Scratch built Poppy Fields and more Buildings.

First off, may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2015.

Following on from my last post I have made a couple more scratch built buildings and some Poppy Fields for my Afghan terrain. I have been running this project alongside Richard Clarkes (Too Fat Lardies) superb Afghan Village project in anticipation for the off shoot of the modern Chain of Command rule set to be released in 2015.

For the poppy fields I purchased a plastic Astro Turf door mat from Homebase on offer for £4 and cut this into the required shapes and based them on some old cork table mats that I had and some cardboard. I then used tile grout, followed by wood glue and sand to texture the base. When dry, paint in dark brown paint. I did this on the base and the mat on my first test piece but found you can skip the brown paint on the actual mat and just paint this in dark green paint followed by a lighter green dry brush.

When the paint had dried, I then brushed wood glue  onto the top area of the mat and lightly sprinkled this with tree blossom. You can buy this from most model shops and I used three different types for a little variety and to experiment with the colours.
Red and green for the main poppy fields.
Pink and green for a small  field
Yellow and green for some scrub area. 

I also made a couple of Irrigation  ditches, I pinched this idea from Dougies wargaming blog which has some great ideas on terrain for this period.

I will let the WIP pictures do the talking.

I did all these fields from one mat and I still have some left over.

     
Next up is the scratch built buildings. I wanted several buildings to a base so I could get that narrow village street look, although I also need to make some more compounds to get the proper look for modern Afghanistan.

 
I still need to make a load of high walls and some ruins, plus a dirt track or road for this project but I am tempted to stay in the warm at the moment and paint some more figures and vehicles for this project instead.

The village so far.....

 

Scratch Built and Commercial Terrain

I will start this post off with the rubberised roads that I received through the post from Early War Miniatures. I purchased these at the Warfare show last month but as they had completely sold out, they sent them on to me with free postage and an extra piece of road as a thank you.

I had seen these roads on some of Richard Clarke's (TFL) and the Perry's table layouts and have been meaning to buy them for a while. I like the idea of being able to run your roads up over hills, something you are unable to do with rigid roads, unless you actually build the road into the hill. 

I purchased my set of cobbled roads for £45 which came unpainted but they paint up really easy using water based paints. Highly recommended. www.earlywarminiatures.com

28mm vehicle for scale. They do roads for 15/20mm scale as well. I just need to blend the static grass on the edge of the roads to match my terrain.

   
Whilst at the Warfare Show, I treated myself to a ready made and painted 'Well and Wall' pack from www.adrianswalls.com Again these were all sold out at the show, so they were sent onto me with free postage. They come painted to a very high standard with three sections of wall, a well with realistic water effect and a wooden 'nodding donkey'. I did repaint the walls and add some static grass but that was only so it would match the colours of my own terrain. Highly recommended and excellent value.

My third purchase of the Warfare Show was the plastic Middle Eastern building from Perry Miniatures. I made a base for the building but didn't glue it down as it does not have a removable roof, so that you can place your figures inside. Again, a very nice kit. 

The rest of the buildings are what I have scratch built and I will be making a second batch of buildings, some roads, high walls and maybe a market to go with this collection.

  
When dry, I use tile grout, PVA glue and sand where needed.

  When dry, paint everything in dark brown paint.

 

 

 

I tried a new painting formula for these buildings using the following emulsion house paints from Wilko Home Store. They are tester pots that only cost £1 each but have about four times more paint than what you would get in your average pot of model paint, so ideal for doing your terrain. 

 

After the dark brown base coat, I use in the following order - Wilko - Nutmeg Spice, Retro Ochre, Sand, On Deck. 

For the wooden thatching on a couple of the buildings, I cut up some bristles from a broom head that I also bought from Wilko and PVA glued down onto the frame work. The glue was still wet when I took these pictures but when dry you wont be able to see the white glue.

   As mentioned in my last post, I plan to use these buildings not just for Modern Afghanistan but also for WW2 Desert and The North West Frontier.

 

 

And to finish off with the usual action shots.

 

 

The dome on the roof of the building was just one half of some plastic packaging from an old Christmas decoration and the table surface is an old dust sheet that I had.

 

I will try to get some more buildings done but it is freezing in the garage at the moment, even with the heater on.

Cheers,

Pat.