Author Archives: steve wood

This weeks blog is a bit different – it’s supposed to be a picture tutorial as to how I made my Medieval tents for my Never Mind The Bill Hooks army. The idea of the tents, is that you store your army morale tokens in them during the battle. This means that the tents have to have removable tops and I wanted something that was fairly durable. I came up with the idea of using Pringles tubes as the core of the tent but needed a way of making the tube look more tent like! Having done a bit of research on the internet, I found a plan for a full sized Medieval tent on Pinterest, complete with dimensions. When I scaled the dimensions down to 1/48th scale ( a bit on the large size but I can handle the maths easier than working with 1/56th!), it turned out that Pringles tubes were ideal for the job!

Plan for Knights Tents – Dimensions are for a full sized tent.

I also found a superb youtube video showing how to make Medieval tents for Dungeons and Dragons. The video link is at the end of this article. I was all set to go but first I need to gather the raw materials and tools. I jumped right in and built the first tent in about an hour but wasn’t entirely happy with the result, so I moved onto the second tent. This took a bit longer as I was more careful with the measurements and I made some improvements to the structure. If you would like to have a go at making you own tents, you will need the following tools and materials.

Glue Gun – you can just use PVA but a glue gun is ideal for most of the work here.

Cocktail sticks

Tissues ( kleenex type)

Cardboard or Foam card.

Compass or compass cutter

Sharp knife

Clippers.

Ruler and pencil.

Set Square if you want to be precise with your measuring ( I used the markings on my steel ruler as a guide.)

Step one

Get your Pringles, any flavour, although I like the plain and the sour cream and onions, and eat the contents.

Pringles tube! First task is to empty it!

You may need some lubrication to help with the Pringles. Beer seems to work well, my current favourite is Shipyard!

You may find that you get thirsty eating Pringles!

Cut the base of the Pringles tube off ( the end with the metal base.) using a sharp knife. It’s tricky getting a straight cut around a tube. I used a felt tip pen blu-tacked to my work board, exactly 5cms from the side and holding the tube firmly against the edge, rotated it so that the pen marked a guide line around the tube. I then cut through the tube using my scalpel. Dont worry if you dont get an exact straight edge to your cut, the top will hide any errors.

The first tube cut down. The height of the cut is 5cms – you can make this smaller if you prefer.

The next task is to cut out two circles. One at 11 cms in diameter will be for the base of the tent – I used a compass cutter for this task on the second tent rather than a compass and scalpel that I used for the first tent. The other circle is the same width as your pringles tube – just draw around it. The tent base is made from cardboard. The top is foam card. You could use cardboard for the top but I wanted to give the top a bit of strength.

Circles cut out – note that I have marked out the centre and divided them into eight segments with pencil lines.

Next glue the pringles tin to the base, making sure that you have it centred as best as you can. Using the pencil marks as a guide, glue eight cocktail sticks to the base and tube as shown below.

Cocktail sticks added to form the structure

I used my flush cutters to clip off the excess length of the cocktail stick. I then took the top disk of the tent and glued a cocktail stick through the exact centre. You need to leave about 5cms of this cocktail stick as the centre pole. Using my clippers. I then cut eight more cocktail sticks( at a slight angle on one end) and glued them to the centre pole at 3.75cms up the pole and again, used the eight pencil marks as a guide.

top of the tent in place – dont glue this – you need to be able to remove it!

The next part of the process is both the trickiest and the most messy! I used standard three ply kleenex tissues cut roughly to size and dipped in watered down PVA to clad the base of the tent. I left one section opened and used two pieces of tissue to make the open door.

Tissue covering the main structure – complete with tie backs on the ‘door’!

There’s no doubt that this is the trickiest part of the operation. I did find that it was easier to place the tissue on the structure and using a large brush, ‘paint on’ the PVA. With hind sight, I think that Crepe paper or perhaps kitchen towelling would have worked better as these products are stronger and less likely to rip when wet. Also, for some reason, I felt the need to explain to my wife why I was going out to the garage with a box of tissues, pringles and my iPad….

Tent with tissue added to the roof.

The whole structure was left to dry for at least 24hours. I then spray primed the tents with Army Painter skeleton bone and dry brushed them with white.

The two tents primed and ready for painting.

The tent on the right was my first attempt. I’m not entirely happy with this one as I got into a bit of a mess with the tissue and I’ve used some filler to try to hide mistakes – if you look closely you will see that I haven’t been too successful! I only used six ‘poles’ for the structure rather than eight. I’ve also added a decorative edge to the top.

