Friday 29 July 2016

CEF - Artillery detachment...work in progress Part 1

Howdy folks,

It has been quite sometime since I dedicated time to conducting research, so for the past 4 weeks or so I've been googling, reading articles, and made my way through 5 books on the subject of Vimy Ridge.  With the 100th anniversary coming up in April, my buddy Ed (Mr. Maersk Grozny) and I are going to put together a Vimy inspired gaming table for Cangames 2017.

Inspired by my research and some of the images I've been able to find, I have taken this knowledge and put it into action in basing my Canadian Artillery Detachment.

Originally I had hoped to build up a similar looking position as pictured above, however with the size of the Battlefront bases and not wanting to overcrowd the base I went with the look below.
As you can see, the real estate gets pretty tight.  So with that in mind I adapted my approach from the pictured gun position above and started building a suitable gun platform.
 Work in progress picture #1 and #2... 

Unfortunately the picture is very very yellow, however I think it shows my attempts to show the duckboards and planking that were part of the construction of artillery positions in the build-up to the Easter assault.  An excellent resource in this case has been the book "Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment"...it is a series of essays which cover the build-up, fighting, and aftermath of the battle.



3 comments:

Duncan said...

That looks good -- I think you could have the berm/sandbags as a separate piece and use that as a dug-in indicator

Stan M. said...

Thanks Duncan, if I get really ambitious I thought I could make up a gun line diorama with the gun bases transferable from the dio to the gaming table...

Duncan said...

Given that WWI artillery probably doesn't move very much, you could probably use the diorama as a terrain piece as well.