Hi

Just whipped up a quick concept sketch for a 1/35 dio I've been thinking about for a while. It's not to scale, just a rough layout. Americans are advancing from the left towards the edge of a small village, there will be two shermans and a bunch of infantry. The german defenders have a panther in the top right, tiger bottom right. The Tiger will be mostly hidden by shrubs/trees and camo from the sherman on the road but a bazooka team has snuck up to the ridge overlooking it at the bottom taking aim at it's rear. An MG42 team will be on the landing of the tower taking aim down the road. More germans will be in/around the dugout exchanging fire with the americans moving up towards the top left.

I was considering some camo net over the german dugout but I think it will obscure the infantry too much so I'll probably place some more larger trees nearby.

I was also thinking of a wrecked willys or greyhound farther up the road that was damaged by the tiger and crashed into the embankment.

I'm not sure if there should be a mound in the middle where the dugout is or if I should devide the dio into two levels with a ramp leading to the upper level in the top left and then make some bomb/arty damaged buildings in the upper section with the dugout becoming a fortified ruined house. The upper level would only be 1.5-2m higher with a stone wall running along the side of the road.

If you're wondering about the size of it, it will be inside a coffee table I'm making.

I wanted to have one of the german tank crews caught by surprise running from the building with the tower towards their tank but I can't find any tankers running.



There will be a lot more plants, I just didn't bother drawing it all.

Hi,

I can really not add really much to comment on your layout.
I think, this is the kind of dio every dio-builder dreams of building.
A complete battle in a highly interesting landscape. Perfect.

But, as you want to put this in a coffee table (a wonderful idea), are you sure about the height requirements or limits. With correct sized trees, the groundwork and a base, this is going to be a high dio.

More , importantly, this will be a center piece in your living room, for every visitor to see, so i feel free to ask you what is your experience level in building dio's. Because you are planning some serious and difficult stuff here. Are this inches ? 48 inches = 122 cm. That's a lot to fill !

How long to you plan to work on it?
I sincerly hope to see this one develope succesfully, it will be very interesting to watch.

Cheers
Claude

Gday there
This is one seriously ambitious diorama! I'll echo a couple of Claudes' points, namely do you have the experience to pull off a successful diorama of this size, and will it fit!? You've got pine trees here, remember...
The layout is very well thought out. Couple of things though... Your Allied force knows of the Tiger threat by way of the bazooka team, so I'm sure they would be doing all in their power to warn the Sherman crew...?
The greyhound brewed up would be a good touch as a recce squad that were ambushed...
What if the Panther and Tiger were swapped, and the new Tiger position just left of centre behind the big pine? This way it would have a great cover of the bottleneck before the roads branch? (of course this defeats the purpose of showing the 2 forces in battle!)
Best of luck in your journey!
Cheers
Brad

First thing I checked was the height of the large trees to see if the table would be too high. I'm going on 10-12m which is correct for some species of pine/fir. Also because its within a village the trees can be younger regrowth/planted rather than fully grown. That scales to 28.5 - 34cm for the largest trees, the taller ones will be placed on the lowest parts of the terrain. My couch is fairly high and because the table will have a glass top and sides I can get away with it being around 60cm high (around knee height when sitting) without it "looming". I wasn't going to put legs on it.

I don't have much experience with WW2 Dio's in terms of armour and figures but I've made a lot of landscapes for wargaming and fantasy Dio's over 15yrs. I made a scale model of Krak Des Chevaliers that was roughly 2m long with LOTS of figures. I'm not concerned with the terrain or buildings, but I don't have much experience with figure conversions/mods. Luckily my uncle owns a hobby shop and has been modelling for 30 odd years .

Regarding the construction timeline I'm guessing at least 6+ months, don't plan on rushing it. Which means I have plenty of time for details to get it looking right.

HONEYCUT: I was going to place a figure between the bazooka team and the sherman on the road either running back to the sherman or signalling it. If I can find a running tank crew I was going to have them running towards the Tiger with the americans trying to disable it or stop them reaching it.

