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)