Preparations for the Battle of Berlin

The time has come to prepare everything for this years game at Crisis in Antwerp. The obviously theme for this years Crisis is Waterloo, in line with this years bicentennial. Am I going down the same road? No. The Battle of Nations game two years ago was largely ignored (even though it was the bicentennial as well) and I would have been hard pressed to get all the minis painted in time. So what was my choice? The Battle of Berlin, after all that one has its 70th anniversary this year.

1st complete Berlin ruins city block

1st complete Berlin ruins city block

So where to start? Since most minis and vehicles for that were done years ago hardly anything remains to be done except for the scenery. Last year I already did  few test pieces and the lessons learned from that were put to use this time.

1st complete Berlin ruins city block

1st complete Berlin ruins city block

Again all the buildings are by Commission Figurines, with some added rubble (homemade from foamcore, sand, matchsticks, wooden strips and bricks cast from plaster), wallpaper and doll house furniture. As I did last time, I also added an extra floor to some of them using coffee stirrers and matchsticks.

1st complete Berlin ruins city block

What I changed were some of my techniques. Last time I applied virtually all the paint by hand. This time I only did that for the outside walls, windows / doors and stonework applications. All the rest was airbrushed. I deliberately over-sprayed the bricks a little bit to create an impression of brick-dust in the spots where the plaster had come off the buildings. I also over-sprayed the rubble to create the impression of a heavier layer of dust around the rubble heaps. All the buildings also got a slight dusting with the colors I used for the rubble, to create a general dirty look.

Ruins (inside)

Ruins (inside)

But there are also a few more lessons I learned. First I glued some tile and wooden floor imitations to the base, just like I did with the pieces last year. The more I do that, the less I like it. A lot of that gets covered up by rubble anyway and there is always a chance of warping. So in the future I will probably just cover up the whole ground floor with rubble.

1st complete Berlin ruins city block

The other thing is, that I must pay better attention to the floors that come with the buildings. For some reason I picked floors, that were all oriented the same direction. Obviously, that meant, that they did not fit for two of the corner pieces and I had to clip them down to prevent them from touching. I can not be helped anymore (and it eventually means that I will get the same problem on a mother two corner pieces later on), but I will have to make sure I do not botch up once more.

1st complete Berlin ruins city block

Up next will be some minis (actually tomorrow I will post some pictures of a Borgward Wanze), but then it is back to more ruins.