1809 Project in 15/18mm: Battle of Eckmuhl Part Two: Building the battlefield model

In Part One I gave an introduction to the historical background to Eckmuhl  and explained my thinking in how to make it a fair and plausible refight at our scale of approximately 1 figure = 50 men using 15/18mm figures.  I showed how I arrived at the usable area - that included, as I often do, a couple of square feet notionally round the outside of the table top, to allow a more realistic opportunity for Napoleonic manoeuvring, threat, risk, fog of war  etc. As many will have heard me say "I can't get my head round the idea that the table baseline is the 'edge of the world' !"

 In this part I will concentrate on the mechanics of making 96 square feet of sculpted terrain hopefully something like an acceptable version of the real thing in 1809. Apologies in advance to any readers in Northern Bavaria! I've already posted a fair amount of photos but as a reminder these two show what I ended up with.

This is the main battle area - 12 feet x 8 feet at the widest made of subdivisions of 8x 6 and 8 x 4 

To enable access by players I cleared off my painting desk and paint trolley at the side of the room to allow for the "extra bit" - 8 feet x 2 feet with an L shape to fit the main table. On average there was about a two foot gap for players to stand or sit in (yes, I send out diet sheets and exercise regimes in advance to those who might need it :-) )

The baseboards

I thought I'd taken photos but can't find them if so; it was back in late Spring 25. I took the basic durable cardboard and timber frame 8 x 6 structure I made post lockdown in 2021 and have shown many times on the blog since then. I stripped it back to resurface with big slabs of packing cardboard and make a roughly flat surface. I nearly always save the big boxes when we get household stuff delivered and flatten them ready for the next project. Wide tape and PVA generally hold it together on the underlying surface. I then used my 18mm MDF 6ft x 2ft and 4ft x 2ft boards to bind together with wooden battens, screws and glue to make the piece that is nearest in the photos  - the 8 x 4 Grosse Laaber valley and water meadows. The extra bit was made in a similar way - on reinforced MDF boards with cardboard on top, as you will see. I stripped off what I could of the old Abensberg boards - rivers, hills etc for reuse, but even I have to admit some of it was only fit for a trip to the district rubbish tip - but thinking about it, I had six or seven full days gaming over that in different ways. I shall be doing the same with the Eckmuhl terrain - more on that much later. 

Researching the terrain

As already shown I had used historical maps to come up with what I need to model - here is reminder of my map created with Photoshop Elements 22.

The Osprey campaign book referred to in the previous part has some really useful "modern" photographs of battlefield views, plus paintings and old drawings which give inspiration. But I was trying to go further, and Google Earth is often useful giving overviews and angled shots, especially the "streetview" tool for ground level. That is, however, limited to roads along which Google consider it worth their while to send camera vehicles and record the scene. Nowadays the main road from Landshut to Regensberg bypasses Eckmuhl and all the high ground to the North over which we need to play the game. So source material was limited but I did screenshot the following which give some ideas.

Gr Laaber Eckmuhl Rogging stretch

Stanglmuhle to Zeitskofen

Rogging from the Oberbach (on left)

Unter Laichling

In this age of Artificial Intelligence I like to use it when I can to assist the imagination. I realised Hohenberg would be an important high point on my table but I couldn't find any photos, sketches or accounts to help. So I asked the Nightcafe system to give me images of Hohenberg, Bavaria in 1809 on a late Spring morning. AI is rarely stumped and always produces something, but you can't guarantee any authenticity.  I didn't let that worry me - I got lots of output, mostly more dramatic than our Eckmuhl valley and with rather modern buildings , but they do inspire model making. Here are some examples.

I particularly liked this one so much I have used it for the background to a painting (more on that in a later part). I could imagine this was Ober Laichling in the foreground with Unter Laichling a few hundred metres beyond.

The "southern bit" - Grosse Laaber valley

This is the section of the map I used for guidance 

And when "finished"

This first section sets the method for the whole build; it's a bit intense, rather photo-heavy, so later on I will skate over some detail to avoid being too repetitive

I started by marking the 12 inch grid lines on my basic cardboard base and transferring from the squared-up map with acrylic paint

Rivers in blue show up well at this stage (only!). Three basic contour colours and some hashed lines remind me of where to make slopes 

The Built Up Areas (BUAs) and river crossings are important to keep in mind constantly to ensure access and flatness for terrain pieces

I'm now building a cardboard wall at the correct height above the table top for each contour where it meets the baselines. The river valley is roughly table level.

This bit is time consuming. Judging where to start slopes, and how steeply, and then cutting strips accordingly. The strips are roughly fastened down with masking tape  and/or PVA. They don't need to be particularly strong .

