Something different for the tabletop - a 1/300th scale car yard. I brought 100 plastic cars off ebay and about 1/3rd were Porsche style cars and i was wondering what to do with them, when I got given an ipod case. I though it would make a great showroom and so i decided to use it to make a car showroom. I added some details using plasticard and the posters and signs are downloaded and printed out on my crappy laser printer. The finishings a little bit rough but I like it as its nice and colourful.
Some terrain I made a few years ago for some modern battles... late afternoon sun is setting as soviet armor moves thru small german town outside of fulda
another view of soviet troops
american troops entering village in Iran
american forces from A Troop 11th cav seize a key rd junction in Germany
Sorry for the quality of the pictures but I think it gives them some character....
I've gotten spoiled by all the great work on this forum and don't comment enough.
rdenman62,
Thanks, I love the ruins. It's nice to see something different.
Did you scratch build most of those, destroy assembled buildings or did you find some supplier I haven't seen - I especially love the building on the right in the third photo (looks kind of like a ruined multi-story office or parking structure).
All the structures are scratch built with cardboard covered with plaster then cut up or "destroyed" then pieces of scrap wood for floor beams, etc...rubble is model railroad ballast and pieces of colored plaster broken up. The multi story building is scratch built also. It was copied from a 1/35 scale military diorama I'd seen in fine scale modeler magazine some years back...here is another picture of the backside of that multi story building
I have been lurking for a while and this is my first post.
I am new to wargaming and still waiting for my 1:285 tanks to arrive from GHQ....
This is my first test terrain (glue is still drying) and I have not worried too much about scale. I will try a few things to see how it goes and then build a large portable board which can be setup quickly. I have a few good ideas which I will share if they work out well.
I think the gravel on the road is too large for such a small scale, but this is just an experiment to see how the materials behave. Hope you like it despite the bad image quality.
MKH, I think the terrain board looks good. The selection of various colored cover helps.
I assume the gravel road is on the far left of the photo. Since the entire width is not visible, it's hard to tell if it is in scale. From my experience (first 16 years of life living on a farm), most gravel roads have a ditch on either side. For most climates, the ditches will have more moisture than the surrounding terrain and, therefore, slighthly greener vegitation in spring, summer, and autumn. Typically, the ditch is not a significant barrier to infantry and tracked vehicles, but can prevent some wheeled vehicles from leaving the road except at prepared paths. They are usually deep enough to provide cover for prone infantry from direct fire weapons but not much more (e.g., standing infantry would be exposed from knee or waist up, a tank could not achieve a hull-down position.
As for the tree line in the right-hand side of the picture; I assume this follows a stream bed. If not, I suggest making it so. Again, based on my experience, it is unusual to have significant amounts of larger vegitation in a linear pattern except in three cases: stream bed, along a ditch, or as a wind-break around houses. In the last two cases, they may be intentionally planted.
Since I posted this I added some medium brown colored fine texture to the road. The road is as wide as you see it on the top part of the image. I cropped it since on the other side it is without terrain and it looks terrible.
Road looks better now with the dark brown color, although more muddy than actually dusty. As for the ditches I am not sure if it is possible for me to create an actual ditch with this sort of setup. Unless I just "plant" lush vegetation along the road, which is a possibility. The alternative is raising the terrain on both sides, but that is more costly and takes time.
The hedges along the side are too large (looking like trees), they're the sort of hedges between farmer fields seen in Europe. I will scale them down in the final landscape so they do not look like trees.
I am currently working on ideas for creating streams with a special sort of glue which will work with this sort of terrain setup.
I will post an image of the entire area once I finish part of the the other side and touch up on details.
MKH:
I wouldn't bother with trying to change the elevation of the surrounding terrain but I would give the road a bit of crown and then put a strip of "lush" vegitation along the edges of the road. My recollection is that during growing season, the top of the grass/weeds, etc. in the ditches were actually higher than the road. Only when you stepped or drove into this area would you sense the drop-off. This can be handled well enough with game rules if you want to get that picky.
As for your hedges looking like trees - we all accept scale inaccuracies. If you say they are hedges, then they are. Most of the trees where I grew up were fairly stunted - only about 10 to 12 feet high. I have seen pictures of the bocage areas in northern Europe where the hedges were this tall.
Wow great ruins! I like the amount of debris you have as a lot of wargames ruins I have seen look too bare (like someone has cleared it all). Also the internal details, signs, power poles with wires hanging down are awesome!
Here is the modified version, with rough terrain added on the other side of the road. I still need to shake off the excess material and fix see through areas but the glue is not yet dry. I have made some rudimentary tracks on the road and scaled down the hedges considerably although they're still a bit large for hedges.
I also added in some ditches and added vegetation.
I think with a little practice I can manage to build a acceptable board for playing which will be the size of our 6 person dinner table.
My next experiment will be water streams and ponds. Since I have no depth to work with this will be a challenge, but I think one can get far with optical illusions.
Also a big thanks to people in this thread, the images posted are very inspiring!
