Terrain- Small Park

I've been wanting to include some terrain features on my tables that include some iron railings. I ordered a set of spiked railings from Warbases to try them for size and scale and really liked them. From there, I ordered a few more, plus some of their hooped railings as well. 

I had seven spiked railings, which I wanted to use to make a small park area to position amongst my houses. The railings are 80mm long each, and with a supporting column either side, this allowed me to make a decent sized rectangular space.

The columns and low walls are made from foamboard, coated in filler and textured using my usual set of old brushes to give a stony texture. The tops of the columns are squares of MDF trimmed from spare kit pieces. Grass, tufts and shrubbery are from my usual selections to tie everything in together.

The open space in the centre of the park is there to allow me to place a selection of trees in the middle, depending upon what I want to do. My trees are all based on 60mm round bases, so I envisioned putting three in a row, or two and a monument/ statue/ fountain. Those will have to come later, so for now- trees...

As a little addition- here are a selection of my recently completed civilians/ refugees trailing past the park on their way out of town... The road surface is just a couple of sheets of sand paper, painted grey and textured with pigments, washes and drybrushes. I intend to use inside the yards my high walls will enclose and just generally for any stretch of land that isn't grass of roadway.

Terrain- Streams (& Culverts)

 After making my rivers, I knew that I’d then want to make some streams using the same principles, just in smaller scale. I was also interested in making a set of culverts to allow the streams to pass under my roadways. I got the idea from a blogger called The Tactical Painter, whose blog you can find here. Using his excellent tutorial as a guide, I decided to make my own culverts, and produce some sections of stream to go along with them. As I set up my stuff to begin, I also thought, why don’t I do a ‘how to’ post into the bargain?!

So here we are, my first How To post. I hope it’s useful!!!

I made the bases for the culverts and streams from the same waterproof tablecloth material that I used for my river sections. It’s hard-wearing and flexible- I like it because it can follow the contour of a gaming table, and will work particularly well for strips such as this. Onto the strips, I glued stones and gravel to mark out the streams themselves.

For the culverts, I cut strips of foam board, which is a material I use a great deal, and carved out an opening to represent the channel in the culvert.

For a bit of variation, I included a small footbridge on one section, constructed from a strip of coffee stirrer and some BBQ skewer lengths. After that, I gave everything with a black undercoat. 

My next step was to add texture to the culverts themselves. I wanted them to be rough stone, so I decided to use the same technique that I’d used to texture the walls of my church. I applied filler to the outside surfaces of the culverts, and then stippled them with an old brush with short, wiry bristles. This produces a nice effect, which I think looks great once painted and drybrushed.

It was then that I realised that I could have waited to do the black undercoat until after I’d applied the filler. Hey ho. I then painted the culverts black once the filler was dry. I took a photo of this, but it’s not a crucial step for me to show you, I think… (Facepalm).

I then moved onto texturing the stones. As with my rivers, I drybrushed these in two stages, followed by an ink wash. First I applied Citadel’s Mournfang Brown, followed by their Xandri Dust. I had given the wooden footbridge a basecoat of Army Painter’s Oak Brown between these two drybrushes, and it too got the Xandri Dust treatment. After that was dry, I applied a good layer of Agrax Earthshade over the whole lot.

The next stage was to paint the culverts. I basecoated them in a grey emulsion I have in a tester pot from a local DIY store. I’ve got several different shades, and any one of them would have done. A couple of coats were applied to get an even colour. 

At this point, I also added tiles to the upper surface of the culverts. These are cardboard tiles that I cut in the hundreds to use as roofing ridge tiles and for the tops of walls, pavement curbs, etc. I knew they’d fit in here. I painted the tiles using Army Painter’s Necromancer Cloak and then drybrushed the whole culvert with Vallejo’s Pale Stone. I tied the two grey colours together with an Agrax Earthshade wash afterwards.

