'Building a Better Brick'

An excerpt from Dampfpanzerwagon Guide No.1 'Building Wargames Terrain' by Tony Harwood

With the second volume of his terrain series now available to preorder, master model-maker Tony Harwood has given OITW an exclusive excerpt from the first book in the series showing how to easily create unique loooking bricks from scratch for use in your modelling projects.

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Click on the photos below to open the full higher resolution image.

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Some years ago I built a Stone Storehouse for use with my Flintloque miniatures. I built the main structure from Blue Foam with the individual stone blocks first cut with a scalpel and then enlarged with the point of a sharpened pencil. The natural rock texturing was pressed into the stone with the use of a rough stone and the roof was built from wood bark chips.

At the time these were ‘state of the art’ modelling techniques. However I was never truly happy with the model believing it to be too large and lacking character.

In my earlier tutorial I showed how I cut small stone blocks from a piece of Green Foam (slightly stronger and firmer than Blue Foam) to build a simple stone wall. This project needed more similar blocks, many more and this is how I went about it.

The Green Foam was first trimmed into strips then these strips were again cut into thinner ones about 6mm x 6mm. The strips were then cut into individual stones about 10mm – 12mm long. I wasn’t too accurate about measurements as I wanted some variation.

As you can see the stones or bricks are quite uniform in shape with unnatural square and sharp edges.

I placed the hundred or so blocks into a plastic container and added some coarse sand. I also added three larger stones (about half the size of a golf ball) and placing a cover of the lid of the container proceeded to shake the contents. This took some time, but the results were worth it

With a collection of textured model bricks, it was now time to build the core of my Stone Storehouse.

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The full article which continues from above and shows you how to build and paint a full Stone Storehouse can be read the first volume of my terrain crafting series, 'Building Wargames Terrain'. This first book in the series is aimed at the beginner or novice terrain builder, with tutorials ranging from the simple, through intermediate to a couple of detailed or ‘signature pieces’. Having sold out its first print run it is currently available to order once again along with the first printing of the brand new 'More Wargames Terrain'. 

For full details of how to order both books please go to – www.dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.co.uk/

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Webmaster's Notes

This article was originaly published in 'Building Wargame Terrain' – Dampfpanzerwagon Guide No. 1 by Tony Harwood and is reproduced with the permission of the author.

Tony has been submitting terrain articles to me for use on Orcs in the Webbe for a number of years and has a huge following, I heartily encourage you to invest in these books, they are wonderful sources of information and of great inspiration to anyone considering building something their gaming table.