Saturday 21 December 2019

From PaulSS: More terrain pieces for our France 1940 games (60 Points)



A few weeks ago my copy of Setting the Scene II arrived in Wisconsin and I've been inspired by it. I've already got quite a lot of Mediterranean terrain for my Spanish Civil War games, but am just starting out on some France 1940 gaming so used the book for some inspiration for scenery for those games.

All the terrain has been built over the last couple of weeks and was primed with dark brown paint ready for this mornings starting gun. By 0630 this morning I'd settled down at the painting table with a cup of tea and was ready to make a start.

The first thing completed was a couple of sections of walled orchard, per Pats recommendations, the tree armatures are from Woodland Scenics while the walls were carved out of high density pink foam board. The gate was made using the method described in the book.


The next piece is a rather horrible Sarissa Precision house from their Americana range. This took rather a lot of prep-work to get it more like I wanted it. I'm not bothered about having access to the interior, so, the windows were filled in with cereal box to be painted as glazing and the roof stuck down permanently.



I added barge boards and planking to cover the bad corner joints, the stone effect chimney and footings were completely redone by gluing on small chips of stone then rendering it with Polyfilla, a gate and fence were added at the back to create a small yard area.

I'm much happier now with how it looks than the original kit.



I'd built and painted a small stable with fenced area a couple of weeks ago and quite liked how it came out, so set too to make another one for the challenge.

The stable is made out of artists mount board then planked with cut coffee stirrers. The fence posts are matchsticks while the fencing is also split coffee stirrers.



The gate, like that one from the orchard is constructed as per Pats instructions. The roof is mount board painted as tar-paper held down with some planks of wood and a boulder.



The last thing painted today was a couple of wall sections made from small pebbles stuck onto tongue depressors, these are quite an easy build but I think they look quite effective and come in very handy.




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Welcome back to the Challenge, Paul.  Wow, great looking terrain! I especially like your walled orchards and the work you did on the chimney for the Sarrissa piece - as you say, it totally upgrades the overall look of the model. 

I'll err on the side of caution and divvy out 3 'cubes' worth for your sterling efforts. Well done!

26 comments:

  1. Lovely looking terrain pieces. The time and effort you put in has definitely paid off.

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  2. Excellent, just finished a 1940 french army

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  3. Good work on the house - must've added a great deal to its market value!

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  4. Lovely work all around Paul, but I am really taken by that walled orchard. I should pick up that book.

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  5. +1 for the orchard also - really superbly done

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  6. Lovely! Wonder if we’ll see a lot of Pat-inspired terrain

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  7. Thanks folks. Hope to crank out more of this stuff over the course of the challenge

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  8. Very nice work - you've worked wonders with the Sarissa house in particular!

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  9. Some great looking work Paul - Something I want to return to in the future is my own WW2 terrain, to get things based up rather than free-standing. What did you use for the bases on the buildings?

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    1. Thanks James
      The bases are just some pieces of plywood that I picked up from the local Michaels, the 6x5 ones are about $1.50 each.
      The orchards are on some 1/8 ply that I chopped up into 6x8 sections.
      Initial base is just done with spackle/polyfiller (dependent on your location, see I am bilingual now) then some texture added with grit.

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  10. Allowing Terrain in the Challenge has been one of the best developments in the event over recent years.

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  11. Wow! That is some blast of real estate plopped on the island! The walls and orchard are really sweet, although I do like that shade of green on the building. Wonderful work!

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    1. Thanks David. That shade of green is a bottle of Vallejo that the label fell off of years ago, no idea what colour it is though ;)

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