Sunday, January 20, 2019

'Sport' from BenF: A Spot of Tennis?

This bonus round initially had me stumped. Most of the projects I'm working on have little connection to sport and I didn't want to paint something up that I would have no use for. Then my wife Laura came to the rescue and suggested 'what about something like the football field you made?'

About a year ago I'd scratchbuilt a football pitch for my 6mm '80s Cold War collection. Its now served faithfully in many battles as a defensive position, objective, and even a landing zone for Soviet VDV troops.

As most battles we play at the club are set in Germany or Scandinavia, I wanted something which was as appropriately 'German' as football. So it had to be tennis.

When I was growing up as a kid in the 80s, one of the biggest sporting stars I remember is Boris Becker, the youngest Grand Slam singles champion at the time, and winner at Wimbledon in '85. I decided that a tennis court would be a useful and appropriate addition to my cold war terrain, a place where aspiring young Germans could practice their game, and where NATO and the Soviets could battle it out for the fate of Europe.


For this, I chamfered the edge of an MDF coaster for the base, and then measured out the dimensions, scaled to 1:500, as a true 6mm scale court would be far too large. The football pitch is similarly downscaled.
I then constructed the uprights using brass spears cut to size, and glued down some sandpaper for the court and car park surface. After that it was just matter of painting, basing, then adding the net and fencing using fine grade flyscreen. I ended up drybrushing the flyscreen with a medium grey, as it was far too dark. I also added a car to make it more used.



The PT-76 and MTLB snooping around the carpark are just included for the photos, not the points, and they'll be being based up for a future entry.  

As far as points go, my calculation is 
1 x 6mm vehicle = 2pts
1 x 4"x4" terrain piece = 20pts(?)

20 comments:

  1. Absolute genius, excellent work!

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  2. Agree with JaimieM, quite imaginative and the terrain piece is fantastic

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  3. One of the most creative interpretations of the theme I've seen - well played!

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  4. Very creative and fits your project well.

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  5. That is one hell of a nice piece of terrain!

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  6. Creative and innovative!
    Cheers Jez

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  7. Superb interpretation of the theme, Ben. Excellent work!

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  8. excellent work on some cool terrain!

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  9. Excellent scratch building there Ben, like this one a lot. The tennis field could be used as an impromptu PoW holding pen.

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  10. Good idea for the bonus round. Extra points for your tally and some nice terrain for your table. Aces!

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  11. Sorry I somehow missed this before...this is great stuff.

    Any way to include the PT-76? I mean...that would look fun :)

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