Do you know the way to Rīga please?

A few hours playing with leftover bits has given me a piece of location-suitable scatter terrain for the Livonia 1812 campaign.

Here we see a peasant woman standing next to a distantsionnyy stolb or distance post. This would give the distance (in postal miles) to various cities.

Here's a preserved one:

I made mine from some MDF "sprue" left over from a building kit. The top was carved to a shallow pyramid shape and the name boards and ground-level socket were made from thin card. The base is another piece of MDF with the edges chamfered down and coated with filler. 

My stripy pattern isn't quite the same as the preserved one but I think it works. A little static grass around the pole completes the picture.

Here we see some French-allied Prussians marching past while Colonel Têtard-de-Crapaud, the French master spy, reads off the distances.

An alternative situation, allowed for in my Livonian Scenario Generator, is that withdrawing Russian troops have chopped down the post and hidden it in the forest to avoid giving information to the invaders.

This version of the post was a lot easier to build! I simply made angled cuts into a similar piece of MDF to simulate axe blows before snapping it off. The same card socket and ground work complete the piece, much to the Prussians' frustration.