Scenery Workshop (Part 1)

Having recently had a look in the garage, whilst hunting for something else entirely, I found that I have a number of half finished scenery projects. I am a great one for starting scenery and never getting to finish it: It's just too boring to spend a few nights painting a building, when I could spend the same time painting miniatures. What I tend to do is eagerly build it, and then run out of enthusiasm for the whole thing before it ever gets to the painting stage.

This summer, I have made my self a vow to get some of those half finished scenery projects finished and so I have suspended my figure painting (well almost) until I can get more scenery completed.

This week I would like to showcase some jungle scenery I have just finished.

This was the easiest thing to make- a few hours and I had made 10 stands of trees and undergrowth. I bought the trees off EBay from a supply in China- about £8 including p+p for 30 palms. They don't need painting and are made form quite a soft, rubbery plastic that is very forgiving as it tends to bend rather than break. I used brown mounting card for the base as this would mean I didn't have to paint it. I pushed drawing pins through the bottom of the card and pushed the trees down onto the pin. Next I glued some bits of green lichen and some bits of fish tank plastic plants from the pet shop. Finally I flocked it with may own mixture of statigrass and clump foliage.

I also made a hill. Hills are great bits of scenery as the are generally not scale specific- this one could work for 40K as well as Flames of War or even Epic. This one is made by Games workshop and is cast from hard plastic- it's a bit expensive for what it is, but it is a tough and durable piece of scenery.

I have painted the exposed rock as red sandstone, to be of more use in my Wirral based VCBW campaign, as the local stone has a lovely warm red colour, but as you can see it also works well in the jungle too.

I can see this scenery being useful for Warhammer or a Conan setting right through to WW2- Burma, Vietnam, Predator, Pulp City and all the way to AE Bounty and 40K. Now that is versatile scenery. I am tempted to make some more!