I get a lot of excess packing from Hobbycraft and other
 art suppliers and I like to recycle it into models  

So I tear it up small enough to roughly full up the frnmework of cardboard contours.You can also see triangular supports at the very edge of the hills down to the valley 

Some of the sheets of packing are good for spreading out to cover the mess beneath

Time to get messy with diluted (about 10-20% only) PVA glue and a wide brush to stick the covering material on. You could just use big sheets of strong but absorbent paper.

This has to be allowed to dry out and find its own level. But be aware of the risk of warping your base as it contracts and dries. I find these old 7 pound industrial weights ideal, placed strategically as I work round.

The next process is the most interesting as it takes careful thought. The aim is to use cardboard or any other filler material to compensate for dips in the dried under layer so you get the slope you want and flat areas for the buildings. On top of that it was back to my tried and trusted torn up brown paper placed on in layers (2 or 3 is enough unless you want it really solid) and thoroughly brushed top and bottom with PVA

Two hills done - countless more to do! This PVA-soaked surface when hard is pleasantly robust for the texturing stage. Close up below.

Same treatment to the northern side of this board. In the right foreground you can see underneath the cardboard surface of the main 8 x 6 which I will do later.

Making progress - the foreground map gives the orientation

From here on I'm moving on to significant Eckmuhl character-forming operations. On this southern piece the Laaber is important and so I used reclaimed river segments cut out from the original 2021 Brampton tabletop (Cumbria to Bavaria!). So they had pebble and tufted foliage edges ready for me to exploit and embellish, but they were a cardboard thickness and so I had to cut lots more single sheets of cardboard to fill up the valley floor to retain a level surface (it's a floodplain/watermeadow). Also I'm cutting card to shape to make stable bases for the buildings of the many BUAs (I think 17 for the whole table).

This BUA is Lindach, three flat levels taking houses down the hillside to valley level. An 18mm stand representing about 300 men to keep me focused on scale.

BUA bases painted brown. At this stage I had not decided what buildings to use where as, to me, getting the correct size village footprint is more important than what goes on it (with the exception of Eckmuhl "castle").

Another significant stage - mixing my first batch of spreadable textured "gloop": builders quality paster filler (cheap), fine sawdust (no sand this time), matt household or cheap school type acrylic paint to taste, PVA and water all well mixed and spread out  just thick enough to cover the brown paper/card surfaces.

Obviously I saved a lot of work reusing the river pieces. You could do this phase with commercial rivers too for a more permanent model. Later on I'll be showing how I did streams from scratch elsewhere on the table. 

All the valley done with "gloop". The colour doesn't matter much as it is just "underpainting" for tone

Same technique just different colours for each main contour

When dry I used my surform scraper tool to shave off the little raised knibbs of gloop. This gives sufficient texture without making troop bases difficult to stand level. Collect up the powdery scrapings - it makes great scatter for other places

Painting in the roads with a basic dark brown now helps keep me focussed

When it's all dry here is another departure for me - using spray paints indoors!  

I've found a range of spray paints only about two thirds the price I'd been used to paying and with a great colour range. They are supposedly more environmentally friendly (maybe so) and low odour (I disagree). Montana 94 Spray paints for example from Cass Art . I made sure I had ventilation and wore a mask and sprayed in situ in my wargames room (being careful to stay on target!). Any youngsters reading this please don't do this without adult approval.  It was much quicker than by big brushes, more versatile, and quicker to clean up, the odour and potential health risks are the only drawback but not if you spray outdoors. I was very pleased with the eventual results and took about 6 or 7 different shades to get there.

As you can see I did not bother to try to mask the roads or rivers but sprayed lightly there so as not to obscure the outlines. Some may call it a mistake, I call it turning artistic licence to my advantage.

I'm still able to drybrush with acrylic, and here I'm lightening the flood plain while avoiding the roads and rivers.

Above and below: More shades of green spray over the hills 

Close up view of river valley. The spray on the river will be helpful giving it a basic tone surface to take more processes

I used Acrylic "Heavy Structure Gel" to fill in joins in the river pieces and it dries  clear

The rivers and streams are painted with a runny but substantial mix of acrylic paint and PVA. I'm using a dark browny-green combination

The old favourite Sandtex Bitter Chocolate forms a good background colour for the roads mixed with fine sawdust and PVA and a bit of plaster filler. You don't want it too thick.

It needs to be allowed to set partially if you want to do this optional step of using some pointy sticks to make either organised or random ruts in your rural tracks. At right a stream is drying out; coincidentally a similar colour at the moment

I've painted lighter brown where the river water might have deposited mud in the bends, and then this photo shows a coat of wet Acrylic Gloss Varnish over the whole lot

Dried roads are trimmed flatter with the Surform tool.....

