Green Acres

Rustic Scenery for Middle Ages Games by a Middle Aged Gamer

For the last several weeks I have focused on building farm and (literally) farm-adjacent terrain for my wargames, something I have heretofore avoided in favor of fortresses, industrial pipe networks, and residential buildings. I have been trying to get a handle on my hobby ADD for one part of my Lenten discipline, and I am sorry to say that so far that is the only part of my discipline I am having any success at.

In this matter, I was greatly inspired by the intriguing and lavishly-photographed PILLAGE wargame, written by Guillaume Rousselot and distributed by Victrix Miniatures. I really must do a review of this game for Splendor of Fire, although there’s no telling when this might be since I typically like to play a few matches before I write such things, and I’m short on opponents. At any rate, it deserves a walkthrough if only for the delightful, even beautiful, photographs of toy soldiers wreaking havok on Dark Ages villages.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy looking at these! Please consider subscribing and resharing with those of similar interests.

Wattle & Daub Cottages

These are 3D prints, the first of which I printed myself and covered up most of the wattle with some spackle for the slightly deteriorated effect, the other two I purchased already painted some years ago at Historicon, but needed a better basing job. While basing buildings limits their usability somewhat, I find that they appear to be ‘floating’ on the battlefield without one, unless you do a bit of work with lichen or appropriate ground clutter around the edges to blend them in. I really think the base work on these is some of my best, especially after I added some shrubberies and piles of chopped wood to complete the effect.

Cultivated Fields

These are not much to write about, just MDF bases covered with spackle with a comb run through them, then painted and flocked. The key to making them look good is to get the placement of the vegetable sprouts right, which I admit took some doing to make it look like a cultivated field rather than a fallow one overgrown with weeds. You may judge for yourself whether I achieved success.

One key ingredient to these fields is the very dark dirt flock that I obtained during my shamefully brief membership in the local model railroad club. I believe they used it for coal, but whatever it was, I think it made fantastic top soil.

The smaller plots use ready-made vegetation from JTT Scenery Products that I bought at the local train shop and Hobby Lobby and have been waiting to use for ages.

Yes, I know that the corn (maize) field is inappropriate for the middle ages, but it will work well in my future wild west or AWI games.

Now, for this category’s piece de resistance, the half-harvested wheatfield:

When making wheat fields out of straw welcome mats (which is what this is), I always prefer to cut out sections and replace the gaps with cut down coconut straw to represent trampled or harvested wheat. This adds visual interest and provides a place for miniatures to walk without appearing to be hovering over the tops of the stocks. But what makes this piece better than my previous wheatfields are the combination stone walls and the wattle fence, which I hand-made using techniques presented in PILLAGE, namely wrapping 20-gauge floral wire around skewers. In this case, I used the paper-wrapped floral wire, which I thought produced superior results to the ‘naked’ kind.

Wild Ruins & Other Scatter

I love building stone walls out of little pebbles, so I made some of these ruined/deteriorated wall sections to act as forest scatter or broken parts of a fence line.

The trees are branches cut from my own hedges and tacky-glued with clump foliage. I think the combination of vegetation looks very natural here, especially when guarded by some outlaws of Sherwood Forest (Medieval Archers miniatures by Conquest Games).

And here’s this very simple briar patch, made out of a left-over Christmas tree base, coconut straw, and flock.

Oldhammer Tribute Buildings

These next two buildings are 3D prints from Dr. Spork, who is getting a great deal of attention lately if you watch ‘Oldhammer’ channels on YouTube. These are based off the cardboard buildings that came with some editions of Warhammer: Fantasy Battles 30 odd years ago, and I tried to paint them in a suitably ‘Eavy Metal style. The almost-cell-shaded look comes from my ‘drybursh over black primed’ technique that I use for almost all of my buildings and vehicles, these days.

First up is a stable and barn, accompanied in the first picture by a 3D printed halfling and wagon (made by Wargames Atlantic).

And finally we have this tidy little two story timber-frame house. It’s rather small for a home, so in my imagination it’s a toll house to be placed near bridges or turnpikes. The ‘quest board’ was a 3D print from MakerMan3d and made the trees out of seafoam and a combination of flock from Nock and Bachmann coarse ground cover.

I hope this photographic wander through the charming green hills gave you a much needed taste of Spring. As always, I would love to hear from you in the comments. If you’ve been working on something, share a link!