Stalingrad Project: The Third and Final Section is Done!

 

The Southern end of the Stalingrad table is now done!  This section was a smaller 2ft x 6ft section and includes the Univermag Department Store.

The last of the 11 iconic locations from the battle to be completed is the "House of Specialists". It was a large multi story apartment complex that provided an excellent observation post for the Germans to call in Artillery and Air Strikes onto the far side of the Volga.  The current rendition is a re-purposed early version of the Grundin Mill that I converted and repainted.  The model is scratch build from pink foam and was way to small for the Mill but happened to be the right size (3 hexes) for the House of Specialists!

Two of the centerpiece locations on the table is the Univermag Department Store and Red Square.  I put a lot of effort into scratch building both and am very pleased with how they came out.  I need to add a bit more battle damage to the Univermag and may green up Red Square. Having something with a little bit of greenery will really contrast with the drabness of all the urban rubble.

A shot from the front.  Some battle damage has been added but I found it strangely hard to put holes into "my precious" model.

A street level view.  The park did have small trees through out but really didn't have a row of tree along the street next to the department store.  I tossed them in on a whim and kind of like them

Just west of the Department Store is the "L" shaped  Nail Factory which saw very heavy fighting in later part of September.  Next to it is a generic apartment block.  To be honest, the apartment block is on first on the list to be replaced as I tweak the board.  There are two reasons - it's a bit to flat and clean looking (hard edges) and its too tall to be on the edge of the table - player will get caught on it as the lean over it to reach units in the middle of the board.  There is a 99.9% chance it gets "belly squished" during game play.

Some Russian village buildings that are currently being pressed into service as worker home.  At this stage in the battle most of these wooden structures where reduced to ash, rubble and a chimney so I'll likely replace these also.  The buildings are MDF kits for "Things for the Basement" and are very nice.

A shot looking at the rear of the Department store.

A last picture looking at the other side of the House of Specialists.

My gaming table is 8ft by 4ft so will not fit the 10x6ft size of the Stalingrad set up.  I will be adding some 1 ft table extensions so I can set the whole thing up but that will need to wait for warmer weather.   To try and give you an impression of how the table looks here are pictures of each of the sections:

Southern (it's just the left half of the image)

The Middle Section.  The souther section is to the left and the Northern one to the right.

The Northern section.  Since this photo was taken, I have repainted the roads to match the same color that was used on the other table sections.

The entire table is 30 x 18 hexes which is a total of 540 4 inch hexes.  That was a lot of work but I think worth it as the hexes are easy to reconfigure and break down pretty efficiently for storage / transport.  I'll probably build another 150-200 more open terrain hexes for non urban scenarios for the rules I'm writing whic have the working title: Company Command: Kompanie vs Rota.  I'm pretty sure having an over-wrought title is required for any ruleset.

There is still a lot of detail / scatter terrain work to do but that is more on the "nice-to-have" rather "got-to-have" list of things to add.  I also need to continue all the rail lines across the lower and upper sections of the board.  For some idioc reason, I decided to scratch build all the railroad track.  It has a nice "crafty-look" but it is very, very tedious to do.

Some of the items I want to add are

 - trench hexes

 - street barricades

 - wrecked vehicles

 - LED lighting effects for fires

 - artillery craters

 - a little more river front details (docks, maybe some wrecked rivercraft.