As is obvious to anyone who’s recently visited this blog, my hobby time lately has been “All About the Rivers,” so to speak, as I’ve been enmeshed since this past Spring in building a set of terrain boards to represent the Logar and Kabul Rivers for a refight of the Second Afghan War battle of Charasiab fought in October 1879.
A few months ago my gaming friend JG Randall asked if I could help him with the terrain layout for a big game he was planning. It would be a massive refight of the British Airborne attack on Arnhem in September 1944. I’ve had a life-long interest in Airborne operations in general and the Battle of Arnhem in particular ever since seeing “A Brige Too Far” as a 10 year-old boy back in 1975. Since I’d spent the past months “immersed” in model river building (lame aquatic pun intended!), I volunteered to build the river itself. JG and his terrain-meister partner-in-wargaming-crime Frank Pattersen had already got a jump on building the bridge itself so I knew dimensions required. The Arnhem table would be 6′ wide and the bridge was 14″ wide, so I decided on a 6’x1′ river. Since I had a handy piece of 2’x6′ dual-tempered Masonite in my garage, it seemed the perfect size. The board I had was 3/16″ thick. If I was starting from scratch I would have used a 1/8″ thick board, but the difference was so slight I didn’t hesitate to use what was on hand. I also decided to cut the 6′ length into three equal sized 2′ long pieces that would fit together end-to-end.
After cutting the boards the next step was painting them. First I “primed” the river pieces with a vibrant mix of blue and green colors, so when I went over them with the final more drably toned-down olive river green, there would be just a hint of darker, more lush color lying below the surface to provide a bit more “depth”…
After the bright colors dried I did the second coat using a mixture of YELLOW-OCHRE and BLACK, which I have come to find is an excellent formula for creating drab olive green from Artist’s Acrylics…
Once I was happy with the olive green river water color, I added “water” texture using a layer of EXTRA HEAVY GEL GLOSS (this is an acrylic product that is water-soluble)…
I painted this on with an inexpensive 1″ brush. I had already experimented a bit with the application process and here used a generous amount of the Gloss Gel and made an effort to apply it in a “wave” pattern. I also tried to make the “waves” carry over from board to board so they’d fit together as seamlessly as possible…
I was very happy with the results, and felt like it had not taken much effort compared with how well it turned out.
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I was so impressed enough with the look of the newly-minted river that I spent some time setting up some figures to show it off. First a handful of my Second Afghan War Brits (72nd Highlanders to be specific)…
After sending these pics to a buddy of mine who is a huge F&IW aficionado I put the figures and canoes back in their boxes and drove down to Orange County to deliver the river to JG with some time to spare before the big game.
When game day arrived I was luckily able to get away from home and away from work and — for a change — get a chance to actually PLAY A MINIATURE WARGAME — which was a lot of fun!
The game itself was a full-scale play-test in advance of the same scenario being run at an upcoming “Game Day” event for the club JG and Frank belong to down in Anaheim.
A bunch of guys were there to play, including my friend Matthew who accompanied my son and I to the first ever Colonial Barracks convention in New Orleans back in 2011. Matthew, myself, and Mark Deliduka played the British Paras and Glider forces under the overall command of Harmon Ward as General Urquart. Frank (the prolific terrain-builder) and Howard — a tall, young Asian-American college student — played the Germans.
I commanded one Parachute Brigade. The British forces included a second Para Brigade and one Brigade of Glider-borne troops. The landing itself was a bit of a chaotic mess, kind of like a scaled down version of the real thing, only much less violent and exhausting.
In the first few turns after landing I lost the lion’s share of one of my three battalions counterattacking a German unit ensconced in a section of woods — tragically it was the battalion commanded by Colonel John Frost!
The “middle” of the game was extremely hard going for my command, but while my two fellow British commanders suffered heavy casualties as they remained in place to defend our landing zone for the sake of the reinforcement wave of gliders and paras, I somehow managed by the skin of my teeth to break through the German forces and clear a path for my two surviving, disconnected battalions to both make it off the 18′ long “Landing Table” and onto the “Arnhem Table”!
… but by that time we’d been playing for about 8 hours, so needless to say, we never got to grips on the streets of Arnhem, let alone atop the bridge over the river I had built. Still, it was great to actually “play” a game for a change — and I felt like I’d aquitted myself very well by managing to reach Arnhem with 2/3rds of my force relatively intact despite facing serious opposition all along the way.
