Ruined Roman villa for Saga

N.B. Apologies for the fuzzy pictures in this post.  My camera was on the wrong setting at the time.

A very white villa

Recently I've subscribed to Wargames Illustrated which the wife rightly describes as terrain porn.  Every issue leaves me with a overwhelming desire to make some new piece of terrain or a new game board, etc.  In one issue there was a brief article on making a ruined roman villa for use in Saga games.  As soon as I saw it I wanted my own.  Plus it gave me an excuse to make a decent sized building which I hadn't done for some time.

Voodoo pins into the building

In order to get the scale of the building right I made a floor plan on a piece of paper and drew the rooms.  Then using a 28mm figure on a 25mm base I could make sure the doorways were wide enough and the rooms could fit the right number of figures.  As far as room layout and design I pretty much copied the design from the WGI article.  It was a nice layout after all.  Once I had the size of the floor plan I cut out a base from 3mm masonite (Whitecoat) which has on one side a white covering which makes painting much easier.  No need to undercoat or seal the masonite.

Always make sure the doors are wide enough

The walls are made of 5mm foam board which makes the construction very quick.  Since the top of all the walls were going to be irregular I laid out the sheet of foam board and drew the top wall line for the each room in one go, with spacing for the width of the walls.  This meant that each corner would match up exactly.  Much easier than trying to cut each wall out separately and measure and match later.  Cutting out irregular curves like the top of wall is best using a sharp hobby knife and holding it almost vertical.  That way the cuts are small and you can follow a curve easily.   I used PVA glue to put together the building.  Also I use dress making pins to hold the walls together while the glue dries.  This means you can make the entire structure in one go and let it dry overnight.  To keep the foam board walls at right angles I copied the Paul Davies (of WGI fame) method of using Lego bricks to make a right angle wall, pushed the foam board next to the Lego and thus keep the corner at 90 degrees.

The front entrance way

Looking at the piece the next day I decided that the high corner I had made in one room was too high, almost a three storey building in scale.  Such a high wall would dominate and make storage an issue.  More knife work and it was cut down to size.  I also put in a small first floor so missile troops have somewhere to shoot from.  Every ruined building needs a platform for the bow/rifle/zapgun troops to fire from.  I used more 5mm foam card as supports and a piece for 1mm plastic card as the floor.  This plastic card was then covered with wooden craft sticks painted to become wooden floor boards.

First floor ledge