Similar to my model basing, I then painted all grassy areas with a coat of burnt umber. Once dry, I applied grass with PVA, avoiding the gravel and the water channels in the middle. To the water channels, I drybrushed/ stippled a small amount of Vallejo Black Green to add some variation of colour and tie into the watery colour I used for my rivers. (Notice, I also cut away some of the Culvert bases. I did this on a whim, but think I prefer the smaller footprint.)

Once this was done, I decorated each section with tufts and little clumps of scatter foliage. After a spray of matt varnish, the final step was to apple Vallejo Still Water to the water channels/ streams to give them the shiny water effect that the matt varnish would have dulled if I’d done it previously.

Terrain- Train Tracks

I've long wanted to add some railway-type stuff to my gaming table. I've looked longingly at Sarissa's lovely trains and tracks and then glanced forlornly at my threadbare wallet... (Sob...) My spirits were lifted when I noticed TT Combat's additions to the railway theme in their World War range. I've got several other buildings from that range and have no complaints about TT Combat MDF kits. They're cheaper to buy, and so can be a bit simpler in design, but not always. To this end, I purchased the Railway station and signal box kit, and a more recent Soviet railway kit including an engine shed and some railroad clutter. Each of those kits comes with plenty of track pieces.

Straight away, I got to making up the tracks from the Soviet kit. Ten straight sections allowed me to make enough to cross my gaming table and be a starter for other railway elements to arrive in the future. I made four longer sections by joining two sections together and kept two shorter sections separate for different table sizes. 

I based the MDF sections on the same waterproof tablecloth that I used for my rivers. It's thin, cuts easily and doesn't raise the tracks up too high from the table. I want to create some raised track embankments that I'll simply lay these pieces on top of, eventually, but that is a project for the future...

Ballast came from World War Scenics in a nice, big bag. I've got plenty left for the rest of the track sections left to build. I'll probably make a ballast mound with some of the leftovers as a thematic bit of clutter for around the engine shed once it's built. Then, I just need to get me some choo choos...

Terrain- Defensive Positions

Here's a few defensive positions and earthworks that I've painted up recently. They're all resin pieces from Anyscale Models. You can buy them individually or get some of them in bundle packs. There's plenty more options (including a few bunkers and pillboxes too) which I intend to get in the near future too.

These were all quick and easy to do. Earth colour. Wood colour. Sandbag colour. Brisk drybrush and then a dark brown/black wash. I added a few entrenching tools that I pulled from an old Warlord British weapon sprue- picks and shovels to add a bit more interest. I considered adding some more packs and pouches, as soldiers tend to litter their firing positions with all manner of debris, but I also didn't want to link any of these pieces to one particular nation of another. I might reconsider and add the odd German gas mask canister of British Bren magazine pouch here or there, but for now I'm happy. Some scratch-built ration tins might be fun though?!

Sandbag Barricades

Even simpler to paint. After a light tan brown base coat, I drybrushed with a lighter bone colour, followed by a dark brown/ black wash. Job done!

 

Terrain- A Scattering of Stuff!

The saying that armies can get finished, but scenery just keeps on going is starting to feel like a truism for me... Now that I've got a reasonable amount of scenery made, I can start playing around with set-ups for my games. I really enjoy placing terrain on the table and seeing what I can arrange where. Can I make it seem believable? Would buildings fall in the positions I've put them in? What would sensibly go where? I like asking those questions, but don't always manage to reach a satisfactory answer. I'm limited by the terrain I have built and completed so far. Another building 'over there' might have just finished a layout off, but as I make more bits and bobs, I'm managing to make increasingly pleasing arrangements. But, ironically, as I've managed to put more scenery onto my table, I've identified a new problem. Things aren't cluttered enough!

