28mm Minefield

Question – how do you depict a mine field on a wargames table?

For the Dumfries show we need a couple of 4 inch x 4 inch minefields. Clearly these are placed on the map to begin with and not revealed, but once they are (hopefully) stumbled into then they need to be marked – somehow.

My first idea was to simply make a couple of 4 inch squares and model a few craters in them, as if the mines had exploded.  Here they are:

The only somewhat obvious issue with this was wow look at the size of that crater! Clearly if a mine that large had gone off there should be destroyed tank or somethig equally heavy next to it. This would be an option at the micro-armour scale but not really at 25/28mm scale. Also it gives the immediate problem of what vehicle to use? Your Normandy beaches mine field isn’t going to look very convincing with a damaged IS-2 in it. Also anti-personel mines are intended to explode upwards and not waste energy making craters, any crater they do make is likely to be very small and virtually invisible at this scale.

So back to the drawing board.

I had some thoughts about using dead figures, but it felt a little macabre and I would need a selection of minefields for each nationality of casualty. Then I thought of this:

 

Making the sign in German will fit in any of the european theatres and appealed to me from my days of reading Battle and Victor comics.

The teller mines are made from slicing up a round pencil. If you do this then I’d suggest using a black pencil crayon. The one I used was bright orange which prooved a little difficult to overpaint. The wooden boxes are approximately 5mm square.