The painted tents

I then painted alternate segments of the tents – Prussian blue for one and Burnt red ( my new favourite colour) for the other.

The tops are removable so that you can store your army morale tokens:

Storage section revealed! Big enough to get your hand into pick out the tokens.

The final touch was to add a bit of dry brushing to the colour panels and to add some flags. Here are the finished tents on my wargames table.

The finished tents.

I’ll be honest, they do look better from a distance than close up. I have learnt a few lessons whilst building these and in the future, I may add a few more tents to my scenery – perhaps trying crepe paper rather than tissue. But for now, they serve their purpose and function as a place to store the army morale tokens. Talking of learning, here’s a couple of really useful videos.

The next video shows where I ‘borrowed’ the idea of using tissue to make the tents. There are some amazing ideas here and I will be stealing a few more of his tips to make some different style tents in the future. The guy who makes these videos has a whole series of fantastic terrain videos that are well worth your time if you enjoy building scenery.

I hope that you find the above helps. as usual, here’s the commercial bit, although I dont sell Pringles, Cocktail sticks or Tissues….

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

To find PVA glue, click here:

GLUES AND ADHESIVES

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here, including some nice army deals!

PERRY MINIATURES

You can see our Woodlands scenics range, including water effects, here:

WOODLAND SCENICS

Gamers grass tufts can be found here:

GAMERS GRASS

Vallejo plastic filler and Milliput is available here:

FILLERS

MDF bases can be found here:

MDF BASES

You can find all the Vallejo Model colour paints here. If you don’t want to browse, just enter the paint number into the shop search bar;

VALLEJO PAINTS

Happy Modelling!

The next piece of scenery that I have made for my NMTB’s project is the ‘Hidden Ditch’ piece to represent the special event card ‘Terrain Advantage’. First I took a base – actually, it was a spare base to a movement tray and at 180mm long and 60mm wide, overlaps the length of the average unit. I wanted the ditch to look hidden, so I built up the front of the base with a piece of scrap balsa. I then added the rest of the ‘landscaping’ using standard milliput.

Ditch, covered with texture & rocks added.

I neglected to take a picture of the base under construction but you can see the base above with the milliput and balsa now coated with a thick coat of Vallejo Dark earth texture paste to blend everything together. I’ve also added some ‘rocks’ – pebbles from my garden and some ballast for additional detail and texture. I then painted everything with my usual basing emulsion colour and dry brushed it all to bring out the different textures. The base of the ditch was left smooth and I also painted this with a darker colour to give the illusion of depth.

Hidden Ditch under construction

As you can see from the picture above, I wanted to add a ‘casualty’ to the scenery, so I converted a Perry’s Bill man by sanding down the front of the figure to make him lie flat in the ditch. I then cut and repositioned (with pliers! – it’s suprising how much you can bend plastic figures!) the arms and legs to make him look as though he had fallen. The arrow was carefully snipped from the arrows on the command frame and the body drilled to take the arrow.

casualty for the ditch

Once the casualty was dry, I just retested the fit into the ditch and filled any large gaps with Vallejo plastic putty.

Casualty in ditch – scatter added to the banks

As well as the scatter, I also added a variety of Gamers grass tufts. I used a mixture of the 12mm long jungle, light green and dry green tufts as well as the shorter 6mm dry green tufts. The casualty was painted to my standard method, covered in my previous blogs. I used a red and white livery as I don’t have any of my troops in these colours!

Tufts added to the ditch

I think that the effect is better when seen at table top level – you can see that there is a barrier of some sorts but not actually see the ditch. I was quite pleased with the way that this has worked out but it is not quite finished. I am going to add some acrylic ‘deep pour water’ to the ditch to make it look even more realistic. However, this product is quite expensive, so rather than purchase it just for the ditch, I intend to make a bit more scenery for my table. I am planning to make at least a couple of ponds and once these are completed, I will add the water. With another lockdown about to start, I cant see me gaming for a while, so there is no rush. Meanwhile, My next project – Medieval Tents is well underway – more on those in the next blog!

Hidden Ditch!

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here, including some nice army deals!

PERRY MINIATURES

You can see our Woodlands scenics range, including water effects, here:

WOODLAND SCENICS

Gamers grass tufts can be found here:

GAMERS GRASS

Vallejo plastic filler and Milliput is available here:

FILLERS

MDF bases can be found here:

MDF BASES

You can find all the Vallejo Model colour paints here. If you don’t want to browse, just enter the paint number into the shop search bar;

VALLEJO PAINTS

Happy Modelling!

