Lots of 15mm scenic stuff

I've not posted anything for a few weeks, but I have been busy, mostly making and painting a lot of scenic stuff for 15mm games. Here are the results. Firstly a bridge and river sections to create a crossing point.

The bridge is resin. I bought it ages ago, at Colours, I think from The Square. It has sat around in a box under my desk for a few years but I decided that it was high time I painted it so it can become useful. The river sections are made from corrugated cardboard with taped edges and just textured and painted. There are more sections to make up a decent length of river;

On these final two sections, you can definitely tell what they are made from! Still, they will do the job on the table.

In total I have roughly 1.5m of river. It isn't perfect, but it was cheap to make and is a lot wider than most wargaming river sections you can buy.

I've also been working on terrain that is going to give me some marshy ground. There is a decidedly wet and dodgy piece and some straggly trees growing on boggy ground.

The trees are railway accessories that I picked up cheap at the club's Tabletop Sale last year and I have loads more left. The bases are once again card, tape and texturing. I'm pretty pleased with these.

Finally, I made a load of road sections, representing rural dirt tracks. I made loads of these about seven or eight years ago, but they appear to have vanished, so I've had to make more. They are cork floor tiles cut into 5cm wide strips and coated with PVA glue and railway modelling ballast. In total there is over 3.5 m of roads. If I ever find the ones I made before, that would give me another 2.4 m of roads/tracks.

All of this stuff is going to be great for Sharp Practice and Chain of Command in 15mm, but only time will tell how robust the cardboard-based stuff is!

I doubt that the bridge would be able to take the weight of armour, but it'll work fine for infantry and light vehicles.

I've been working on lots of scenic stuff

I needed to get lots more trees and hedges for 15mm wargaming and I've been working on them for weeks now. The word for this is BORING! but it had to be done.  Here are all the things I've done. Apologies for the picture quality. I was in a rush and used a camera that isn't really designed for close-up flash work.

First, here is an orchard. The trees are quite large for 15mm.

The trees are on bases and can be removed for ease of access to troops etc under the trees.

Next, a couple of small coppices. Again, the trees can be removed. These are a mix of large and small trees.

Twelve more small trees here, again on separate bases;

These will work well as trees lining fields or around the edge of a village, I think.

Next I have lots and lots of hedges of various kinds;

And to finish, some large free-standing trees and poplars to line roads;

I reused some old rough roads made from cork tiles as the bases for some of these items and used tongue depressors for other pieces.  

The flock and ballast stuff comes off very easily, but a blast with Hycote matt spray varnish seems to have stuck everything in place pretty well. 

The trees were all bought ready-made and came unbased, so I had plenty of flexibility as to how I used them. I bought them from K&M Trees. Nice stuff and quick and efficient service.

Guess the next project

Here are a few photos of the start of my next project. Any guesses what it might be?

The terrain is made from blue dense polystyrene foam, mounted on 2mm MDF and the removable resin statue (from Copplestone Castings) is approximately 4.5cm tall. The statue is clearly of some kind of Lovecraftian Elder God.

The stone alignments are also made from blue foam. I cut into the foam to get the effect of stratified layers and cave entrances and also cut out the rough steps up to the main plateau. This was given a sparse layer of fine railway ballast and spray-painted in varying shades. The grey spray actually began to eat into the foam, but the effect of this looked pretty good, creating a weathered and aged effect. I then painted everything with washes of Vallejo acrylics, drybrushing to bring up the details and then flocked the rocky outcrop in a number of places.

I think that this looks pretty cool.