Here’s a bunch of pics I took during the play-test game:
NOTE: In addition to painting and basing all the troops and preparing most of the terrain, JG was also responsible for building ALL of the Airborne paraphenalia himself — the transport planes, the gliders, the parachutes and equipment containers as well. He is a bit of a one-man machine — but he has a secret weapon, which is his close friend Frank, who is quite famous down in the Orange County wargaming community for being a human terrain-building-factory as well as a prolific and talented figure-painter. The rules we used also came courtesy of JG. They’re called “FIRE & MANEUVER” and elegantly incorporate a lot of logistical elements without slowing or bogging down game-play at all. He wrote them a few years ago and they’re very popular at his club, where several gamers have been trying to convince him to make them available to the public.
Tennis Courts used in the actual battle to hold German POWs, here used by the Germans to hold some British Airborne POWs…
Wow! Great photos, epic game, and an inspiring terrain tutorial. Good work!
Thanks very much, Barks! Appreciate you taking the time to leave your comment!
Fantastic looking game table! Great river pieces!
The river looks great! I like the way you've given it a sense of movement. The AAR is excellent, too.
Thanks Mark and thank you AJ! It's always great to see comments from people who emjoyed something I posted here!
Great tutorial and the river looks excellent
We played Market Garden at the old Wargames Holiday Centre a few years ago over the weekend with setup on the Friday evening. It was a great one.
Thanks very much, Paul! I'm a big fan of your Scrivsland blog, and I think I remember seeing pics from the game you're talking about, maybe from back in 2012. Arnhem truly is one of those all-time classic wargame scenarios which will never go out of style.
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DUDE!!!!! That river is EXTREME!!! That is honestly one of the best handmade rivers I've EVER seen!!! The colors, the waves, the texture, really awesome brother. Way to go, I want one…..LOL….
Great WIP too. I will have to try this one day, right after I try to copy the fields you made. I already bought the brown caulk for that.
As I read your email I noticed once again we have run some very parallel lines in our lives. I too had become enamored with the Market Garden op and Arnhem campaign form that fateful day in 1975 (being the same age as you). The movie fueled an already voracious appetite for WWII knowledge and wargaming interests.
We also are both enamored with the NWF, colonial gaming, and TSATF! We both love to build terrain, are both MOT (member of the 12 tribes), etc……..
Cheers my friend, please keep the posts and pics coming. You are my inspiration…LOL.
JB
Jeff,
Glad you liked the river so much! Of course you're also a big “A Bridge Too Far” fan, I'm not surprised — you are a man of EXCELLENT TASTE!
…and CHAG PURIM SAMEACH my fellow Tribe Member!
Toda raba achi! Same to you brother.
Ethan
Amazing river, game and write-up! Well done. Which gaming group sponsored this superb game and how can I join?
Michael,
The group is the “St. Crispin's Irregulars” based in Anaheim, whose members hail from all over Orange County.
Here's a link to their “meetup” page:
http://www.meetup.com/stcrispins/messages/boards/
They hold “Open Game Days” all day and night (open 8:00am to 10:00pm) at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Anaheim at 1127 N. Anaheim Blvd, Anaheim CA 92801 on the Second Saturday of each month.
They do all different genres of gaming on their “Open Days”, but unfortunately I've yet to attend one. The handful of times I've played there have been on different Saturdays when the entire hall is focused on one epic historical miniatures wargame, like the Arnhem game above.
Ethan, thanks for the info. I've been looking into attending the St. Crispin's Irregulars Hobby Days. Maybe we can meet up at one soon.
Michael, I certainly hope so!
So impressed with the Arnhem/Oosterbeek set-up. Did you make the Hartenstein hotel or is is a commercial product?
Anonymous, thanks very much for your kind words! I neither made it nor bought it, all I can take credit for making is the river! It was a Najewitz Modelblau kit in 1/72nd scale that the Game Master customized by adding the base, bannister, porch and portico, so kind of a fifty-fifty answer to your question re: commercial or homemade!
Great AAr and a lovely set of pictures on the great terrain and figures.
Question: Where did you get the parachutes?
I made them scratch build for my Arnhem game for a similar system like yours (only one or two chutes per standard), but i would like to expand the set.
With kind regards,
Ludwig
Arnhem
Netherlands
Ludwig,
The parachute stands shown above were also homemade by the Game Master. Hope you succeed in expanding your own set!
thanks for the answer.
i”ll try before Crisis Antwerp