Clarence Harrison - Whether
building small dioramas or sweeping wargames tables, well modeled
terrain enhances the presentation of your collection. Believe it or
not, building and painting terrain is actually easier than painting
the models with all of their fiddly little crossbelts and piped
cuffs! The purpose of this article is to document some of the tools,
materials, and techniques I used to build a 28mm scale abbey to serve
as an objective for a Napoleonic skirmish game. Although I
originally envisioned using it for Spain circa 1811, this style of building would
fit in almost anywhere in the Mediterranean from the days of
the Romans to World War II - for the LoA period it is perfect for Tangiers!
The
first thing to do (after deciding what you want to build of course)
is to gather some reference material for your subject. Building a
vignette of troops at the Battle of the Bulge? Besides the all
important uniform references you need to paint the figures, you can
collect some photos from the actual battle along with a few winter
forest scenes. Another great source on inspiration is the work of
other modelers and having a few books and articles on the subject
(I’ll give some suggestions later) will not only help you with the
techniques of modeling, but serve as a great example of what can be
accomplished in miniature!
In
this case, I found a photo of a church at the Spanish village of
Morisco that played an important part in the early stages of the
battle of Salamanca in 1812 (from the Osprey book Salamanca
by Ian Heath). It was not my intention to build a replica of the
building, but I used the inspiration of a tall tower on one corner,
the split level roof, and the low-walled courtyard as the basis for
my project. Since the building was meant to be a centerpiece for a
tabletop wargame, I decided to place it at the summit of a steep hill
to make a terrific strong point to anchor a defensive stand. With all
of this in mind, I set out to do some sketches using my photo as a
reference point. It is not necessary to produce your own drawings,
but even if you feel you have no talent for such things, you will be
amazed at how even a rough attempt can serve you in visualizing your
finished piece.
The
next important step is making a plan. In this grand age of
technology, I use a computer graphics program (CorelDraw) to get
precise angles and measurements, but graph paper can be employed just
as admirably. The size of your building is obviously dependent on the
scale of your project, but for wargaming, I tend to focus on the
getting the scale height correct and allow as small a ”footprint”
as possible. A realistically scaled floor plan tends take up too much
room on the game table and takes valuable maneuver and deployment
space away from troops. A cottage may be represented by a building
that is only three to four inches per side for 28mm figures. The
abbey measures in around eight inches wide and five inches at it’s
deepest. It is helpful to have a figure on hand to compare to your
scale drawing, to make sure the doors and windows look right.
Next week we'll look at starting construction of the abbey...
This article was originally published in Battlegames Magazine, but many of the photos were quite small and some were left out due to constraints of the format. Here we have unlimited room to ramble so I thought it would be a useful addition to the blog as I often get questions on terrain building. This series will focus on a Mediterranean style building, but the techniques could easily be applied to any type of construction.
This article was originally published in Battlegames Magazine, but many of the photos were quite small and some were left out due to constraints of the format. Here we have unlimited room to ramble so I thought it would be a useful addition to the blog as I often get questions on terrain building. This series will focus on a Mediterranean style building, but the techniques could easily be applied to any type of construction.