Terrain: abandoned Wild West building

I picked this MDF kit up at Salute. Apologies for forgetting the company, but whoever it is, they sell a ruined and an in-use version of this one. I really liked the basic shape. I ended up cladding the outside in balsa, and making individual tiles for the roof. The main colour was Army Painter Red spraypaint, with some pre- and post-shading with black, white, their cream colour, and then a bit of drybrushing. I added a few little details, like the logpile and a few tufts of grass, but wanted to leave it fairly empty, both for playability and because it's a abandoned building, so the emptier it is, the more right it feels.

Ruined adobe buildings for 28mm

Intention

Having made a bunch of adobe buildings for Middle Eastern/American/SF use, I wanted to round them out with a few abandoned ruined structures. Maybe the settlement fell on hard times as a result of the depredations of Space Calvera. Perhaps, as was formerly the case in Greece, incomplete buildings are not taxed. It used to be quite a striking feature of Greece, that: perfectly habitable (and inhabited) buildings with a notionally incomplete upper floor. Hardly the Parthenon, I agree.

Beginnings

I carved a few bases from cake board (£1 from my local pound shop), two small buildings and one mid-sized. I bevelled the edges, and coated them with a layer of UHU. Not coating them would have meant they'd have been warped later on. With some polystyrene offcuts and some foamboard, I created the perimeters of the buildings, gluing everything together with the hot glue gun. I put in a little rubble (not enough to impede the occupation of the buildings by soldiery) and something in the way of tall grass. I coated this all with dilute filler (hence the earlier application of UHU to the bevelled edges).

Painting

I applied a coat of the same cream paint I've been using since c. 2003, and suddenly realised I was on the brink of running out. Improvisation! So I applied some dilute washes of brown and black around the edges of the walls and on the walls themselves. Once they were dry, I began drybrushing the walls in progressively lighter shades, working my way up to white.

Finishing Touches

With the painting completed, I went a bit crazy with the flock. These dwellings were clearly abandoned a while back as the greenery (and brownery) suggests. I'm pleased with how these turned out, particularly the very exposed vantage point at the top of the stairs. Now I just need to find some paint to last me the next decade and a quarter.

Terrain Tutorial: Build your own village

Nothing could be simpler than knocking up an adobe village. Even better, provided you minimise the detailing, they're suitable for all sorts of locations: the Middle East, Mexico and the south-easterly portions of the USA, even the desert planet Tatooine.

Requirements:
Foamcard
Long pins
PVA glue
Superglue
Balsa wood
Rulers
Pencil
Sharp knife
Suitable paints
Paintbrushes, including a quite large one (a 1" brush is a good size)
Filler

Decide how large you want your buildings to be. I decided to give most of mine a 3" (76mm) by 3" footprint on the table, and then make a few slightly larger ones for variety. I drew some 1:1 plans on an A4 pad (Fig. 1) and set to work. I carved out all the side pieces (leaving out the roofs for now), including doors, which I decided would be an inch (25mm) wide and an inch and a half (38mm) high. Owing to the size of the buildings, I elected to have windows on doors on different walls. I also marked out one inch from the top of the walls so I could place the roof there later (Figs. 2-4). After construction, I ran across another tutorial which recommended carving out a 5mm strip at the end of the wall, allowing pieces to abut very tidily. I have since tried it and commend it to you. It means less work when applying filler to hide the joins later.

When carving out your doors and windows, do not throw away the offcuts. Retain them. Line up your corners, painting some PVA on the adjoining segments, and then pin them together. Do not worry if the pieces are of slightly different heights, but do your best to ensure that the bottoms of the walls are level so that the completed dwellings will sit flat on your table. Once the walls are pinned together, take those offcuts you saved, and pin them into three corners of every four, where they will support the floor you will add later (Figs. 5 & 6).

I chose to make two slightly larger and different buildings here to add to the character of the settlement. I gave one a 4" (102mm) long back wall, and the other a 4" (102mm) long front and 5" (127mm) long back wall. In both cases I cut a strip of 1" (25mm) wide foamcard and then cut it into pieces to form an external staircase. I recommend decreasing the strips of steps as they are stacked by 1/4" (6mm) for a good appearance, e.g. if the lowest strip was 76mm long, the second should be 70mm, and so on. As before, apply PVA glue and secure the pieces with pins (Figs.7 & 8).

