A Church for Saga by Miniature Scenery

Smells like gold

One of the few pieces of terrain from my LotR terrain period that survived the purge was the church from Miniature Scenery .  Although not strictly a LotR appropriate piece it fits very well into Saga.  Vikings know those monks are flush with gold...

The front door

This is a flat-pack MDF building that you need to assembly yourself with PVA glue.  Although around ten years old it still looks pretty good for a non-laser cut MDF building.  I build it as spec expect for the front entrance.  Rather than have the door at the front of the nave I put it back a bit so there was an alcove for figures to hide in.  I then painted in some tiles at the entrance.

Fake lead glass windows

I did a number of extra texture features to increase the detail level.  Firstly I created fake lead glass windows out of a spray painted cdrom case and some metal flyscreen.  The clear plastic cdrom cases are cheap and can be cut up and snapped apart easily.  I painted the flyscreen Boltgun metal and drybrushed it with Chainmail.  I sprayed the cdrom case black and then glued the flyscreen over the window with the black cdrom case added behind that.

One of the side windows

For the window in the steeple I painted a piece of cdrom case orange as I planned to add electric lights.

So so orange

The roof was constructed out of cardboard tiles rough cut to look like slate tiles.  I found the cardboard from Games Workshop boxes the best for this as they didn't warp when painted.  They seem to be a slightly waxy cardboard.  I went for a very Warhammer fantasy dark blue roof colour scheme.  In my defence it was the style at the time.

Dry brush heaven

The walls were painted with a textured paint.  This is basically paint with fine sand in it.  The advantage is that during drybrushing there is lots of texture that is picked up.  You can either purchase this or make your own by dumping in a handful of sand in some paint.

I also added some led lights to the inside of the building.  That way I managed to get both my main hobbies in one project.  The leds were glued into place with silicon before the base was attached and a small hole was cut in the base so I could get access to the main circuit board with the batteries.  The light in the steeple through the orange painted plastic work well.  The light in the main part of the building was less successful as the led was pointing down thus there wasn't much spread of light.  To be honest I never really use the lights, it was just a fun thing to try.

The base was whitecote mdf with the edge sanded down and painted green.  Then some static grass and flock was added.  I recommend basing the building as it adds a lot of strength.  Ten years on and the only damage to the piece is a few dings on the cardboard roof tiles.

New paint rack by Miniature Scenery

Ready for loading

A number of years ago to neaten up my painting area I purchased a number of paint racks from the Miniature Scenery company (2 x 'Paint Rack' and 2 x 'Corner Paint Rack').  The paint racks can handle most paint pots including the standard Citadel pots and dropper style bottles.  The racks are designed to clip together so you can chain a number together.  I got a large piece of 3mm ply which I reinforced with batons and bolted the rack onto this so I could easily move all my paints (mainly off the dinning table when guests were coming around) in one go.  It's a good system that has worked for many years.

In more recent years I have converted over to Vallejo paints.  As the paint racks were designed for a wide range of paint pots when using the Vallejo/Army painter dropper bottles there is quite a bit of wasted space on the rack.  Then Miniature Scenery came out with their new paint rack, the 'Dropper Bottle Rack'.  The older Paint Rack type stores 33 paints, the Dropper Bottle rack can store 76 paints in the same space.  Also the dropper bottles can be stored either cap up or cap down for ease of spotting colours.  The only downside is that there is no paint brush storage like the 'Paint Rack' type has.  However I’m think of fixing that with a quick drill session.

The paint rack is the normal laser cut mdf flat pack in which you punch out the pieces and glue together with PVA glue.  Nothing hard especially if you are happy to slather the glue on and get it constructed in one sitting.  Just make sure you have things square and leave everything for a day for the glue to fully set.

Amera Ruined Temple for Saga part 2

Painting finished

Continuing to use the airbrush I highlighted the tiles by painting spots of VGC Khaki and VMC Iraqi Sand (and then later adding more Iraqi Sand) in the centre of the tile.  Finally using a mix of almost pure Iraqi Sand I highlighted the edges of the steps and the edges of the raised rear area.

Column rubble added

Next I added some sand around each of the column bases to represent rubble from the column falling down.  This was glued on with PVA glue.  To distinguish this from the stone work of the temple I painted the sand rubble with a base coat of VGC Earth.  This was dry brushed up with VMC Iraqi Sand in a number of iterations by varying the ratio of Earth and Iraqi Sand (75/25%, 50/50%, 25/75%).

I also wanted some rubble (from the broken columns, etc) so I got some of the plaster of paris rubble I had made earlier for my Roman villa and found pieces with a flat side so they could be glued down easily.  These rubble piece were painted the same colour as the main temple.

For those about to flock, we salute you.

Around the outside of the temple I painted the ground a grass green.  This was then covered in PVA glue and various green/olive/brown/static grass scatter was applied.  Grass and flower tufts were then applied.  On the temple itself I glued on small patches of scatter and grass tufts to show weed growth.  Finally the rubble painted previously was glued on top of the grass area and on parts of the temple.