This sounds very good and promising for this dio. So please post some progress pictures. We definitely want to see it.
As for modifying figs, may i direct you towards the Historicus Forma - Armorama subsite, where Markus and others made wonderful tutorials about basic sculpting.

As an actual castle builder, i really want to see your "Krak des chevaliers" build. Do you have some pictures of it ?

Cheers
Claude

Thanks, I'll checkout the sculpting stuff.

No pics of the castle . I made it in '93-94 for a friend and never thought of keeping a build diary, really wish I had.

I'm going to do some more planning before I get started. I'll refine the terrain in 3d studio so I can get it right before I start the build. I'll keep you updated.

Ineluki,

You may have to revisit the scale of this diorama.

Using my military background, in 1/35th scale, quite honestly you are going to have to look closely at why would everything be so close and create the terrain and do figure/armor placement accordingly for it to look realistic. Even if one had one infantryman on one end of the board and a second on the other end (48") they would be 140 feet apart in real life or under 50 meters. Half way between is 25 meters. This is almost suicidially close for combat. Grenades should be thrown 20 meters. Infantryman are taught to engage targets at over 200 meters for starters. Remember, MG's reach out to 800 meters and chew through foliage and trees between it. A grenade will wound/kill within 10 meters. The kill diameter of a 88M HE Tiger tank round is 50 meters. Tactically infantry will also not let infantrymen get this close to their trenches. Unless everyone literally cannot see eachother they would all either be wounded, dead, blazing away at eachother, or surrendering.

Also, remember that a Tiger tank in 1/35th scale is roughly 12 inches long from exhaust pipe to the end of its barrel. You have it drawn as a much smaller vehicle that only takes up a little bit of room. In all honesty, the Tiger tank will cover as much as 1/8th of this diorama's physical space just by itself. You have 8 square feet (2 x 4) and a Tiger tank will physically cover 1 square foot (about). If you position the Tiger at one edge and a Sherman at the other their barrels will be around 24 inches apart or 70 feet in real life. In between these two vehicles you have drawn a pond, a bunker/dugout, a split in the road, a ridge that the Tiger is on and suggested a wrecked vehicle. I'm not sure that is possible in 1/35th scale. Also, it is nearly impossible for WWII tanks to sneak up on each other to under 50 meters since they make a hell of a lot of noise.

You have positioned the bazooka team nearly next to the Panther. A bazooka can destroy a Panther from 50 meters. Why would the team get so close? Also, if the bazooka team actually fired the weapon from as close to the Panther as the drawing suggests they would most likely be killed in the explosion when the warhead hits the tank.

Between the Tiger, Panther, two Sherman tanks, potentially a wreck, a ridge, two roads, a dugout, and two buildings things will be on top of eachother.

Sorry for the long comments and I am not being critical of the idea (I think it is great and long for the day I have the room and time to do something like this) but didn't want you to start this potentially very expensive and time consuming project and find out that everything did not fit. A diorama with this amount of "stuff" could easily be 4 feet by 8 feet and tactically it still would be very close. May make more sense in 1/76 scale for this size of base.

Respectfully,

Marty
US Marine (1993 - 2003)

KCBuilder: Thanks for the input. As I said initially the sketch isn't to scale, the layout isn't final, the size isn't final it doesn't include all the trees and plants, etc. The reason I was going to have things so close is that the area was going to be heavily wooded and I wanted the impression of the americans driving into a sh*t storm. Sure an MG42 can engage a target at 800yards but only with line of sight. The reason the bazooka team was going to be so close is because there is no line of sight on the tiger from farther back. Again I wanted to show that things were going downhill very quickly.

I acknowledge that 2ft x 4ft isn't big enough, I worked that out fairly quickly when playing with the design in 3d studio. I'm not sure how you worked out the scale of the tiger though, when placed on an angle it only takes up just over 7x7 inches not including the barrel which was going to be extended through the trees/shrubs. With the tiger at one end and sherman at the other the distance between them is around 30" from muzzle to muzzle, still far too close though.

