Phillippeville (3)

Last week my copy of Setting the Scene arrived and I will say I was enthused by reading it. At the moment I'm not working on any more Mediterranean terrain for the Spanish Civil War collection, but I got loads of ideas for my current projects so have ordered a load of Woodland Scenics stuff and while waiting for that to be delivered made a start on a few pieces for scatter in our games.

A trip to the local Michaels furnished me with some plywood bases, washed stones, washed grit, and coffee stirrers, a trip to the local DIY store got me two pints of 'Mooring Post' paint, 'spackle' (poly filler to us Brits) and glue. I was going to pick up a back of pine bark chips, but although it's only $3.50 for two cubic ft. Victoria did point out we live in an apartment, where did I plan to store a two cubic ft. sack of chippings, good point well made!

The first item is a animal pen with a gate using the instructions in the book, these are super easy to do and look much better than previous efforts. 

The 'wall' is more of a stone fence like those found here in North America, made up of piled stones revealed by the plough rather than assembled in a more European manner, although this will likely get use in our WWII games around my town of Phillipeville, it's going to be equally useful for my American Civil War games.

Next is a pumpkin patch, again, probably more use in our ACW games, but a handy piece of scatter none the less.

I picked up the pumpkins on the run up to Halloween from Michaels, I think they are some seed pod that they colour with orange dye, I gave them a coat of Army Painter flesh tone to bring the colour down a little.

I really rather like the next one, a small stable and animal pen built on to a section of an older collapsed building. The stones were this time built more wall-like with me laying them in successive layers.

The stable is made of coffee stirrers on a cardboard former that I knocked together, the fence posts are matchsticks and the fence planks are split coffee stirrers. I have a good selection of farm animals painted up and have just the donkey in mind for this piece.

The next piece is a fenced off vegetable patch, the fence and gate are fabricated from coffee stirrers, while the veg are represented with either tufts or Woodland Scenic clumps.

It will add a nice bit of concealment in our games, more for breaking up line of sight rather than adding any degree of cover, that fence it to keep out the rabbits not .303 rounds!

Finally a couple of stone fences / stone walls, again I made the gate like the instructions in Setting the Scene and am very happy with how they turned out.

I may even get the opportunity to play a game one of these days!