Here are some pics of the hills I've done for the game.  To be honest they look better in real life than they do in the photos.

The first pic shows the full set of completed hills with sand texture added but before painting.

Next a few pictures of the completed hills with the Ranger Cannon Company for scale.  You also get a chance the see the Crawley family's new hall carpet.  You lucky people. 

The dry-stone retaining walls of the terraces took ages to build.  I'd be quite happy never to handle cat litter again!

  

The Allies are up to something!!

Spotted on a reconnaissance flight over Sicily

Initial estimate is 3 x LCA; 2 x LCVP; 2 x DUKW and 8 x LCM

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Hopefully enough for the game

Will

Buildings of Salerno

Here are the buildings I've just finished for the game. Like most of my buildings they are built as modules each mostly 12cm x 6cm with a few 6cm square.

Construction is foamcore with Wills pantile tiles for the roofs. I started with the very basic rectangular buildings but I really prefer the second wave where I split the building 1:2 as they look far less monolithic

The next step is to try and create some scenic village bases to place these on. Typically I'll place 3/4 buildings in each location.

The Hills of Salerno

Inspired by "Alcal"on The Guild wargamers' forum, I decided to have a go at building some Italian style hills with dry stone walled terraces.  The plan is to have enough to do all of the hills we need for the game with the exception of the Chiunzi Pass feature that Will has already started.

The hills are built on hardboard bases.  First I chamfer the edges and then glue on layers of expanded polystyrene using PVA glue.

Then the retaining walls are built up.  These use large pieces of cat litter and gravel attached to a bed of "grab adhesive" (something like No More Nails brand).

Then the surface texture is added by gluing on sand with PVA.  Painting and static grassing will follow.

As I say, this is enough hills for the game except that I'll need to add one more for the gun battery hill above Vietri.

Some more mortars

Will has already built two nice models of US 4.2" Chemical Mortars but we need a grand total of four  for the game.  Here are a couple of very simple scratch-built ones I've produced to make up the numbers.  They are very much in the style of the late John Sanders whose articles on modelling the 8th Army in Airfix Magazine played a large part in getting me in to wargaming in the first place.

They're just placeholders really, to show the location of our second Chemical Mortar Company.  If they ever need to fight at close quarters we'll need to add a few more crew figures. 

The figures are from the Hasegawa Willys jeep set and all of the rest is scratch-built on bases made from old mini CD-ROMs.

Buildings for the game

Here is my progress to date on the buildings for the Gauntlet game, I still plan to add a number of others so suggestions are welcomed. I plan to use 2-3 for each of the villages.

They are all based on a 60mm x 120mm footprint and built with foamcore and the roofing is the Will's Finecast pantile roofing.

15 minutes in Maori

OK, well I just managed to get to Maori, the US Rangers landing beach, from Sorrento. I would have liked to get to Vietri, but that would have been another hour there and at least that back again and combined with the road works I decided not to risk it.


First a couple of views from further along the coast at Ravello (above Amalfi)

It certainly gives a good impression of the terrain involved, very steep terraced slopes

And closer from the bus


Maori beach looking east

Looking inland, up the river, which is now covered over on most of the main street, up towards the Chiunzi pass

Looking west.

Compared to the other beaches/harbours further to the west this is large and seems to be more gently shelving with less rocks.

Most of the town centre was washed away in floods in the 1950's so the whole front has been rebuilt in 60's styling

Once you get away from the terracing the hills are mainly covered in beech woods or coppiced sweet chestnuts, which are quite dense/impenetrable. Higher again you get rock/scrub vegetation

Will