What I mean by this is street clutter. Day-to-day detritus. The stuff people leave lying around to show that they exist in a place. People are messy, and people in wars even more so! Wargames terrain and tables can be clean and crisp and free from mess, unless it's a bomb-blasted cityscape, of course, but little details can add interest and enjoyment and credibility and don't need to be expensive or over complicated. From a game perspective, clutter can also provide valuable cover or cause blockages to movement and lines of sight. It can add colour to a game and help support a narrative. Or, as I've realised, it can just help make things look more interesting... 

There's a mixture of resin and 3D printed stuff here. The oildrums are all from Anyscale Models, a company I have used for quite a few bits and pieces. They have a wide range of 'clutter' and some really nice WW2 vehicles in 28mm scale and others. Well worth a check out. The barrels are 3D purchases from eBay and the crates/ barricades are from Charlie Foxtrot.

The water pumps are from Hovels, which I got at the same time as my resin bridge. The woodpile came in the eBay pack with the barrels, above.

Opel Blitz

This is an Anyscale Models resin that I'd had my eye on ever since I'd discovered the company. I wanted to include military debris on my tables, as some zones would be fought over multiple times and still have the wreckage from previous engagements littered around. I painted it up to look like the grey Opel Blitz in my Heer army, and added a few decals left over from the Warlord sheet. Thematically, it could be a strafed truck carrying important cargo that either side needs to retrieve, which could have a scenario built around it? Or, it could just be a cool piece of scenery blocking a road or junction. The second picture shows some 'clutter' loaded on the flatbed.

Sherman Tank

Same as for the Opel Blitz wreck, I thought some fighting vehicle debris would look good, and this Anyscale Models resin is perfect. They've got several other examples for different nations, but these were the two that fit my current armies. If I can find cheap vehicle models that I can bash up, I'll definitely add some more to my collection to represent roadblocks, ambushes and aerial strafing runs. I painted this Sherman to represent a British/ Commonwealth vehicle rather than  American. I need to get some divisional symbols, so Allied stars and War Department serial numbers will have to do for now.

Terrain- Rivers

In a roundabout way, this particular element of wargaming terrain is the main contributing factor to why I started creating a blog. Fair warning- there's a bit of autobiography before getting to the pictures on this post... ;D

A few years ago, I returned to tabletop wargaming, model making and painting after many years away from a much-loved hobby. Life, work and children had all contributed to the gradual decline and then my eventual departure from all things hobby related. As years passed and children grew, the world carried on turning and circumstances changed, I found myself able to revisit wargaming and model-making again, and discovered a (then) new ruleset for WW2 called Bolt Action. Wheels were set in motion and my decades of fantasy and science fiction gaming shifted firmly into a historical setting which has always been of enormous interest to me.

My armies grew, and then my gaming table started to take shape. Trees, hedges, fences and walls are all early purchases/ builds. Roads are easy to build or buy. A couple of buildings grew into several and I started to feel like I had enough 'stuff' to fill a small table and battle across it. Seeing all of these elements grow and take shape was enormously pleasing. Since I'd been a boy of ten or eleven, I'd always looked in awe at pictures in Wargames Illustrated and White Dwarf and dreamed about having a beautiful scenery-laden gaming table, I was starting to get there, but there was one feature I was struggling to get hold of. I'd always wanted to have some rivers...

I don't like any of the professionally manufactured versions on the market. They can look very artificial (which is a bizarre thing to say about a fake wooden/ plastic/ resin water feature) and often come in garish bright blue colours that really put me off. I decided I wanted to try and make my own, but my next problem was finding a technique or method that I felt represented what I wanted my rivers to look like.

It wasn't easy. Youtube and Google gave me plenty of suggestions, but none fit what I wanted exactly, until I came across a talented gamer and model-maker from Australia called John Bond. His blog was massively eye-opening. I first discovered it after a Google search for 'making wargames rivers'. That's what I was given and that's all I've ever needed. And, to add to the bargain, I was introduced to the world of wargaming blogs and the excellent work of John and many others like him. The rest, as they say, is history...

