Making Isandlwana Hill with Diane

The other terrain job I planned was the centre piece for the Isandlwana game.  Jon had wanted to make this hill for years and never got around to it.  While I had some blocks of polystyrene handy I thought I could make use of the volcano drying time and get on with it.

I began by Googling the battlefield and got a rough idea of what I was looking for.  As the game is in 15mm rather than 25mm I had to take care not to make it too big.

As you can see by the pictures, the work is still at a pretty early stage.  All I've done is to cut a base from insulation board and then add two layers of polystyrene.  I've then covered the whole thing in a PVA and wall filler mix and scattered sand and gravel over it.

When I get back to Crete, it needs to be coloured, the hill will be a lighter shade than the base and I need to add some clump foliage here and there.

You can see from the picture that the PVA and sand is still drying out.

I quite like the way that the bigger bits of gravel have gathered at the bottom of the feature.

This is second on the list to get finished when I get back to Crete in June.

Tents and Huts

Bit of a round up really.  Some close-ups of the Italeri tents and accessories, French Indian Wars Woodland Indian huts (bought five years ago at Salute) and some 15mm Anglo-Zulu War Zulu huts.  I made the masters of these years ago (about 1980!).  Since then the masters have been lost along with the original mould.  So I've knocked these up from some of the survivors which are plaster casts.  Have now made a new temporary mould to make thirty or forty of them for the new games. 

I bought these at Salute - I think they are JR Miniatures, might be wrong, they are light weight foam.

Items from the Italeri tent set.  They are designed for 1:72nd, but are fine for 28mm.

Some of my Zulu War hut survivors.  The originals were made from a carved piece of balsa covered in milliput with bits of string!

Anglo-Zulu War 1879

It's been a long term desire to get this collection finished.  It was started several years ago, but finally it is nearing completion.  In the end we'll have all of Chelmsford and Dunford's columns, every single unit plus lots of fancy bits and pieces ready.  Against them will be all of the Zulu regiments involved in the Isandlwana campaign.  This is a major undertaking, we've gone for a very big man to figure ratio.  The regiments range from 60 figures minimum to a massive 450 figures. 

This is the biggest regiment the iNgobamakhosi ibutho.  There are 45 bases of figures.