EPIC CHURCH

Practical Wargames Terrain in a smaller scale:

Following on from my recent series showing how I build practical and simple wargame terrain (as featured in earlier issues), I needed a break and was looking to build something a little different. At about the same time I picked up a plastic sprue of American Civil War figures from Warlord Games.

These ‘Epic scale’ miniatures are sculpted in banks of ten miniatures each about 13.5mm tall. I estimate the scale to be about 1/130th. The simple style of the figures and the prospect of large regiments marching across the table, took me back to my earliest ever wargaming memories, moving 1/72nd scale Airfix ACW troops across green-dyed bed sheets with chalked-on roads and rivers as well as green felt woods and a hotchpotch of plastic structures. Maybe I was looking back through ‘rose-tinted’ glasses, but I have never been able to reproduce this spectacle in any game I have played since. Just maybe these new troops from Warlord Games could re-kindle my love of ACW wargaming...

I contacted John (the Editor) and suggested an article showing how to build 1/130th scale buildings to go alongside these troops and he quickly agreed. In fact he suggested that these new buildings may be of interest to gamers playing in different scales. For example 15mm (what I said was some gamers often use ‘subscale’ buildings with their miniatures: I have certainly used 1/144th scale buildings on a 15mm – or nominally 1/100th – scale game and I suspect I’m not alone in this. Even though it brings me out in a rash! Ed.)

I sketched up a simple wooden church which was based on some 28mm scale wargame buildings I had found on the internet, images I sourced on Pintrest and a couple of watercolour paintings I had seen in magazines. Construction commenced with a core of balsawood, covered in card and detailed with even more card. Most of the initial building was done with just PVA glue before being detailed or textured with acrylic medium, ready-mixed filler and glue. The painting was simple and didn’t take that long and I used a ready-mixed ‘soil’ product from Geek Games to decorate the base.

As this building was so small – just 95mm long, – I decided to base it on a used CD. This is a first for me, but I think it works and I can see me building more pieces of Epic scale terrain on CD’S. I had great fun building this model: it was a pleasant change from my usual 28mm/32mm scale models and the smaller dimensions forced me to use some new techniques. I can see me building similar structures in the future. Maybe a barn?

1. SKETCHY BALSA

I sketched-up a simple plan based on some images I had found on the internet and a couple of watercolour paintings I had seen. As I had calculated earlier, I used a scale of 1/130. A core of scrap balsawood and a piece of MDF were glued together and then sanded to shape with a home made sanding stick: a piece of scrap wood with sandpaper stuck to one side with double-sided sellotape.

2. CURRY FAVOUR

This balsa core was clad with some spare card: packaging material from an ASDA Curry Meal Deal. Note how the main door and windows have been cut out with a new scalpel. The walls were further clad with thin strips of card – this time packaging from some icecream cones. The strips were glued in place with PVA glue. I applied them over-size and trimmed them back once the glue had fully set.

3. DETAIL & PORCH

More card detailing. I call this technique ‘layering’ and build up each layer with more thin strips of card – again glued in place with PVA glue. I also ‘seal’ these layers by applying a dilute coat of PVA glue to make sure that they stay in place. The porch to the front was constructed from a balsawood core with more card detailing. The pillars are short sections of cocktail sticks and the porch base is built from two layers of plywood that I found in my spares box.

4. BRING ON THE CD

At around this time, I started to think about how I was going to display this model. At just 95mm by 50mm and 90mm tall, I thought the plain church was too small to be left without a base. I used a CD which is 120mm across and glued the wooden church in place with a 1mm spacer between church and CD. The groundwork was built up with ready-mixed filler and DAS modelling clay applied over PVA glue which was further textured with fine sand, sieved stones and some acrylic modelling paste which I ‘stippled’ on with a short bristled brush.

5. ROOFING

The roof was constructed from more card (this time some card packaging from Christmas mince pies) and further textured with a ready-mixed filler, PVA glue and fine sand mix. When this mix had fully dried I added even more surface texturing by scraping the back edge or blunt edge of a snap-off bladed knife up and down the surface of the roof.

6. UNDERCOAT

After undercoating the whole model with a very pale grey, I picked out the individual planks of the wood cladding in white allowing the pale grey to show through in the recesses. The floor of the porch and stone foundations were painted in a slightly darker grey and washed with a dark tone wash.

7. ROOF PAINTING

The shingle roof was painted in a dark grey, dark brown and dark green mix before being drybrushed with a very light grey colour. Once again, I added even more interest to the roof, by then painting individual shingles with both lighter and darker coloured paints and applying another wash.

8. FINISHING THE BASE

The CD base and groundwork were painted in a Barbarian Leather base, drybrushed with a lighter tone and individual stones picked out in grey. The three plastic card head stones were painted in a dirty grey and then highlighted with a light grey.

9. WINDOWS & VARNISH

The windows were painted with a detail brush and some dark blue acrylic paint. The whole model and base was then varnished with my usual choice of Galleria Matt Varnish before being decorated with some Geek Gaming/lukes Aps Mediterranean Soil mix. The mounted officer figure is from the Warlords Games ACW Epic sprue based on a round counter and shown alongside the church for scale.