Wednesday, May 8, 2019

6mm Hougoumont

This terrain piece has been almost a year in the making.  I was so impressed with Glenn Drover's giant Hougoumont model that I bought the necessary buildings from The Wargaming Company (the buildings are made by Leven Miniatures).  This is a somewhat stylized representation of the famous farm complex, but it makes for a stunning bit of terrain.


I cut a large, thin piece of plywood to serve as the base.  I sanded the edges and corners until they were all smooth and rounded.  I primed the wood with rattle can grey primer, and once it was dry, I applied a coat of Liquitex Ceramic Stucco  texture gel to the entire base.  While it was still wet, I used superglue to attach the resin buildings and fences.


Once everything had cured for a few days, I used an electric drill to make holes where I wanted trees.  I glued round cocktail toothpicks into the wood to serve as tree trunks.  Once that glue was dry, I primed the whole thing with rattle can white primer.


It is surprisingly difficult to find accurate pictures of Hougoumont.  I settled on a couple of 19th century color lithographs to help me with colors.  I had a tough time settling on the correct oranges and browns for the buildings, and months stretched by as I repeatedly experimented with different shades.  This past weekend I just decided that I should finish the model and move on.  It turned out I was agonizing over nothing, because I am quite pleased with how the colors turned out!


Two days with my bix box of flocking materials resulted in the foliage as you see it.  I painted the ground a medium tan then used a light khaki color to drybrush the texture.  The static grass is from Gale Force 9.  I added clump foliage from Woodland Scenics wherever I thought rain water would fall from the roofs.  More clump foliage went on the toothpicks to create leafy trees.  Finally the formal garden got Army Painter tufts, which I then drybrushed in bright colors to represent flowers.

All told, I probably put in about two weeks' work on this model.  I just stretched those two weeks out over 10 months!  This should be beautiful on the table.

21 comments:

  1. A masterpiece! This will be stunning on the table, for sure. Do your figure bases fit within the compound structure?

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    1. Yes, they fit. I'll be using my 15mm troops with this, and the skirmish bases fit pretty easily. Close order bases will fit too, but they're snug.

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  2. An impressive looking terrain piece. Well done!

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  3. Five star! It will undoubtedly be the centrepiece on your table.

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    1. Thanks, John! Once I screwed my courage to the sticking place, it went very well.

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    1. Thank you, Christopher! I did enjoy the process.

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  6. Awesome job, i'd be almost afraid to have a game with it tho :p

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  7. Very nice and interesting that you went 6mm. You mentioned that you will be using this with your 15mm collection and that the skirmish models fit (just). IIRC you base for GdB. Have you seen the Tiger Terrain Waterloo buildings? They scaled down 15mm so that they were not overly large and find that they will work perfectly for my GdB sessions using 15mm figures. That, and they are absolute gorgeous models. Regardless, excellent brush work as usual!

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  8. First class Hougoumont, impressive and beautiful details!

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  9. Great work...Travel Battle compatible objective...what’s the footprint?

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