.....ready for a coat of a richer country track mud/sand colour. Try to leave some of the indentations dark if you can.

This is the fun stage for the roads when dry. Drybrushing with lighter tones till you get a pleasing effect 

It's beginning to look more unified and natural now. I've still tried to keep subtly different greens for valley/contour 1/contour 2

At this stage I was not yet sure what combinations of my buildings would go where, so it made sense to me to coat all the BUA footprints with a level surface of fine sawdust sprinkled through a sieve onto evenly brushed  PVA glue 

BUAs all sawdust coated

At stream level the water reflects the surroundings, so a glossy brown-green with subtle white flecks can be built up with coats of gloss varnish. This is also good for a realistic top-down view. It's only blue on a bright sunny day if you are right at water level and it is reflecting the sky. You never get that from the wargamer's birdseye view perspective.

Time to yellow up the valley floor with dry brushed acrylic so it shows up better for game purposes; and a closer look below

Can't resist putting a few regiments of cavalry on the table to test for unit footprint size. Historically at one time the French/Allies had about a dozen regiments in the flood plain; I wanted to give my players that option too.

I'm not happy with it yet. The water meadows as an obstacle will be crucial in our game - it's late April after a week of rain and so I want a lush grass look that is not yet a garish Spring freshness. Commercial "dead grass" spiced up with other flavours gives me something nice I feel. It's sieved onto PVA but I'm not too worried about it sticking everywhere.

I reserve a nice fluffy soft brush, designed for water colour painters, to brush gently the surplus off the shiny river surface and collect back up into a bag.  I've added a batch of fresh clumps of commercial tufts by this stage too. Bright colours would not be appropriate - keep the tones gentle and harmonious

The watermeadows are coated with the grass now but there is still a lot to do

Yeah, it's madness but all these little tufts will help the players keep an eye on the watermeadow boundary

All those tufts are a bit obvious as a model, but some compromises over realism are occasionally necessary to ease game play and arguments 

It's supposed to be wet (at least horse knee deep in places) and, naiively, I thought I could just coat the bare patches with gloss varnish and that would be it.....

......but it just soaked in so I had to use the solid, clear Acrylic Gloss Medium I use for 2D painting, and follow that up with the gloss varnish to remind us all not to get our feet wet.

To save you scrolling back up to the start here is the whole thing again, finished till it is united with its big brother - northern section. (Phew!)

I thought I deserved the treat of a little play setting up some troops before I moved on.........

The "northern bit" - Eckmuhl valley up to Thalmassing and Alte Glofsheim

Here is the map of my standard 8 x 6 table which I used for guidance. I drew a template of the end on paper where it would meet the "southern bit". Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not infallible, and later I had some correction modelling to do when the parts joined. 😮 😟. But until then exciting big scale model building described as succinctly as I can.

Starting off with the 8 x 6 covered in cardboard to a sort of flat surface, squared up and ready to translate the map onto it. I'd already checked out the contours at the edges and built a "wall" all round in which to keep the materials secure

Streams and main contours.......

.....and coloured in, as before. You will note I have an awful lot of high ground including a whole new 3rd contour. As with most wargames the hills are exaggerated as the soldiers are so much bigger than in a real scale model. (2mm figures might have appeared just right!)

Quite a challenge as the very highest areas are within the body of the table and not at the edges 

Rolls of wide masking tape are particularly handly to keep the process going at a brisk pace. It tears off the roll quickly without scissors, sticks well enough till all the process covers it up, and takes whatever top coats I choose.

Abstract sculpture?.......reminds me of A Level Art!

A significant stream has to fall from the high ground so I've used strong paper  to bridge my supporting structure, glueing with quick drying UHU general adhesive  where necessary.

Then I've extended that technique down the valleys using the papier mâché system with PVA glue and ensuring stream bottoms are a bit below the level of the main valley floor contour 

Above and below: In-filling with scrap paper packing waste as usual and using lots of masking tape to provide a frame for the top layers - which the bottom picture shows drying out

The next three pictures show the "Hohenberg" rising steeply from the Eckmuhl valley but with a long gentle slope down to Pfakofen and Gailsburg villages. I'm using up a mass of old polystyrene as the filler. It's a material I hate as it never rots and can't be recycled so this is "out of sight- out of mind" till I eventually have to take it to the tip. 