Back to the drawing board...

Perhaps two side tables, one with advancing americans the other with defending germans? /Ponder.

Now that is an interesting solution! Maybe 4 corner tables might work better? Would spread it out and leave your basic idea intact. Just a thought building on your unique solution.
Cheers
Jeff

Why not do it the other way .
Use the whole Living room as base for the dio and find a place in between to seat yourself . :-) :-)

Just a little joke on a Friday morning.

Myself i am running in this distance problem in my Clervaux dio, the last planned part will be limitly plausible. Panzers firing on the castle from only 10 feet in 1/35 (100 m in real). I will try to use height difference and a forest as visual limitation and explanation.

I hope you will figure out a solution for your project.

Cheers
Claude

Ineluki, looking at the layout I'd say that it will be an interesting dio. Combat dios are quite hard to do convincingly however.I've looked at the feedback before I pass an opinion so as not to repeat things. Firstly I can't see a problem with the Shermans. If they're moving up the slope they're in enfilade positions so wouldn't be touched by the German armour.One brewed up would be good to add dramatic effect. If its a defensive position Tellermines will have been planted so a shed track would be nice. Once your forward infantry have seen the armour threat the bazooka will come into play. Althought the bazooka had a decent range the crew would get as close as possible to obtain a kill rather than watch it bounce off into the distance and then get mowed down by machine gun fire. I disagree with KC Builders comment re the proximity of the infantry to dug in positions. I spent 5 yrs in the British Army as an Infantry JNCO and we were always taught to get on top of positions/bunkers before we used grenades. Posting them was how it was described. That is the nature of infantry fighting. Up close and personal instead of swanning about in tanks. To take an entrenched position (which after all is the object of the attack) your infantry will have to engage in hand to hand.If an MG is in defilade it cannot reach an enfilade which is what you have, which is quite normal. Tactically I would have placed the MG in the woodline behind the first sherman (furthest away) and a second MG in the church tower so they have interlocking fields of fire. That would be a standard defence. All arcs interlock in defensive positions.
Why not...now heres the crux...lose the German armour and use the two Shermans. They've been knocked out by panzerschreck teams covered by MG's(as is normal in urban ops. Usually infantry anti-tank weapons) and a US platoon has been sent forward to take out the armour threat? That way you get your armour and the CQB? Just a thought...
Hope thats of help........
Royal Anglian Regt1988-1993

nice idea there.is it goin to be snow covered and all that.
and also while i was reading your first post that you wer using a dining table,if you were sasafied with your effort and work you could make it into a dining table and use it,but you would have to make the trees smaller and plexiglass the top,if you get what i mean,but it was just a random thought.


matt

I'm still thinking about a solution. I was going through some of my books and reference images and found some really nice photos from the start of winter '44 and the fog is so thick you can barely see details 20m away from the photographer. If I rig up a fog machine it'd be a good excuse for them to be that close . I got sidetracked thinking about a nightfight and using an ultra bright LED to simulate a flare that had been fired into the air. That led to working out how I could make tracers in midair (UV light and reactive paint on the tracer?). Now I'm thinking of converting half of a spare room into a display! Thanks for putting that idea in my head Roudeleiw .

Back on track, I did another sketch. I removed most of the building across from the tower and shifted the tiger to the road in the bottom right corner. I also moved the dugout into the top right corner getting rid of the panther. Then I had the top left sherman breaking through a stone wall close to the edge with the infantry around it. The other sherman is closer to the corner on the road and the bazooka team is much closer to the bottom left corner.

That makes the Americans about 70cm (24.5 meters) away from the closest germans with a fair amount of trees and shrubs between. Seems like a reasonable distance to me.

Damn! Now there would be an idea... You could cut most of what you are planning, and have the flare as a focal point in a smaller dio... Would be more feasible to have the flare as having just been fired so as to support it through its 'trail' from the ground maybe... Illuminating the ambush party in positions on the ground... Hmmm... Sorry, just thinkin out loud