Eking out the supplies

When I was gainfully employed I had access to an on-site print shop that produced a large amount of public information material printed onto expanded PVC board. I managed to blag several quite large "off-cuts" that were otherwise unwanted and they make great bases for wargaming models. Much easier to work with than MDF.

Now that I'm retired I'm having to eke out the remaining supply. I've even gone as far as recycling the base of one model I decided not to retain.

This first piece is just such. I'd built a 20mm scale French maison on a hill for my Menton 1940 games but I was never entirely happy with it and it look up an enormous amount of storage space so it's been demolished and all but the base went into the bin.

This offcut from the original base will form a generic village base onto which I can place some Middle Eastern buildings, again in 20mm scale.

The edge was already chamfered and I've engraved irregular paving slabs with an old ball-point pen. Some traces of old hot glue and areas of crazy- rather than rectangular paving will add a lived-in look to the thing.

And here's one I made earlier to show what I'm aiming for as the final result.

A small, unbased house should look better on this rather that being plonked straight onto the terrain cloth. While I could have permanently based my Middle Eastern houses, based houses take up more of my valuable storage space. These pieces can just be thrown into an old shoe box with the houses.

Construction (such as it was) used the usual terrain gloop (Quick Drying Polyfilla stained with brown acrylic paint) on the irregular edge with the straight edges kept plain so they can butt up against straight road pieces. 

Speaking of straight road pieces, a couple of long, straight sections of 5mm MDF that came in the packaging of some Ikea furniture seemed too good to throw away so I painted them grey as tarmacked road sections. To link them to my existing glooped-hardboard roads, I created this jointing piece from more of the left-over PVC board.