MiniStories

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Snow basing tutorial and Winter War Finnish Platoon

It all started when we bought a snow mat. Think it was three years ago and it was delivered at our hotel while visiting Salute. Excited to do some snow fighting we got ourselves a box with pine trees and some other scenery. At home, in the middle of summer, I gave the trees a snow treatment and we were basically ready to game. By then we realized we also actually needed some miniatures to play with. Lot of choice but since two of our group were doing russians at that time I made the decision to do Finnish troops. Posted before on a forum, now on the blog as I am slowly moving most of my pictures here.

For the 28mm figures I chose Brigade Games and Battle Honors. They go very well together and provide enough variation. The sled is from Copplestone and the ski guy from Warlord (Bolt Action)

So far it is just a small platoon. Since this is one of those projects that have never seen daylight apart from getting them out of the box to take pictures I doubt if they will ever grow to a full platoon.

Hopefully we'll get them in action in the next few months so I can shoot some battlefield pictures.

Now for the snow. There are plenty tutorials around on the net. Some use baking soda, others just paint. I decided to try this with Scenic Snow bought from Antenocitis Workshop.
I am not releted to them in any way but do struggle all the time to find them because of the difficult name..

This product is really easy to use. They come with instructions so I won't reproduce these in detail. Basically you just use the bond and sprinkle the snow over this. Do this in several layers and you are done.

For the infantry I wanted a muddy snow effect reflecting the battlefield as I had seen in the movie The Winter War (Talvisota) . How I did this:

-Base the figure as you would normally do and paint it using a brown and a couple of lighter drybrushes

-Paint the area on the base you want covered in snow white. A light white drybrush around the edges is fine.

-Put the bond on the white and brown area you want lighly covered, using an old brush. Next sprinke the snow. Repeat untill you reach desired effect.

For the sled I wanted a deeper snow look. In this case you can just paint the base light grey or light blue if you prefer. Then you start to apply layers of snow until you have enough for the desired effect. Press in some footsteps, maybe sprinkle some icy sparkles (in the box) and you are done.

I found this very easy and it gave me the desired effect. Maybe it is even embarrassing simple and you can have the same effect with Woodland scenics and PVA glue or other materials. Anyway I can highly recommend this product.