Wednesday 29 January 2020

Landing craft production in full swing

Having recently completed a commando raid game of St. Nazaire. It got me thinking about a D-Day style game and this idea was soon reenforced after re-reading Chapter 28 "Landing in Force" from War Game Campaigns (Donald Featherstone) and Chapter 8 "Disaster at D-Day - and other big games" from Operation Warboard (Gavin Lyall). However, I lacked any landing craft to undertake a game of this sort, and decided to take a similar approach to the St. Nazaire game by using bits of wood and MDF board to create some very basic landing craft.

The landing craft themselves are constructed by cutting a 42mm x 30mm wood to shape with one end angled, adding MDF board on top and for the ramp, and finally adding a pilot house made from some 10mm x 20mm wooden dowel.

The models are painted grey and receive a light sanding to remove any obvious rough areas of wood grain.
Once all the bits were cut out (and I included a gun emplacement) they were such together using PVC wood glue. The wooded models were given a coat of grey and lightly sanded once dry. Then the major details were painted. As you can see from the photos the cargo bays are painted black to give the impression of a cargo area when the models have none to simplify their construction.

Rather than building models with a cargo bay. The bay area is represented by painting them black.
Using the same chalk pastel approach I did with the St. Nazaire models. A light shading of black and blue was drawn over the grey paint before using a light grey pastel to blur and blend in some of the blues and blacks. A white pastel was used to highlight the landing craft edges and corners. Finally, a light shading of dark brown and dark green was used to soften the black representing the cargo bay.

A coat of PVA glue is applied to seal the pastel colours
The finished product made from 4 bits (2 bits of MDF board and 2 bits of wood)
I now need to plan a series of games with some paratroopers capturing a bridge to delay reinforcements, a beach landing, a counter attack, and maybe a final breakout game assuming the landings are successful.

Here are a few photos of the landing craft on the tabletop to show off the models and how the beach landing game may look.





20 comments:

  1. Great scratch building and very effective when complete.

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    1. Thank you. I am always surprising at what a lick of paint and colour can do.

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  2. Nice models Peter and the beach landing pics are very good.

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    1. Thanks. I am looking forward to setting up a game soon.

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  3. Your handiwork is quite impressive!

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    1. I always know my schoolboy woodwork skills would come in handy. Thanks.

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  4. Replies
    1. Thanks. The landing craft came out better than I expected for a few bits of wood stuck together.

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  5. Your crafting is always imopressive.

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    1. I enjoy getting outside and making these wooden models. And they are cheap to make. Thanks.

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  6. The beach landing pictures are incredible.

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    1. Thank you. Hopefully the game when I get to play it will look as good.

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  7. A very simple but extremely effective way to model landing craft ... and other warships. Are you going to build any larger ships (e.g. LSTs, fire-support ships, monitors)? I would have thought that your building method could easily have been adapted to produce bigger ships.

    All the best,

    Bob

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    1. Hi Bob, I was eyeing up some of the remaining offcuts of wood and a recon I will be able to build one LST to add a bit of variety. Thanks, Peter

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  8. Replies
    1. Thank you. These worked out first time. Sometimes I require to goes to my models right.

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  9. Just piling on here, but wow! Looks great! I shall continue to follow your project with interest.

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    1. Glad the project is of interest. Thank you.

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  10. Landing craft Looking good - Much simpler than hacking about milk cartons like I did https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/landing-craft-carton-two-more-how-to-photo/

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    1. Thanks. Wood seems to be my model choice at the moment. The reuse of the milk carton is a clever idea, especially the top as a hatch.

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