vietnam terrain

The build something contest 2021

thomasriepe , , , , , , , , ,

It is that time of the year again . Over on LAF forum the build something contest 2021 runs again like every year. And like every year I droped out already. So I can show you my project from start to finish here now.

The theme this year is difficult terrain and as my ovear all theme at the moment is Vietnam I build some difficult terrain for my Vietnam collection.

So how did I start. The idea was to build a swampy, elefantgrass overgrown, area, wich is infested with booby traps. The concept was to be able to swap traps with harmless terrain features so no one knows in advance what might happen when the troops walk through the area.

I Started by building 6 different terrain pieces with spaces wide enough to fit some MDF bases I had lying arround. On the MDF bases I would build the traps or other features to be able to swap them arround.

The bases:

Above you see the 6 bases I did. You can clearly sea the spaces were the traps would go. The elefant grass is artificial lawn cut in strips and glued to the board. Below are the finished bases without traps:

The last base was done a bit different. I tried to build a punji stake pit, which is not really possible without “sinking” the pit below street level. So I build the pit directly on the board rather then using the way I showed you above.

Now i had to build the traps. I used round MDF bases to base them on. These fit into the ” holes” I left on the boards.

In the picture above you see some of the traps. On the left there is a bent back bamboo with sharpened bamboo sticks affixt to it. If you release the trap the stick will move very quickly hitting everything in its way about knee hight. In the middle you see a C ration box and an abandoned pack. both might be booby traped or not. The third one holds a smoke grenade ( if you loook very closely you can see it. On the right is a stand of bamboo with a piece of ordonance nickt from somewere. Better don’t release the tripwire…..

Above are some more closeups of the traps. Below are the traps on the terrain pieces:

And the boards in action . A US Marine section moving through the area. Figures by Empress.

having a little smoke

thomasriepe , , , , , , , , ,

Here is another Vietnamese civilian having a smoke. A Full Metal Miniature smoking a pipe.

Is he really just having some time off or is he on the lookout for the VC…..

The building is a 3D print. STL from WOW buildings.

The village buildings completed

thomasriepe , , , , ,

I completed my 3D printed buildings for my Vietnam village over the last weekend. Here are pictures of the finished property:

House No 1:

House No2 with hidden underground entrance:

HouseNo3:

HouseNo4:

And a 3D printed house I bought from the net.(to be found here):

Altogether I have 5 new houses now to ad to my growing Vietnam terrain. Next up will be some fields with wattle fencing and of course some rice paddies.

Another Hut for my Vietnamese village

thomasriepe , , , , ,

The same hut as I have shown you previously, just raised from the ground, as many of the jungle huts ,you can see on historic pictures, were.

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Complete with an underground entrance to a VC hideout. Or is it just a storeroom?

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Comparrison with the other hut:

There will be a smaller hut in the future. Just printing it out.

 

More terrain pieces for my Vietnam project

thomasriepe , , , , , , , , ,

As a break from painting miniatures and as I like building terrain as much as painting miniatures, I started to do some more terrain for my Vietnam gaming table. I decided that my jungle wasn’t dense enough so there have to be more jungle scatter pieces. There were only a few palm trees so there have to be done some more. But most important I wanted to do some bigger elephant grass patches and a landingzonye for my choppers.

So I started with some palm trees . I use the plastic stuff you can get from sign makers as offcuts. This is quite sturdy and takes glue and paint well. I hot glued the trees to this and put some filler and sand on them to define the base of the trees.

Some of the trees were just glued to a washer and a 25mm mdd base to have a smaller footprint on the table and fit between the other terrain pieces. The washer was used to make the base heavier and prevent the tree from falling over. Then I painted the bases and added plastic plants and flock like on my other jungle pieces.

here are the finished pieces:

The elephant grass test piece was done by glueing pieces of artificial grass to a plastic base , adding filler round the edges of the grass to blend it all in , adding sand and scatter and of course paint.

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So this looks like a small path through the grass doesn’t it?

some more pictures:

Next up my LZ ( landing zone) done like the elephant grass with a wider central free space for the choppers to land in:

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Some more pictures:

And all the pieces I have finished at the moment:

Next project will be a village in the jungle with rice paddies, hooches , and animal pens.

Added my Jungle scatter foliage

thomasriepe , , ,

As you can see here I made my own clump foliage. I mixed a coarse scatter foliage to be added to my jungle terrain and to the bases of the Marines and the soon to come NVA.

Here is a picture without the foliage and with the foliage:

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What do you think ? I personally think with foliage will blend the miniatures better into the terrain.

Making your own clump foliage from upholstery foam

thomasriepe , , , , ,

As i have to do some terrain for my ongoing Vietnam war project. I need a lot of clump foliage for my jungle terrain, so instead of buying it I thought about doing it myself. I know someone who does upholstery as a profession and he gave me offcuts of upholstery foam seen here:

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I cut it into smaller peaces with a pair of scissors and added these together with some water into a blender. I blended them for a few seconds and had this:

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So this doesn’t look like terrain clumps as the color is all wrong. So I put the still damp foam shreds int a bowl with household paint and some PVA:

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And this is what came out after mixing the foam shreds with the color:

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two different shades of green clump foliage and some brown:

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This took me about half an hour to do. The clumps have to dry now for 24h and will be ready to do a coarse scatter for the jungle bases and the bases of my miniatures.

This wasn’t my original idea to be fair, though I nicked it from Mel, aka the terrain tutor.

you can see a video by him about the process here

I will post more about my vietnam terrain as I create it.