Top view of the finished piece

So did I achieve my goal of taking a cheap piece of terrain and detailing it to a higher level?  Yes I think so.  However there are still areas where the cheapness of the original shows through.  The tops of the broken columns are a bit too rounded.  The back and side walls are too uniform.  I think steps all the way around would have looked better.  However I do now want to purchase one of the larger ruined keeps/tower pieces that Amera make as I still see value in the time saved by having the basic structure already done rather than making the entire piece from scratch.  If I had all the time in the world I would buy some of the Hirst molds and make things brick by brick but that just isn't the case currently.

Front view

Forest path and tree bases

I have a number of Games Workshop trees (the older ones that were the cheap model railway type - not the new plastic kit type) that I based singly on round mdf bases.  I did this because at the time I was playing LotR and single trees suited that level of single figure skirmish games.  As was keeping with the times I did the horrible lawn bowls grass approach and covered the entire base in static grass.  A bit silly as the ground under a tree is normally a bit barren as the tree shades the ground and this reduces how much plant growth occurs underneath the tree.

Forest base I

Now that I'm playing Saga a wanted a way to keep these trees but have a way to use trees as a terrain feature that would impact a small unit of figures.  I decided to make some small forest bases that would be big enough to impact unit movement and you could place one to two trees on each forest base so it was obvious that this terrain piece was representing a forest.

Forest base II

I used 3mm mdf for the base of these pieces.  Once I had cut out the mdf I painted it VGC Earth.  Then I covered the entire base in PVA glue and sprinkled scatter over the base.  I used brown/dark green/olive green and light green.  After that I applied some more glue and added patches of static grass on top of the scatter.  This didn't really work that well.  Next time I would mix the static grass in with the scatter like I did on the ground effects of the rock terrain I made.

Up the garden path anyone?

The third piece is what I call the forest entrance.  It is a resin piece from Fernvale Scenics.  In the centre is a pathway and one either side a collection of rocks and fallen tree bits.  Originally I was intending to add some trees to this piece.  However that made storage an issue so I dropped that idea.  I kept the path visually distinct by using mainly brown scatter on it and the usual green scatter and static grass on the sides.

Amera Ruined Temple for Saga part 1

Raw plastic ready to go

The online store The Combat Company opened a physical store just down the road from me recently.  At the grand opening I picked up a piece of the Amera plastic terrain, the Ruined temple (part no. F218).  These terrain pieces are plastic and seem to be vacuum formed.  At $7.50 it was reasonably detailed in the most part.  However if just painted it would have looked like a piece of plastic.  Too many smooth areas and too many flat surfaces which would break the scale illusion.  So I saw it more as a start of a terrain project that would need some detailing before painting.  I also wanted to try some of the larger Amera pieces but first wanted to see if I could make this piece look the way I wanted.  I had seen other pieces done and they always tend to look a bit too much like cheap painted plastic as drybrushing over flat plastic never looks good.  You always see paint streaks.

Since the floor area in the middle of the ruin was unsupported I glued a piece of polystyrene foam under it.  That way it won't bend when heavy metal figures are placed on top.  To add rigidity I then glued the ruins onto a piece of masonite cut to the size of the base with PVA glue and left it to dry overnight.

Lots of texture, but ugly for now

In an effort to add extra texture I used a model kit technique of covering the plastic in plastic cement and then pushing in an old brush into the soft plastic to stipple it.  This worked but the effect was minimal.  I then tried using the liquid green stuff (my pot was going hard so I needed to use it up) but again not much result.  In the end I used texture paste and stippled that over the entire piece.  Now I had real texture.

Reading some model kit magazines I had come across the black preshading technique.  This technique involves painting a thin black line in all the recessed areas as an under layer of paint.  Then the area is painted as normal but the black under layer of paint shades the cracks/etc without any obvious painting (unlike the normal way of painting a surface and then painting a shading layer over the top of the original layer of paint).

Preshading and base coat

Using my airbrush I spent 20 minutes tracing all the pavement and brick cracks on the temple ruins.  After that I applied a base colour of VGC Khaki.  The preshading worked really well.  In the flesh you notice that the pavement cracks are darker but you can't tell how really (except for the parts where I made the black line too thick).

Rocks and rubble for 28mm terrain

For one of my terrain projects (a ruined roman villa) I needed a large amount to brick building rubble.  There are commercial scale model bricks available but they are much too expensive for the amount of rubble that I would need.  I remembered that left over plaster of paris when broken up looked a bit rock like so I decided to do some trials.

I mixed up some plaster of paris and then spread it very thinly on some plastic takeaway lids.  Once dry I could easily break off the plaster and smash it up to for rubble.  My wife then mentioned that most of the rubble (for the roman villa) would be brick, not white plaster.  So I made some more plaster of paris and did a trial colouring it.  First I tried inks but they didn't really get the colour dark enough and I didn't want to use any more of the expensive inks to try.  So I swapped to cheap acrylic craft paint and mixed some of that in.  A key thing to remember is that the plaster is white so it's like mixing in with white paint.  Once I had the colour I wanted (a red/brown brick like colour) I spread out the plaster as usual and waited for it to dry.  Plaster of paris normally takes approx 1 hour to dry.  The plaster with the paint took 12+ hours to dry.  However the wait was worth it as now I had a pile of brick rubble and plaster rubble.