Let everything dry overnight, then remove the pins. Twist them through a complete circle in order to break the glue's hold on them so you can remove them easily. Round off the sharp edges of the buildings with a sharp knife. Create some damaged sections for verisimilitude. Remove some of the paper covering, and carve bricks into the exposed foam. Make some roofs to fit the buildings, and carve a 20mm by 20mm square close to one corner unless the building has an external staircase. As before, glue and pin in place, leave to dry, and remove the pins when dry (Figs. 9-11).

Mark on balsa sheet your doors, windows. Remember to make them large enough to overlap the door-frames and windows. Using a ruler and pencil, score them to suggest planking (you may need to repeat this after staining), then dye them with diluted paints. This gives an initial suggestion that the wood is sun-bleached (Fig. 12). I chose to stain each building's wood differently. Do not worry if some pieces are more strongly stained than others as it is what happens in reality. Once dry drybrush with a colour to suggest the wood is weather-beaten. I used a cream.

Mix up some filler and apply it with the large brush across the building to provide some texture, taking care not to obscure the brick detail you have scribed in place. Once this has dried, repeat the procedure, applying the filler only on the pieces of wall not scribed with brickwork. Wait for this to dry, then paint the buildings in your choice of colours. I mixed a brown with a cream, and used that for my base coat. I applied a heavy drybrush of cream over that, and a final lighter drybrush of white. Some of the filler had dripped into the buildings, so I carefully removed that at that point. Then I applied superglue around the insides of the doorways, windows and roof hatches, and glued the differently stained and drybrushed woods in place.

And you're done! Enjoy your village. Note in Figs. 9-11 the larger building with the domed roof. Look out for a feature on that building shortly. The general principles are similar to these buildings.

Terrain: sprucing up the ol' homestead

To go with the adobe village I'm working on, I decided to spruce up a larger building I had mostly finished a while back. I'd never got round to finishing off the ground, so with a few coats of brown, a bit of a drybrush, and some greenery, it's all done, and ready to await the completion of the rest of the village. A Great War Miniatures BEF officer is present for scale. I've gone with a slightly darker palette for the village proper, but since this would be the home of someone important, its different colour is not unreasonable. Any justification to save on repainting, eh? :D

Terrain Tutorial: Don't fence me in!

I am planning on getting under my belt a few games of the defunct Warhammer Historical's Old West rules, so I have been working on a bit of simple scenery for games: fences. You'll need the following:

* Hot glue gun and glue sticks
* Balsa wood (thin)
* Bamboo kebab skewers
* Sharp knife
* Superglue (gel, not liquid)
* Sand
* PVA glue
* Paints and brushes
* Material for bases
* Ruler

1) Prepare your bases. I used some plasticard. Cut it to strips about one inch (25mm) wide by six (150mm) long.
2) Place your knife on a round kebab skewer, and gently score a line in it every inch (25mm) or so. Snap along this line and tidy up as necessary. Do this until you have three or four pieces of skewer.
3) Take your thin balsa wood (use a thickness that look right to you), and cut strips of it that are 6" (150mm) long and about a quarter of an inch (6mm) wide.
4) Clear a space where you can leave glued things to set without the cat, wife, girlfriend, children, aliens or visitors trying to eat or decorate themselves with.
5) Place two pieces of cocktail skewer in the space you just cleared, and dab of small blob of superglue gel at one end of both, then lay one of your strips of balsa across both cocktail skewers. Leave to dry. Do be careful here. If you place the pieces too far from one another, they will not fit on your bases.
6) After a few minutes you can add another couple of blobs of superglue, and add a second balsa strip below the first. Leave to dry.
7) Glue a third piece of balsa between the two and leave to dry. If you want, you can add a fourth piece or even more.
8) Get the hot glue gun out and secure the ends of the skewers to the bases. By now they should look like Fig. 1.
9) Paint some PVA over the bases and scatter sand over it. Leave overnight to dry.
10) Paint some dilute PVA over the sand to secure it in place, and leave to dry.
11) Undercoat everything. See Fig. 2.
12) Paint the fences. I used progressively lighter greys for the wood, then progressively lighter browns for the earth. See Fig. 3. Once the paint is quite dry, you can add bits of grass and so on.

Although these were built with Wild West gaming in mind, they are quite suitable for various other things. You can see below an IG HW Team using them for cover, and do not be at all surprised if the British, French and German armies turn up behind them at some future date.

Bonus Music Video, folks. Enjoy!