So here they are, my rivers:

In his tutorial, John Bond bases his river sections in MDF, but I chose to try something different. These sections are based on waterproof tablecloth- the stuff you throw over the dining table before the kids get their poster paints out or you see covering primary school tables. I've got several that my kids used to use- it's flexible, can be cut easily and is lightweight. Plus, I don't have any wood...

The short river section below with the bull-rushes was my tester. I used the techniques from John's tutorial- small stones for the banks, Vallejo colours for the water, and coated with Vallejo Still Water that I'd bought for another project. Sand, flock, grass and shrubbery around the edges tied everything in to my particular basing style, but underneath, this is 90%+ John's technique, and I am very happy with it too!

The bends and smaller sections came along after doing several longer sections and being happy with the results. The stepping stones and the stony ford added a bit of variety to the mix. (I allow infantry and bicycle troops to move over the stepping stones on an Advance move, and both of the above plus cavalry and motorbikes to cross the ford on an Advance. Vehicles need to use the bridge.)

The bridge is a resin cast from Hovels. I like the level of detail with resin compared to the MDF bridges I've seen. This particular one has long been a favourite which I had marked down as a possibility once I finally get around to making rivers. I cut a base for the bridge and its sections of water from the same waterproof cloth I'd been using and added grass, stones and tufts as per my usual techniques. The bull-rushes are paint brush bristles cut to length and glued into place.

Terrain- Building 9- Terraces

This kit is from TT Combat. It's a great little piece that allows you to create a decent length row of terraced houses really cheaply. The detail on the kit is great, and it's generic enough that a bit of customisation can be made to dress it up quite easily.

I'd had success using brick paper on my scratch-made water tower, so I wanted to try it out on a larger building to see if the effect was just as good. I also felt that brick paper would speed up the process of getting the kit table-ready , compared to using filler, etc for the walls. I used the same brick paper that I had used for the water tower (and would then use again for the Boulangerie), and I must say I like the scale, colour and overall effect of this. I have other brick papers which I will try out on other kits, but I think I'll use this one the most... 

I added back yards to the houses to increase the overall footprint, using foamboard for the walls. The original TT Combat kit has no back doors, so I decided to make outhouses that extended out from the rear of the house to define one side of the yard and then join them together by a back wall. This allowed me to enclose the yards with back gates and make a self-contained block.

Walls and roofs are tiled with cardboard tiles, as per, and the spare shutters from the kit (where ground floor rear windows are now covered by an outhouse) were utilised to make shuttered windows on the extensions themselves.

I wanted to make one of the back yards a little different, as I felt three identical enclosed yards would be a bit dull. I omitted the back gate to allow for an open yard and gave the outhouse two doors instead of a window. I had an MDF motorbike from Sarissa rattling around, and had always planned on making a little garage or workshop and have it propped up outside. This seemed like a good option for quite a small yard space and so I decided to create a little backstreet business. I added some crates and oil drum clutter and stuck a few suitable automobile related posters to the yard wall and a Michelin advert outside, A wall-mounted lamp from the Rubicon street furniture sprue finished things off nicely. A couple of other posters and advertisements seemed to be enough to finish off this model- I wanted something big on the end wall to break up a big expanse of red brick. I positioned it as I have so that if I place one end of the terrace against another building, I can flip the upper floor round and have the poster on the other end.

Terrain- Building 8- Boulangerie

Boulangerie

This is the second building that I have completed from a set produced by a company called Game Cult on eBay. The first one I finished was my church, and these two were the stand-out kits in a multi-kit set, and as a result, are the ones I've completed first. 

I like the multiple levels of the roofs and the archway on this kit. It made the building a little bit different to the boxy nature of quite a few MDF kits you can buy, and it got my imagination racing as to the possibilities I could do with the kit. As always, I wanted to extend the footprint of the building and included a yard. I've made a few of these now and am reasonably confident now. I also wanted to cover the kit in brick paper to tie it in with a set of terraced houses from TT Combat that I had just completed and thought worked really well. (I'll post the terraces soon, but wanted to show this building first because I think it's really cool...)

