New Terrain and Basing Issues Settled!

Progress continues on my Blood, Sand and Empire project. This week I managed to finish off a couple desert dwellings for my layout. Did some experimenting with the texturing on these. The bigger one was given a good coat of joint compound ("spackle") with sand mixed in. The smaller was white glue, sand, and a touch of baking powder. Not sure about the latter. It did dry very quickly however - not really a good thing. Either way both turned out alright for my purposes. Astute readers may recognize the models as being from the old Epic 40k wargame by GW! I simply converted them to fit 15mm scale.

Some new buildings all finished.

To go along with these two building I have also purchased two boxed sets of desert buildings for Flames of War (Battlefront pre-painted). These sets include a total of three additional buildings, some walls, and a well! So that should be enough buildings to get me by at the moment.

Also, I bought a ton of plastic palm trees off of Ebay to go along with the few I already have. All they need is to be painted up a bit and based as appropriate. Of course, I still need to make more terrain for rocky areas, cliffs, and shrub/greenery to clutter up the table.

As for my basing dilemma, I have finally made a decision! I have decided to base my infantry six models to a 30mm square stand. This is very useful and equates to 24 models on four stands which is perfect for representing a "standard" size unit in Black Powder, as well as for units in Battles for Empire II. My units will look big and have a really nice feel to them. "large" units are six stands, "small" units are two stands, and "tiny" units are six individually based models. So I am all set regarding that. The "tiny" unit models are perfect as I want to use them also with some skirmish rules I also have and am eager to have a go with.

Six models in two ranks on a 30mm square stand. Perfect for Black Powder
and Battles for Empire II.

I should have more stuff in by the end of the next week or so, so stay tuned for that. As soon as I finish some ancient Gauls I am painting, I will start getting these models on the painting desk and get some Khaki splashing about! Perhaps next week I will post some more photos of the lay-out using my Cigar Box desert mat and some new terrain.