Venturing through the horrors of Gloom Trench 1926

After over a year of struggling with Gloom Trench 1926, I realized it had veered off course. The game was initially meant to be a smaller model count skirmish game, focusing on intense, strategic battles with fewer models. However, as development progressed, it began to morph into something akin to larger-scale war games, which was never my intention.

Over on tabletopsentinel.com, I’ve started a blog series where I delve deeper into my journey with the game development and the steps I’m taking to bring it back to its original vision.

If you’re curious about the twists and turns of game development and want to see how Gloom Trench 1926 is evolving, head over to my detailed articles on Tabletop Sentinel. Your support and feedback are invaluable as I work to bring this game back on track.

So, things have been slow for me a bit due to work and life getting in the way, but I hope to be back on this forthwith. Especially as the Kickstarter is now running so I need to pull my finger out!!

In the mean time, I thought I would post up a few pics of the first Scourge sculpts we have printed out. These little cheeky chaps just love to scamper across the battlefield and eat your face off.

Bless them.

Gloom Trench is a grim horror game set in 1926, thanks to the British Empire the first world war never ended. In fact, it got worse…. Much worse

Thanks to research into fringe science, Britain managed to tear a hole between this reality and another – opening up the way for the Scourge to enter our realm and feed on mankind.

It’s a dark, desperate place of eternal war and suffering. So what better setting to embark on a new hobby project!

So, it had been a little while since I had my Saturn printer set-up and running. It has been in storage for a little while, but now it’s all set up in it’s new home in the garage it was time to fire it up and get producing.

After a couple of hiccups, I got the first lot of models produced, ready for painting! 

But before I could embark on painting an army, I need a colour scheme for said army. There were a few stipulations to the colour scheme.

• It had to fit in with the theme of the game
  • So looking at the period of ww1 it had to be muted colours
  • It had to portray the grim horror setting of the game – so grim dark.
• It had to be easy to paint.
  • Painting isn’t something I overly enjoy so any scheme I do has to be fast and easy.
• It has to look great on a table.

With these stipulations in mind, I embarked on figuring out a colour scheme.

Although I say I don’t enjoy painting, and tend to choose schemes that are fast and easy to paint, I have been experimenting with oil paints as I love the grim dark style of painting. Fortunately, as Gloom Trench is a pretty grim and dark setting I decided to use oils (as well as acrylics).

I have to say, the first attempt turned out brilliantly, in my humble opinion.

But I went over the top on the effort. I think I must have spent 3 hours on this one model. That goes against my second stipulation so I had to change it to speed that time up.

For the first attempt I used a black undercoat which meant I was having to block the main colours in by hand. Obviously, this isn’t ideal for a scheme I want to be fast to paint so that was the first thing to change. 

Halfords do camouflage spray cans, and one of those is a Khaki colour, this one in fact: https://www.halfords.com/motoring/paints-and-body-repair/specialist-and-decorative-paints/halfords-camouflage-spray-paint-khaki-300ml-252069.html

It just so happens I have a couple of these cans so I decided I would use that. 

On the first attempt I also used a different colour for cloak and a slightly different colour for the webbing. I decided the spray would be the main colour for the uniform and the cloak, and I would use a green to add some colour change to the webbing and the helmet.

I still used some oil paint on it, Abteilung ABT 160. Engine Oil to be precise,  as I just find it to be brilliant for adding that real grubby grim feel. This was applied mostly to the bottom of the cloak and lower regions of the model to represent mud and stuff picked up on the trenches.

The bases were done with a few pieces of cat litter and ballast in areas, a skull here or there and Vallejo 26.807 Thick Mud European slapped on it. This also got a coating of the Engine Oil oil paint. I also used some tooth pics to which I attached some Army Painter Barbed Wire

You’ll note they aren’t all based on single bases, good spot. Gloom Trench is pretty indifferent to basing but does suggest a ‘1,2,3 base system’ as you see in the pics. Basically, a single model on 25mm, 2 models on 30mm and 3 models on a 50mm base. There is no need to use markers for casualties as you just remove the base you need. And if you can’t, you just remove a larger base and replace it with a smaller base of the right number of models. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to do some extra modelling as the larger bases can be seen as mini dioramas.

Anyway, I’m well pleased with how this second attempt came out, and have decided it is the scheme I will be using going forward with the British. All in all I spent about 3 hours max doing the painting, then probably a further hour doing the bases for all 7 models. That is my type of painting scheme!