Hedging my bets with lolly sticks

05 May 2020

Can you run an English Civil War wargaming battle without hedges? Well, not on my watch! That meant I needed to source some generic hedges that could serve on any battlefield.

I went through our Wargaming Links Directory and found Serious Play - a wonderful site for this sort of thing and is to be recommended. I ordered the items I needed and they were very efficient in delivering them to me. However, that was before the Covid 19 pandemic so I guess they my be affected now and anyone ordering from them (or any other trader) will need to be patient.

So, my next job is painting, sticking and producing some hedges for my ECW enclosures.

Having sourced the hedges, lolly stick basing flock and various cutting tools I began . . .   

I started by trimming the lolly stick's ends to square them off and painted them with Loren Forest, my favourite basic green which is great for wargaming.

You may have noticed that the lines of hedges come with sticky bases. This lets me quickly put them on the lolly stick when they are done and dried.

Using the lolly sticks for bases is a great idea and one I picked up from Twitter - easy to cut to size, easy to trim and good to paint and handle. They also look great when the hedge is mounted on them and have some heft to them.

All this work had given me two metres of hedges to deploy on the various fields of battle I use them for.

I also used a watered down PVA to add some flock to the base. This gives me a bit of two-tone effect on the base which give them a better look when finished. 

• 16 x 100mm long lengths
• 7 x 40mm long lengths
• 2 x 20mm long lengths
• 1 x 80mm long lengths 

Here they all packed and ready to go when needed.

That could be for Cropredy Bridge 1644, Bunker Hill 1775, Fire and Move 1944 or indeed any battlefield I want to use them on.