Plain white and brick colour rubble

On a "don't try this at home" note don't break up the plaster on a wooden bench with a hammer.  You end up with plaster rubble and a nicely dimpled bench top.  This was even with the plaster wrapped in a rag to cushion the bench top.  Better to use a sacrificial lump of wood or plastic chopping board underneath.

Ruined Roman villa for Saga part 3

View from above

To show the ruined state of the villa (and to hide the messy bits) I wanted to add a fair amount of rubble to the building.

Front door

All these plaster rocks were glued in multiple layers around the building over a few days.  Finally I used a mixture of olive green scatter, mid green static grass and various grass tufts and flower tufts to green up the building and hide some of the bad bits.  I also made a creeping vine from some lichen.

Open side room

The whole villa took some time but much of that was trial and error on the wall colours with lots of repainting.  Next time I would make up a small scrap of wall and trial colours there until I was happy.

The landing

Having to repaint the entire villa every time I changed my mind/made a mistake got a bit annoying in the end.  The mosaics turned out better than expected and all the greenery blended in well.

The hallway

Gabions for 28mm figures

Gabions in action

The more Renedra plastic terrain I buy the more I want.  The set of 20 gabions (wicker/wattle baskets full of dirt) was another small set that I knew would make a nice addition to the terrain pile.  Each gabion is formed from two halves, with a flat disc to form the top.  I glued some sand/rock mix to the top disc to make it look like it was full of dirt.  Once glued and undercoated black I did my normal dry brush technique (much like what I had done on the wattle fences for the Saxon hut previously) on the sides and a lighter dirt dry brush on the top dirt pile.

Lots of rocks in there

To stop them rolling around the table I used some of the rectangular Renedra bases I have and glued a number in a row to make simple barriers.  I made a few 5 unit gabions, a few 3, etc.  Then the bases were flocked/static grassed and the edges painted green to fit into the rest of my terrain pieces.  A simple little job with a nice end result.

Ruined Roman villa for Saga part 2

Those Romans built well

The foam card is much too smooth and slick to be painted on directly.  I needed some texture.  Lucky for me I now know about texture paste which I covered the entire building with inside and out to simulate plaster.  Once the texture paste was on I used an old brush to add some small ridges/bumps/etc.  Nothing too dramatic as that would break the illusion that a 28mm scale person had hand rendered this building.  After all they have small hands.  Again this was left overnight to dry properly.

Good enough for Time Team?

Now it was time for some paint.  I'm sure that all this terrain making is a subconscious way that my brain working out ways to use an airbrush.  With this much surface to cover I went for the cheap $3 craft paints.  I did a base coat of off white mixed with a small amount of brown to get the aged/dirty building look.  The first mix was a bit yellow so I repeated it to get what I wanted.  I found it was hard to get the colour right as every re-coat takes a few layers to really cover the previous, so you are always getting a blend of the old and new.  With the base coat done I then did a brown mud splatter around the outside base of all the building.  This was to show the gradual ruination of the building.  There would be a lot of rubble added later so I wanted to get the brown in there before I started gluing on the rubble.

On the inside of the walls I went for a dark maroon just like the (Hollywood) Romans did.  I used masking tape to get a nice straight line that later I would dirty and weather.  However I only put on one piece of masking tape.  This meant some of the wall above the masking tape wasn't covered and afterwards had in parts a small amount of red misting.  Another re-coat in the off-white/brown mix fixed that up.  So in future mask everything you don't want paint on.  On the top of the walls I painted them a red/brown as that is what the brick colour would most likely be.  The top of the walls were then dry brushed to lighten it slightly.  Once all the painting is done I planned to add some flock/lichen to represent foliage growth on top of the walls.

Just add missile troops

To age the building I used Army Painter Strong Tone wash all over the building inside and out.  After all the roof has fallen in so things should be pretty dirty all over.  The walls were then dry brushed back up with the off ivory and then ivory with some white added.  Also the partial wooden floor was painted brown/black and then dry brushed lighter with a dark brown followed by a lighter brown.

Mosaic floor

For the floors I wanted to have them as mosaics (much like the article in WGI described).  Searching the web I found some appropriate pictures that I re sized and then printed out in black/white to test for fit.  Some more resizing to get the borders looking right was done before I printed the colour copies.  I used spray adhesive as I thought that pva craft glue would make the paper soggy and wrinkled.  The spray worked very well and some of the spray soaked into the paper to and gave it a very firm surface.

Front entrance pavers

For the front entrance way I used a sheet of plastic brick work that I found in the model railway section of Hobbyco.  This was repainted and aged already so it just needed to be cut out to size and the front chopped up a bit to show the outer brick / pavers breaking away.