1:1200 naval - coastal terrain -islands, rocks, and sandbars, Nov 2022

[tomrommel1]

that is gorgeous 

[Daeothar]

Wow, so awesome 

Also, I can instantly see the appeal of building an entire village in this way. It must be great fun thinking up the layout, with gardens, roads and alleys, not limited by the need to keep things modular, or the size of a table.

I think I'd be completely losing myself in the details, and gladly so

[von Lucky]

Lovely result - really something to be proud of.

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

Great work, absolutely lovely!   

[Wirelizard]

Wow, so awesome 

Also, I can instantly see the appeal of building an entire village in this way. It must be great fun thinking up the layout, with gardens, roads and alleys, not limited by the need to keep things modular, or the size of a table.

I think I'd be completely losing myself in the details, and gladly so

That is exactly the appeal I found too, with the added advantage that because this is for naval gaming I didn't have to make any of our usual wargaming compromises to fit stands of troops or anything amongst the terrain. All the action is going to be happening offshore!

Also things like, "A realistically proportioned alleyway can't be a thing, because you won't be able to reach in a move figures around in it" stop applying entirely. Go ahead, leave a ~1mm alley between buildings.

The one area I did compromise on, for the sake of my sanity, is the back alley area of the central block in the village, which should be a litter of tiny yards and alleys behind the row houses. That would have involved insanely fiddly minute bits of wall, so it got skipped. There's also fewer sheds and outbuildings than there "should" be, but, well, you have to stop somewhere.

On to wee tiny ships next, but I will definitely be coming back to more tiny scenery, both more coastal sections and possibly some other bits for aerial games or even microscale/2mm ground combat.

[Codsticker]

Awesome work WL. That last pic is a great perspective- it really shows it off as a landscape.

[Wirelizard]

Awesome work WL. That last pic is a great perspective- it really shows it off as a landscape.

Thanks, I'm very pleased with how these coastal bits have turned out.

If you look at the four photos in a row over on my blog post you get a nice "flying down the coastline at low level" effect. Maybe I should figure out how to stick them all in an animated GIF or something.

I'll be running a coastal naval game at Trumpeter Salute in Vancouver in a couple of months, currently scheduled for the Friday evening opening slot.

Painting of impossibly tiny ships has been progressing, I'll try and get some photos to show off this weekend.

[OSHIROmodels]

They’ve turned out great 

[Wirelizard]

Finally sat down and bulldozed through the rest of the buildings from my first Brigade order at the end of last year, the buildings I didn't use on the two completed coastal modules.



This is fifty or so individual buildings, with parts like the industrial chimneys and church steeples cast and painted separately from the main body of the relevant building, all from various Brigade's line of English/British/UK buildings. A bunch of industrial buildings, a few more walled farmyards, enough town/village buildings for a reasonable little village or the edge of a town, and a bunch of detached houses of various sizes which are also useful for things like schools, hotels, small hospitals, and that sort of thing. Also a trio of lighthouses and a pair of Martello towers for coastline details.

I have no immediate plans for these, as there's other incomplete projects I want to finish before I come back to making more coastal pieces, but it's satisfying to get them all finished up so they can stop lurking around the edges of my painting area!

There's another seven or so photos over on my blog, including some closeups: http://www.warbard.ca/2020/08/11/fifty-or-so-tiny-buildings/

[Hammers]

Oooh... I'd play with that!

[OSHIROmodels]

Nice 

[Wirelizard]

Thanks, guys, I'm very pleased with how this lot turned out, and the Brigade SSS series is just such fun to paint.

The trick, such as it is, is to be fairly aggressive with edge highlights, especially on roofs. These buildings are so tiny - the largest one in that photo, the big factory at top left, is not even two inches long - that they turn into little blobs if painted conventionally. Pop the edges back out with a fairly aggressive edge highlight and your eyes and brain go "Oh, OK, that is actually a building".

I'm planning a harbour/industrial coastal module based loosely on what Felixstowe looked like before and during WW2, with a harbour basin (or at least the front half and entrance) and industrial buildings alongside.



The National Library of Scotland has a fantastic archive of OS maps going back to the 19th C and covering the whole of Scotland & England, in various scales: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=51.94985&lon=1.32271&layers=171&b=1

[Wirelizard]

Hauling this out of the barnacled deeps because after most of two years not doing a thing for my WW2 coastal naval project I got a couple of games in and am now building new scenery and have ordered new boats and planes!

Cranked out a couple of sandbars to give enthusiastic captains something else to run into; this is an in progress shot with the base paint down but several steps left to go.


There's a real shortage of "naval scenery" articles out there (trust me, I've been looking) so I'm writing up blog posts on the sandbars, and also doing some rocky reef bits and some small islands and will write them up on the blog too. 1/1200 is a fun scale to do scenery for, really really different from 28mm/15mm/etc.

Over on the WW2 forum I also have a two year old post of boats and planes, will likely salvage that from the briny depths once my two orders of new boats and planes show up.

[Wirelizard]

As I mentioned in the post right above this, there's a shortage of small scale naval scenery how-to articles out there, so I'm writing my own with hookers and blow to fill that gap.

The full sandbar/sandbank blog post is out now; rocks coming in a few days and small islands sometime next week. I've already talked about how I do my coastline modules back in 2020/early 2021; at some point I'll likely do a summary blog post with links to all the various naval terrain posts in one place.

Anyway, sandbars: http://www.warbard.ca/2022/11/24/sandbars-for-naval-gaming/

The finished articles, all ready to menace captains who get more focused on the enemy rather than the unforgiving sea...


Feedback welcome, either here or as comments on the blog!

[Wirelizard]

Wrote up my rocky shoal/reef/whatever you call it construction process.

http://www.warbard.ca/2022/11/27/rocks-vs-boats/

Plastic card base, cork bits (crumbs, really) and not a lot else beyond paint.