Above and below: That feature you thought might be a concentric Medieval castle has turned into the Glofsheimberg

Here I am having to work out how to make the footprint of Hohenberg village span down the very steep slope. It's a problem of scale and I'm sure it is too steep but will make a spectacular feature. Below: that is it on the right of the valley now covered in brown paper papier mâché

I mentioned making the indentations for the streams when building up the cardboard, so I indicated them with marker pens and now infilling with a nice wet paint/PVA brown stream water mix 

The Hohenberg and Eckmuhl valley are now receiving some "gloop". I sketched the contour lines from the map along the slopes in thin acrylic to remind me of the necessary colour changes

The same view after treatment - keeping the very tops of the ridges and hills quite brown

Scraping off the hardened knibbs of gloop and sieving, sorting and storing for reuse as scatter

Similar view after some spray painting the hills and BUA footprint painting 

Above and below: two different views now with roads and streams initially painted

Lightening the highest contour with cream drybrushing. I also flecked white in the hilly stream while the colour mixture is still wet to get a good blend

Depending on what you have you can put layers of matt varnish underneath and then gloss as top layers for the streams. I generally use no fewer than 5 coats of varnish at a maximum of two coats per day to allow proper drying time. The roads have had a light drybrush by now

Coming together nicely now with extra spraying and drybrushing. You will see I had to make an artificial cut out of the hillside to accommodate some buildings for Neue Glofsheim. You can judge how that looks when completed later on. Also putting some background boards round the sides. 

An aerial view of the 8 x 6 completed structural build but there is of course a lot of detail to add in due course 

Luckily I'd managed to complete it to time with a visit from my strapping teenage grandson who could help me bring in the heavy southern piece from garage storage to unite them. I faced this stage with some trepidation - would they fit properly?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
NOTE: In reality at this point I juggled around with my working space and made the "extra bit" side piece on the white tables you see above. I describe that fully further on but so as not to disturb continuity too much here is the reuniting process:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Blending in the two parts 

Well it's in (thanks Euan) and I can't resist having a play with some buildings just to get the juices flowing for how to use my building stock. The contour shape match is not bad .......

....but not sure why - I have messed up the alignment of roads near
Rogging and the stream near Eckmuhl, so a fairly major repair is needed.

I've fitted stiff paper in the stream join (though it's heading uphill nobody seemed to notice!) and will paint it to blend in. Across the whole join I felt the need to rebuild the texture to fill in dips and smooth the abrupt apparent contour shift there. Colour didn't matter much, those spray paints awaited.  

Drying out and weighted down

Significant parts of the waterways
masked off so I can spray the terrain

It appears I did not take any photos of the actual blending and I think that was because I moved on swiftly to arranging woods and buildings.  Judging by this photo which shows the grass repainted but the new roads are merely sketched in so I can place Rogging and Pfakofen villages with buildings kindly loaned by Paul B.

I need to show a photo from near completion to give a proper idea of how it blended in all along the 8 foot join.

The "extra bit" - Laichling to Thalmassing via Luckenpaint 

Regular readers of this blog will have seen this piece many times before, back to its creation in 2015 for our various Waterloo refights. Then it was only 7 feet by 2 feet as I was worried about player space and dispensed with the farthest two feet to give space by the L-shape. 

In practice that had not proved to be so much of a problem back then  so I planned to make this the full 8 feet. Things had changed a bit since though. The drawback was that the main table needed to be shifted over about 8 inches and pulled away from the window by about  a foot to avoid the right hand bookcase. I would still not be able to align the "extra bit" exactly with the main table. Yet I judged that far top left corner of the playing area round Thalmassing could be critical and I needed to model it!

In the photo below I have had to work on it at 90 degrees to its final orientaion. Northern edge is at the left and that is where a couple of feet extra of 18mm MDF supported by screwed and glued wooden  battons has been added.  The existing modelled surface has been lightly sprayed green so I could draw the contours and see how to build it up. The usual cardboard wall round and card "ribs" seemed the best approach. I've cut out a stream bed for the Pfatter river.

Covering with cardboard and masking
 tape, then the brown paper
papier mâché system

Adding appropriately coloured
 "gloop"

The whole thing covered in a layer of texture except
the BUAs, and weighted against warping 

Beginning the spray paint process including the BUA footprints

Continuing to work with spray paints next to the main board to ensure a good match

Sawdust coating the BUAs and executing the roads
 and streams in the same method as previously shown

Happy that I had this extra piece finished up to the same stage as the main table I sorted out the buildings I wanted to use for it and then stored them back in the garage while I finished the main table.  

I want to quit while I am winning so I think that is quite enough for this post. Thanks for getting this far with me. Next time I will try to give some insight into the buildings, woods and fields to try to bring the whole thing alive.