15mm Scenery

My good friend David has entrusted me with the honor of painting a piece of terrain from his collection. The piece is a pre-cast walled village/church in the Roman style of plastered brick with tile roof, scaled at 15mm. I believe this was originally intended as a Built up Area for DBA (De Bellis Antiquitatis, a fine game for ancients!), but most recently saw service as terrain in a game of Sharp Practice, set this time in 15mm scale, and would also serve well in Flames of War, since this style of architecture is still  to be seen today in Europe and the Mediterranean.

After washing the resin with warm water and dish soap to make sure any last remnants of release agent were off the material, I went about creating a base for the terrain. Why base what is essentially all base itself already? Though sturdily molded, and quite flat on the bottom, the piece is still resin, and could potentially break in transport. The MDF board base will give it some more rigidity, as well as add a bumper around the edge so that the paint does not get scratched/rubbed off as quickly. It will also allow for a little bit of extension to the scenery, where the vestige of  a field can surround the walls and give them a little more definition.

Tools used for this phase of the project: MDF board, hand saw, rasp file, pencil, and sandpaper. I traced the village on the hardboard, and cut out the square that surrounds the wall, leaving about 1/8 to 1/4 inch margin.

To break up the pure rectangle outline (and to disguise my poorly cut rectangle), I roughed up the edges  using a rasp file. Note that the rough edge was applied as to also work as a beveled edge.

Here you can see the walled enclosure placed onto the MDF board base.

I used superglue to affix the town to the base board. To ensure that it dried flatly in place, and without gapping around the edges, I rubber banded the whole assembly together. This, however, was not enough pressure to ensure a good bond (I was impatient and kept checking), so I took drastic measures:

In case you are having trouble seeing the contents of the two cans, here is a better image:

That's right! I've use several hundred .69 caliber musket balls to hold the parts in place until dry (quite appropriate for blackpowder era gaming...). When the superglue is set, I can move on to gluing sand to the base and priming.

Stay tuned!