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.

Building a 1:600 scale airfield (Part4)

 So let’s scatter some of my buildings onto the airfield back drop and see what we get. 

Looking 'North' over a provisional layout

There is still a bit of painting to do to remove the original wider black runway but essentially this is the final layout. On the far side of the runway is the HAS complex with 4x F-16's and x2 F15's (both Tumbling Dice) added for scale.   
In the foreground, left to right are the four buildings of the Barrack block, then the control tower, 'round' hanger, Fire station, square hanger, and workshop (the grey 'concrete' hard standing has yet to have any markings applied), then three warehouse / shopping Malls (two scratch built) and the school complex.

Looking 'East' over the finished Airfield

Airfield painting completed, though I'm still not convinced by the colour of the lighter 'concrete' taxiways as they look too yellow to me. Also, the hand painting to remove the original wider black runway needs to blend into the main field area better.


This picture was taken before a game of Cold War Commander but the layout is the same as above apart from the HQ building barging into the place of the school that has now moved further 'East'. 










 

Firestation, hanger and workshop hard standing





I've added markings to the hard standing to give a car park and aircraft movement lanes as well as some hazard markings around the fire station





HQ Building warehouses, hangers and the school 







This picture shows, from top to bottom, the HQ Building, a collection of fox-holes, warehouses, hangers and finally the school with houses. The numbered markers were used to 'hide' combatants during the game

HAS Complex

And finally the HAS complex, similarly marked up, this time with British Jaguars and Harriers (both from Tumbling Dice) providing scale.

The making of the HAS complex will be the subject of my next few posts.


Building a 1:600 scale airfield (Part3) Sky Wave Models

I also have a number of plastic buildings (1:700 scale)  from Japanese company Sky Wave:
Set 23 is for airfields:


Hanger Type A



Hanger Type A again


 

Hanger Type B































Set 24 contains factories but I do not own

Set 25 is a town building set with houses & school / hotel :

Building a 1:600 scale airfield (Part2a) Cruise Line Models

2. I had sourced a number of excellent resin airfield buildings (1:700 scale)  from Cruise Line Models some time ago and whilst constructing the airfield I was also painting these:




CLM7000005 Headquarters/Hospital building

 This building is impressive (Dimensions: 175mm x 100mm x 37mm) and could form a centre piece to a number of scenarios acting as a presidential palace, seat of government or administration, a hospital or a college/ university building. Unfinished -grounds need car parking to be added

CLM7000001 Air traffic control tower

The control tower (Dimensions: 80mm x 46mm x 31mm high) is painted up in limited camouflage and probably only has airfield / airport applications. There are separate aerials but adding these will cause storage problems.














CLM7000004 Fire Station

 
The Fire station (Dimensions: 75mm x 55mm x 19mm) is painted up in limited camouflage though it could be used in any urban context. I need some vehicles as fire appliances to finish it off so will probably have to convert army trucks. Unfinished.







CLM7000007 Workshop

 


This building looks more like a factory than a warehouse (Dimensions: 124mm x 52mm x 18mm high) so again will have a universal application. Unfinished. 






CLM7000008 Hanger

 


This hanger (Dimensions: 85mm x 85mm x 15mm) has had a very rudimentary first coat applied. It is open with 2 sets of doors yet to be applied (there is also a closed variant available). Unfinished.




CLM7000003 Workshop

 

This general utility building (Dimensions: 124mm x 52mm x 18mm high) looks like a warehouse or small industrial unit with office space so again will have a universal application. Unfinished.

The following buildings have not yet been painted or based:
CLM7000006 Warehouse
CLM7000002 Workshops

Building a 1:600 scale airfield (Part1)

Can't recall exactly what drove me to it but I wanted an airfield as a back drop to a CWC scenario so I set about building one. Elements to include / Considerations:

1. Runway - scale representation, permanently put onto a board or mounted onto card sections
2. Buildings - Bought or scratch built, what to include and where to put them

1. They were clearing out the warehouse at work some time ago and I chanced upon a large 1500x800x4mm sheet of plasti-board abandoned by our Marketing department so it was duly liberated as a "that will come in handy" addition to my gaming materials. This was to form the basis of my airfield.
I aimed to make my airfield double sided (somehow) so I cut the sheet in half width ways and rejoined it both sides with silver/grey duct tape. In that one action I had reduced the storage space by half by "hinging" the board. Next I spray painted one side a mix of greens and the other side in desert colours. I then added more duct tape lengthwise as a prototype runway. That is how in languished whilst I worked upon some buildings to put on it (a later blog).
I then worked on a layout for said runway by researching Google maps over most American / UK airfields in Europe. Apart from realising how many had closed and been put over to container parks I quickly realised that there really is no such thing a standard layout. So I took the features I liked and created a fictional layout. The other thing that also became clear was that if I stuck to a 1:600 scale then I could only fit on about a third of the length of the airfield and probably would not be able to locate any buildings - not really what I wanted. I also wanted to be flexible with where my buildings went but had came down in favour of permanently sticking down the runways and taxiways.

Runway under construction looking "South"

My compromise was to represent the "landing end" (to left of picture) of the airfield and to locate some buildings off the taxiways / hard standings. Hence the runway was fixed but the buildings could be placed wherever.
I created the various runways and taxiways using the drawing suite in Microsoft Word, colour printed them, cut them out, located them in an aesthetically pleasing and representative way and then stuck them down.
Assuming a prevailing wind from the west this view is looking south; you will notice the taxiways are quite often different shades as this represents either: different materials (concrete or tarmac), repairs and different time frames. The black line running the length of the runway was my painted attempt over an original duct tape runway but it just too messy and the runway seemed too wide when I offered 1:600 scale models against it. 

Runway under construction looking "West" with HAS complex in the distance

Gaming Modern conflicts in 1:600 scale

A small group of us at the Scimitar's wargame Group in Coventry, UK have been playing Cold War Commander on and off for the last 12 months with 1:600 models from Tumbling Dice for aircraft and Oddzial Osmy who also produce vehicles and troops.
I feel that this scale looks particularly impressive on a 2400mm x 1200mm (6'x4') layout and the scale also seems to sit well with rules fire range and movement distances.
We have played a number of scenarios primarily using British and Soviets armies from mid '70s to mid '80s owned by two of the guys, Neil and Richard respectively, and I've fallen into the niche of terrain provider (I also have desert camo’ Arabs and Americans but they haven't seem much action yet - they may show up in future blog entries).
We have played encounter scenarios mainly but now that we have got a hang of the rules we are spreading our wings a little into more complex scenario's, however, one factor that seems to be consistent is that the Soviets always seem to do better than the Brits. This may have reflect that the Soviets are good value for money (kit for points) or that Richard is a far better player than Neil or myself (I suspect the latter).
The latest scenario we planned to fight was a Russian airborne Assault on a British Airfield in Germany, around 1981 and I will report on that soon.