World War Two For Hippos: Ishoo Sixty-For Bee: Pretty Pictures of Normandy Beaches

Well, it took a little while, but here they are! Pictures of all four sections of the Normandy Beach set. Some members of the USMC have agreed to pose for the photos to give them scale, although they are at present not painted. That's a job for another day...

Ishoo Sixty-For: World War Two For Hippos - Normandy Beaches

If you are going to play the Normandy Campaign, chances are you will eventually get the itch to refight the D Day landings. Which is understandable. And epic. You'll need beaches. Lots of beaches. Big beaches. But do not lose heart!  A beach is not an insurmountable obstacle! Let Drill Sergeatn Cleetus P. Grot III explain.

And there you have it Hippo fans! It's not really very hard to build a single beach module - you'll probably want at least four of these so you can set them up next to each other as a four-foot long beach front to fight over.
Pretty pictures are now available of the whole set.
Anyway, that's about it for the World War Two for Hippos fortnight. I'm working on Chaos conversions right now, but we have not seen the last of Oufsette Des Frite - the other parts of town will be built in future!

Ishoo Sixty-Free: Village Square (La Place Des Pommes-Frites)

Welcome back to a further instalment in World War Two for Hippos! This time we're looking at making a village square for our little corner of Normandy, the village of Ouffettes Des Frite. In this ishoo, we're building the square itself, but the really important part of any French village square is not the cobblestone part in the middle - it's the cafes and shops around the outside! We'll be tackling those in Ishoo Sixty-Fiv (Sixty-For is a people's choice ishoo, and you have a day left to influence the outcome of the vote!)
Anyway, here's Herr Schmurtzige Hippoptomus to explain things...

PART ONE: La Place Des Pommes-Frites.

PART TWO: Dirt to cobble stone road adaptor pieces.

And there you are!

By this point I suspect a fair few of you are wondering why the village square is called 'The Place of French Fries.' There is a good reason. Really. Originally, the statue was to be a 15mm napoleonic or something, but much to my surprise Eureka Miniatures was closed when I went there on Friday. But I had a 15mm dog... One of my favourite crime novels is 'Monsieur Pommplemousse' (I have almost certainly spelled that wrong) by Michael Bond. The redoutable Aristide Pommplemousse is ably assisted in his offical job of resteraunt guide writer and his side-line of amateur detection by his ex-police blood hound, Pommes-frites. So naturally, if there was to be a statue of a noble hound in the village square, it was to be of Pommes-Frites! Never mind that the books all take place post war...

Anyway, you've got mere hours left to vote in the readers choice poll and enter the terrain compometition, so naturally, you should do both!

Ishoo Sixty-Too: Normandy Ruins

Welcome back to WW2 For Hippos! This ishoo we'll be looking at making some buildings to go with the bocage riddled roads from last ishoo. When you have panzers, dive bombers and bazookas going off in close proximity, you tend to end up with ruined houses. Which is just what we'll be looking at this ishoo. It's fairly easy to adapt the techniques shown to make intact houses as well (and in the near future, we'll be looking at making Normandy shops which will also help you with ideas and what Grot would call 'tekineeks')
Take it away, l'hippopotame minable!

And there you have it! Proof that there are some languages Grot speaks even worse than English! Also a nice ruin.

And if you hang around for about twenty minutes, you'll be just in time for Ishoo Sixty-Free: Le Place Des Pommes-Frite!