Wild West River board

I've got this piece nicely in hand now. I realised that constantly slapping glue and sand just above a carpet was asking for trouble, so I have moved the board up to the attic, where I shall work on it henceforth. I got the second rise to the bridge built up, and made sure it approximately fits the bridge. I'm not securing the bridge until later for a few reasons. I want to make sure I can paint the bridge from every direction, and I want to get it nicely settled into the board. I'm still toying with the idea of making it removable. Who knows? Maybe some reckless cowpokes with nitroglycerine will decide to blow it to kingdom come! The sand has been secured, and I'll probably do a bit more work on this tomorrow. For now here's where things stand. The tiny wee figure stood in the middle of the river is that GW Cadian officer who turns up from time to time in these photos to give a sense of scale. Yup, that's a 2' by 4' board, all right!

Gaming Board: Part 4 and Wild West river board

It's getting grander! As I said before leaving for Wales, my intention with the gaming board I have already constructed (which is a foot and a half long and wide) is to add to it with three boards of the same size, yielding a playing area of 3' by 3'. I don't intend to play any crazily huge games, so that will prove to be much more than I need, I'm certain. So on Wednesday night I trundled downstairs to cut up huge bits of plastic while watching Lewis. Our rabbit, Spot, has a thing for trying to dig up rugs and carpet, mistaking them for grass, doubtless. I told him off and wryly remarked that some day I'd teach him to stop it. A minute later he came over to see what I was doing, and knocked over my glass, soaking the floor. I presume that in rabbit-speak this means, "Some day I'll teach you to stop leaving full glasses where I can knock them down!"

Having mopped up all that stuff, I kept cutting plasticard. I was really pleased to find out that the large piece of 2mm thick plasticard I had ordered was not 48" long but a little over 54", thus perfectly providing the three large bits I wanted. So now I have the three large pieces and can start building them up. I'm going to be in Scotland for several days for another wedding, so I won't be able to do any work until Tuesday night at the earliest. I doubt I'll be back until about 10pm that night! As well as this plastic cutting, I have applied the first coat of sand to the Wild West river board. It is slowly coming together.

Auf wiedersehen, folks!

In a few hours I'm heading off to Wales. My good friend Mark is getting married to his fiancée, Marie, on Sunday, and I'm the Best Man. Needless to say, I have been worrying myself silly trying to write a speech that's not going to send everyone to sleep. The last time I gave a Best Man's speech I got heckled by a little boy for being too dull. Anyway, I'll be back here on Monday night, I think, but not for long. I have another wedding to go to in Scotland that Thursday. I don't have to write anything for that one, praise be! I should be back from that the following Tuesday, and it is then that I intend to get back into the Wild West (see below) and make a few more gaming boards for Space Hunt. I have had a Wild West river crossing board on my bedroom floor (or chair or bed or desk) for weeks now, and I want to get it finished and up into the attic! I also finally want to get that hotel done and dusted. Until next Tuesday or so, when I shall have some wedding shots for you, I wish you all a lovely week and weekend!

Big Board: River, Bridge and Hill

Today the temperature fell, so instead of sawing in the garden, I have begun work on a long-considered project: a Wild West river board. I made the bridge for this ages ago, but only acquired the 2' by 4' chipboard the other day. I marked out where I wanted the river to go first, and decided it would be an imposing 6" across. I wanted to have the bridge toward one end and on the other side a small ford, with line of sight between the two blocked by a flat-topped hill. So I grabbed the hot glue gun and some bits of polystyrene, and set to work. Having completed that initial task, I dug out some old elasticated bandage and some tissue paper, and secured them to the polystyrene with some diluted PVA glue. I wanted to make it appear that there was a viable way to the summit, and I think I've succeeded. I shall almost certainly add some more bits and carve others away, but I shall leave that until the glue has dried. For the time being, here are two photos. The first after the initial building and the second following the mummification of the polystyrene lumps. The softening of the corners that the mummification effects makes the hill look a lot nicer than when it's just bare polystyrene and wood.

Works on the desk right now

Everything here needs some little touch-ups, but is largely completed. There's a two-foot long rampart for snowy landscapes, a Hellhound I finally got round to completing (yes, it needs some mud) last night, a shed/toilet for the Wild West, and a building (storehouse? Access to an underground complex? Scientific laboratory?) for snowy terrain. They're all pretty much on the verge of completion, so I doubt I'll get round to taking any more pics of them. Here you go!