Simple and cheap village

This month of August I have been Building a village (well only 4 houses) from my peninsular/italian/mediterranian buildings. You can find them at warbases and come as small lasercut modules that you can combine to form bigger structures. The idea is good because each module cost between 2 and 4 pounds and come with doors and Windows. I also bought arched doors (I think are more typical) and a couple of balconies. So for two single storey squared modules, 3 single storey rectangular, 2 two storey rectangular and one three storey squared module you get:



Well, not a lot of houses, just 4 but shown from diferent points of view. After some fast and simple painting, I added plastic roof from plasticard and railroad modelling materials and... I'm quite happy with the results obtained:

Upgrading my forest

Several months ago, I published a post explaining how to built cheap trees for wargames. One of the comments I received was something like: nice hula-hoop trees...Well you know, the kind of comments that move you to make things better. I decided to upgrade my trees so I bought a couple of bags of 30oz of woodland scenics polyfiber I glued the fibers onto my trees and I added some leaf effects. All glued with spray glue.
Here I show you the before and the after. Good results with a relative small amount of work.

Scenery on a budged (II). The woods.

Every wargamer wants a wood that covers the main part of his table.
Sometimes seems that only wood elves or native americans are confortable with woods but the truth is that woods are the most important scenery items.

I tried to buy ready made trees but altough the look terrific, the price is not so good and at the end you end using 5 trees to represent a whole wooded area.

Thaks God, nowadays we have the help of internet an looking through all the blogs, posts and DIY webs I came across with a trully inspiring one.

The gentlemen not only makes his own miniatures but has a lot of good ideas to make really good looking scenery.

I tried to copy his idea of making trees with not so good results but good enough for me.

MATERIALS:

- CD's to use as tree bases.
- green matt used in railroad modelling to cover the cds.
- natural branches, from my brother's in law backyard but you now, you can go to a public park or take them during a family trip to the mountains...
- contact glue.
- kitchenware scrubbers. That green material that is really cheap.
- green paints.
- glue in spray.
- green flock.

In the pictures you will see that my main problem is that my trees look too much "shaped with scissors". Some of them look too unnatural but this will be solved adding more flock and more small pieces of green scrubber to fill the angles.

Afterall, I made 10 tree stands in less than a week and they look really good on the tabletop.

Scenery on a budget (I). Making roads

There is a time whem every wargamer feels that he needs more scenery. In my case, things went this way: I started years ago collecting and painting miniatures, last year I bought a table, a green cloth and some model trees and finally I made some fields out of an old carpet.
Well, after severall battles I feel that I need more things: roads, rivers, hills, a true forest (no scattered trees), a village, orchards, a fortress... My permanent problem is money. If I buy miniatures I cannot buy scenery so...

Well, in this first post I tried to make a modular road without spending too much money.

Materials:

- 3 DM pieces of about 3mm and dimensions of 20x30cm.
- Modelling saw.
- Flint paper.
- Marker.
- Can of glue in spray for free, it was at home from a previous project.
- Sand for the texture, free it comes from the beach of Barcelona.
- Two big brushes, cheap from a craft store.
- Paint. From Vallejo, not model color but hobby craft line instead (the big ones).
- Green grass. The same I use for the bases. Free, I have a decent stock at home.
- Matt varnish

Total cost: Les than 15 Euros





STEP 1:

With the marker, draw the road sections on the DM boards. I made straigh sections of 30cm (about 1ft) long and 5cm wide plus two "T" sections the same length and several irregular curved sections.

STEP 2:

Cut the sections with the saw. They don't need to be perfect cut. After all its an earth road, not a padded way.

STEP 3:

With the flint paper smoth the endings of the road






STEP 4:

Spray the road sections with glue and cover with sand. Let dry



STEP 5:

Paint the roads and drybrush with a lighter color if you want.

STEP 6:

Put grass at the road limits and at the center.

STEP 7:

Apply matt varnsih and let dry



At the end you get a decent road that in my case is capable to cover all my table in both directions.