Scratch Built 1:600 scenery - Village (Part1)

I've had some 3mm buildings for a while now, from manufacturer's SPC Wargame Creations (complete structures, in resin) and Oddzial Osmy (damaged structures, in metal) obtained through Fighting 15's, but what to do with them? Well I've decided to put some of them in to a village for use in Cold War Commander games. This is how I'm going about creating the finished product. First find a suitable hardboard base, mine is about 300x200x4mm spayed up.

My next process was to decide a road layout and where building plots were going to be. For a bit of village flavour I'll include a stream, bridge, church, various house designs, shops and a pub plus a couple of light commercial buildings representing a petrol station as well as a couple of farm complexes. So I drew a rough map and cut out the shapes.
















Now I put on the first coat of paint to delineate the residential plots from commercial and road. Whilst i know this will be covered over it gives me a feel for what is going on as the build progresses.








Next port of call was to get a bit of surface contouring for which I turned to my trusted polystyrene pizza bases cut to shape using my original card map as a template.  This piece will end up in the top left of the board

I left the road and stream at base level and added the height (stick polystyrene to base using No More Nails); this is placed where where the buildings would eventually be. It also gave an opportunity to include pavements (side walks)

These are a selection of resin buildings primarily from SPC Wargame Creations in resin but also there are a couple of metal buildigs as well as parts from a children's toy.

At each stage I tend to add buildings back to the board just to keep the look in check. This arrangement will not end up being the final one.


This is the board with all the polystyrene glued on. At each stage I tend to add  buildings to the board for effect but they are not fixed at this point






















Everything now slows down a bit as I start to add detail such as walls (polystyrene), fences (plastic packaging straps) and hedges (green wool)

Scratch Built 1:600 scenery - Hills (Part1)

With the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War I have been looking to generate some appropriate scenery for troops to 'yomp' towards and storm. For those of you familiar with this conflict you will know that these objectives were essentially rock topped hills with dug in Agentinian defenders. So I've created a few hills as follows:


My usual technique for creating a bit of height was employed here. Layers of this polystyrene (ex-pizza bases) were sandwiched and stuck together using 'No-More-Nails' all pver a heavy card base. Once dry a final textural covering was added by stippling the glue with my finger. Finally pieces of cork (yes from a wine bottle) were broken up and applied with NMN. 



Once dry the grass slopes were painted green and the rocks grey.
Dimensions are about 200mm by 50mm and 50mm tall (8"x2"x2)




Ithen mixed up a combination of PVA glue, grey paint, and two sizes of railway ballast to act as fallen rocks.
A reasonably pleasing result was produced



I had to do a bit of touching up afterwards of both the grey and green, I also did a bit of dry brushing to add a biy of contrast. I still feel the grass is still a bit too green so will do a bit more work on this but I will probably leave the rocks as they are. Once complete i will have an acceptable 'Wireless Ridge' for the little 'uns to assault.
I will now apply this technique to a few more hills and see what they look like

I've been away

It's been far too long since I last posted to this blog. My other wargaming interest is in 20mm plastic Ancients and I've been doing a lot of painting towards my Greek and Persian armies and have spent little time on 1:600 matters - either playing, painting or creating. However, that has all changed recently and I'm now looking to catch up on the 1:600 blog side of things.