An interesting feature of Game Cult MDF kits is that the building is not split into floors that lift off individually, rather the back wall of the kit slides up and out on guide runners once the roofs are removed. You can see these in the pics below. It's not as awkward as I first thought it might be, and it also allowed me to attach a drainpipe to the back wall that didn't need sectioning to fit to individual storeys of a more conventional kit.

The exterior stairway is actually the one included in the kit to put inside the building. I chose not to use it that way because I don't want extra clutter inside when I place troops. Instead, I thought about using it as an external metal stair leading to the upper floor. The door at the top is one I fashioned from cardboard bits and bobs, which covered a nice blank space in the wall- perfect for a new feature. 

The yard is surrounded by foamboard walls, just like the ones I've made for my other buildings, capped with cardboard tiles. The paving stones in the yard are leftover sheets from when I paved the yard of my hotel- it took a bit of jiggery-pokery to make what I had left fit the dimensions, but I covered any joins with moss and 'weathering'.

The gate into the yard is made from coffee stirrers, like all of my gates, with card and wire bits to make hinges and handles. After looking at all the rounded ends I'd snipped off to make it, I thought I'd have a go at shaped ridge tiles across the roofs. It was a bit fiddly to attach them, but I'm happy with how they came out- they definitely add a little extra to the building.

The archways have stones over the top to break up all of the red brick and gives them a bit of definition, and the chimney top is a couple of Lego pieces, as per... 

Decorations include posters and shop signs lifted from the collections I've downloaded online, a wall-mounted lamp by the back gate from the Rubicon street furniture set and a clock mounted on the front of the building that I free-handed onto an oval MDF piece that pushed out of another kit and was lying around in the 'bits and pieces' tub for just such an occasion.

I'm really pleased with how this came out. I plan to have a cobbled road piece connecting to the back of the arch, so the side gate opens onto the roadway. Traffic can pass through the arch and connect onto the road in front of the Boulangerie, making it a bit more interesting than just a normal T junction. With buildings either side, this will make for some interesting set-ups, I hope...

Terrain- High Walls

I'd wanted to make some high walls for a while now. All of my obstacles- hedges, fences and stone walls, to date, have been waist/ chest height, so I wanted to produce something taller to block line of sight and offer some variety.

As I've made more and more urban scenery, I felt like I wanted some taller walls to create storage yards and enclosed spaces to make things a bit more interesting. A continued inspiration for me as I've grown in confidence as a scenery maker has been John Bond and his wargaming blog. He produced some high walls a good while back for his Chain of Command games, and these provided a basis for my ideas. You can see John's walls on his blog here.

I don't have carpentry skills or tools to make attractive walls from wood, like John, but I do like to use foamboard to extend my MDF buildings. I used the same material here, which I'd found worked well for the high walls around my hotel backyard so thought it would do nicely. Instead of engraving brickwork and cracks into the walls, I experimented with using printed brick paper to represent the exposed brickwork under the plaster cladding. I stuck some patches of brick paper onto the bare walls, then added watered-down filler to make the plaster texture over the top. After painting the 'plaster' and capping the tops of the walls with cardboard tiles, I added weathering, moss, rubble and posters.

I like how these came out, and will go back to some of my earlier buildings and add chipped bits of brickwork poking through on some of the more bare surfaces. Watch this space...

I made the gates in my usual way- coffee stirrers. The hinges and lock plates are cut from cardboard. The gate handles are small sections of paperclip bent into loops.

Because foamboard is quite soft, I was able to poke little holes into the surface with a pin to make bullet holes. Think I'll go back and do the same to my older buildings to add a bit more 'war' to them...

The wall sections with the corners missing from the base allow me to join two walls together to make a corner (see below).

I also made two small t-sections to allow me to put walls at right angles to one another and make some different enclosed areas.