I’ve still yet to start gaming and to make matters worse, my figures for NMTBH’s are on loan at Wargames Illustrated, so I cant even play a solo game! It’s all a bit frustrating, particularly now that the rule set is out in the public domain and other people appear to be having great fun with it! The upside is that the Facebook page and blogs have been a source of inspiration and there have been some great ideas out there to ‘borrow’. One of these is a custom arrow storm counter. It’s so obvious, I cant think why we haven’t made them before but we just relied on a dice next to the unit. Functional, but not so pretty!

Arrow counters

So as a side project I made up enough counters for my four archer units. I had some micro dice from a kids game in my stash. I also had a couple of spare command frames from the Perry’s WOTR infanty that have the spare arrow groups. It was a simple matter of combining these with a 25mm round MDF base to make the counter. I just covered the base in Milliput and whilst it was still wet, pressed the dice into it to get the correct sized dice cavity. To keep the dice from being covered in Milliput, I wrapped it in cling film. I then pressed in the arrow group from the Command frame.

arrows on the Command Frame

Once that was done, it was left to dry, spray primed and then a thin coat of Vallejo dark earth texture paste was spread over the base to tie everything together and a bit of ballast added for extra detail. I then painted it with my usual basing paint, added some Green Flock and tufts to finish. The arrows were painted with Iraqi Sand for the shafts and white for the feathers.

Hidden Ditch by Andy Callan.

The next diversion was inspired by Andy Callan. He decided that it would be fun to have some scenery pieces to represent some of the special event cards so that we could add them to the table if they were played. Andy had made a piece for the ‘Terrain Advantage’ card – a hidden ditch. Andy had also added a touch of humour – a couple of Coots swimming in it! The picture above is stolen from Facebook, hopefully Andy wont mind!

A new cart for my Army!

That started me thinking that perhaps a marker or piece of terrain for the special event cards would be good fun and an excuse to add to my collection. The ‘Extra Arrow Supply’ prompted me to order a cart (I already have one, but any excuse…) to load up with extra arrows so that it can make an appearance on the table if called for. I also liked the idea of making a terrain piece full of arrows to represent ‘Fauconbergs Gambit’. All I had to do was to make some arrows.

Evergreen Rod & Strip for arrows

I had some Evergreen rod that looked about right – pack 211, .040″ width. With hindsight, it is a bit on the thick side and a slightly smaller diameter would have been better. But I used what I had rather than wait for the better solution. To make the arrow flights, I again used Evergreen strip, this time .040 wide by .010 thick – pack #102. I cut the strip into lengths about 3mm – 4mm long and then using a sharp scalpel blade cut them into triangles. It was a bit fiddly but surprisingly quick to do. I then used Tamiya liquid poly to coat the top of the rod and using the point of the scalpel, picked up a ‘flight’ and attached it to the arrow shaft. Once three flights were attached, I clipped the arrow off and started on the next one. Again, it sounds fiddly but once I got into the rhythm, it only took 30 minutes or so to make over twenty arrows.

Arrow production line!

I then had a spare MDF base that I covered in Milliput and simply pressed the arrows into the milliput. Again, after priming, Vallejo textured paste was used to tie everything together and cover any imperfections and the usual paint scheme followed to finish the arrows and terrain. I’m not sure whether I will get to use it in battle, but it will be fun to slap that piece off scenery down, along with the card, if I get the chance to play it!

Testing the arrows layout!

The finished piece.

So I am now thinking of other little additions to make in between my other painting projects. My version of the hidden ditch is already in the planning stage, and the ‘False Colours’ or ‘Treachery!’ cards could be represented by a flag with the Stanley colours on them! I also need to make some tents to hold my Army Morale markers, so that should keep me busy for a while. I quite like the idea of the symbolism of adding something to the table when playing the special cards. However, I think that taking a water spray bottle to represent ‘Sudden Heavy Rain Shower!’ may be a step too far….

New gaming pieces fr NMTBH’s

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

If you have yet to get your copy of Wargames Illustrated, including the free copy of Never Mind the Bill Hooks Rules set, we still have some of stock at the time of writing. It’s available, post free here!

WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED ISSUE 393

But it’s selling quickly so don’t hang around!

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here, including some nice army deals!

PERRY MINIATURES

You can see our range of Evergreen plastic strip and Rod here:

EVERGREEN PLASTIC

Milliput is available here:

FILLERS

MDF bases can be found here:

MDF BASES

You can find all the Vallejo Model colour paints here. If you don’t want to browse, just enter the paint number into the shop search bar;

VALLEJO PAINTS

Happy Modelling!