Snow Basing

So with the basing department home we started to experiment. Quite a few figures are finished and glued to the bases we want to use, now its about how we make the snow bases look right.

Chum Chris Charlton has been working on the Russo-Finnish Winter War for 1939 and we had talked ideas through. The initial thoughts were to base using white filler and then put a very thin blue wash over before PVA glue and snow flock, hopefully gaining some depth of colour from the blue. Chris has tried this fairly succesfully I believe.

You can see from the first attempts the blue is too dark and shows through too much. I am going to need to re-think this. The flock gives a nice finish but is very uneven. Big gaps where the blue shows through too much. Not what I had in mind.

The figures with less blue on the basing look better but still not quite what I hoped for.

Some have come out better than others but its still not quite what I hoped for so time to re-think the basing approach.

So for the next lot I decided a layer of white sand first would work well. So white filler, blue-grey wash and pva glue with a dusting of white sand before more PVA and the flock.PVA

There are still some issues with the flock not taking and the blue under the sand shining through a little but it doesnt look as bad.

The second base of Poles finished gives me a single unit of 8 for Sharp Practice and half a unit for the Black Powder games.

4 bases of Cossacks will be both a unit in Sharp Practice and Black Powder unless I decide to make the Black Powder units larger. 8 Cavalry looks quite good. 10 might look better mind!

From above you can see which ones have too much blue showing through and which dont, I think if I wash it out further and use white sand the effect is OK. Still not quite what I hoped but pretty good.

The French gun and crew from Black Hussar has come out quite well and I am a bit happier with the finished product here. So that gives me two units of Cossacks, two sled Guns, one unit of Poles and a French field gun completed. A few Russian foot and some more Poles or French and I will have enough for a very small game of Sharp Practice!

I am not far off finishing the next 8 Poles and a couple of Russians will give me my first 8 man unit of foot to complement the Cossacks. A few more French to support the Poles and maybe we can get a wee game to share with you in a month or so.

Apologies if the images are a little dark, I will try harder with the next lot.

See you soon.