware that Elephants were so long lived and that they were considered to be in their prime between the ages of 40 to 60 years when they could be trained for battle. They were obviously highly prized and heavily protected with skirmishers defending the rear in particular. I wanted to try to reflect this in the rich colours and addition of the infantry behind them. Possibly they could have been a little less 'regimented' but base size (40 x 40mm) was limited and the amount of work there is no way I am going to rebase them! I just need to figure out how to mark which base represents the 'General' possibly King Porus himself?






The recent spell of hot weather  and the decision to takes a bit of a break for a week or so has allowed me to spend some time working on more terrain for the new folding game board project. I had been thinking about woods and wanted to make areas that could if required 'flow' slightly up the side of hills for a more realistic look and the discovery in Hobby Craft (UK) of the felt sheets you see below in numerous shades gave me an idea and tons of PVA glue and clump foliage - which took  a few days to dry out - resulted in my first flexible wood section. I then wanted to make some Arable/bad going areas to break up the green surface and a bit of experimentation resulted in a couple of rather pleasing pieces. Next was river sections, again avoiding 2mm MDF as too thick for the scale of the figures I experimented with magnetic paper as I had quite a lot spare from magnetising the bases, It's functional and looks OK to me, built up the banks with PVA and flock and the river from gloss varnished paint, the main advantage of the sheet being that it does not warp due to the coating. So far so good.










12 comments:

  1. The terrain has worked out really well.

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  2. A plethora of pachyderms and bendable woods. Whatever next. Lol. Very nice.

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    1. OK, have to admit I had to look that one up JBM! As to the terrain, I'm not done with it yet, I see more potential in the non warp mag sheet and the fuzzy felt fields.
      Cheers,
      Lee.

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  3. Hi Lee, I am particularly interested in the rivers with their ‘no-warp’ quality. Amazing to see the nellies in such numbers, thanks to the scale. I seem to remember there being 80 elephants in one of the battles that I was reading about.

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    1. Thank you for the comment. Magnetic sheet has great potential for terrain thanks its coating, I'm going to try a couple more ideas using it to break up the green of the board. Elephants were used in entire divisions, literally thousands of them! I have used this guy below for a lot of my research into Ancient Indian armies and there are a couple on the use of elephants that I found fascinating: https://youtu.be/rGkBbLbifxA?si=6mMYN6KYS-AVV0ch

      Cheers,
      Lee.

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    2. Sorry, this was me, I had my disguise on! :-)

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  4. Your Indians are coming on well Lee (I mean these little guys with the turbans and elephants, as distinct from the other Indians you’re painting - the ones with the feathers and face-paint). Could the general’s elephant have a parasol? You might need to check, as. Don’t know when parasols came into use.
    Your terrain is looking good too. What more do you need to build? Scrub/rough ground maybe? Bog/marsh? A few generic buildings should cover all the Middle East but, obviously, won’t be suitable for your Ancient Brits.
    Keep up the good work 😉
    Cheers,
    Geoff

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    1. Hi Geoff,

      Thank you Geoff and I really like the idea of parasols for the generals Elephant and also maybe the chariots, suffice to say that I type this with super glue hardened fingertips after messing around with dressmakers pins and green stuff :)
      Working on your little chaps alongside and the Swedes are about done so I'll have some photos soon for you.
      Cheers,
      Lee.

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    2. Thanks Lee 😉
      I was trying (yes, not “successful” merely “trying”) to build some BattleTech models the other day. Superglue all over the place - apart from holding the joins I was trying to stick together. Eventually admitted defeat.
      One positive was that I didn’t realise I’d cut into the end of my thumb with my Stanley knife until much later in the day whilst walking the dogs in our local park. Luckily (???) the Superglue must have immediately sealed the cut.
      One negative of the superglued fingers was that my iPad “fingerprint recognition” failed every time. Oh well…
      Cheers,
      Geoff

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  5. That terrain looks great, very impressive

    regards

    Paul

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    1. Thank you very much Paul, it's still work in progress :)
      Lee.

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