Digging in

Right, it's been a busy week, but I've shaken off the cold and taken a break from work for a while to crack on with some wargames terrain pieces.

I intend to fight the final battle of the VBCW Bury St. Edmunds campaign, and looked over the army lists for this hypothetical period. One option defenders may chose are trenches for a team or section. They can be deployed as part of the scenario set-up or chosen as a support option from the lists. Either way, I realized I didn't have any trench pieces for this (or any other) scale - so I had jolly well better make some!

I began with a basic shallow box made from craft sticks and 'tongue depressors.' Gluing them to a card base, I made a series of triangular pieces from corrugated card and glued them close together to form the foundations for the sloping sides of the earthwork. Lengths of cartridge paper glued along this made the slope itself. I used craft glue for the most part, holding it in place with blobs of hot glue to save having to pin them whilst they dried. The slopes were then smeared with spackle, allowed to dry then smeared with PVA and scattered with sand. The photos show this stage just before and after.

Pretty simple, but effective and light weight. The next stage will be to fit some slim upright pieces of card at intervals to represent bracing along the wooden trench sides, then apply the paint.