15mm Bavarian Towns

 While I may not have been actively posting on this blog over the last few months, I have still been busy working on projects. One project, just finished up in January, were these Bavarian towns. I wanted suitable buildings before doing such a project and I ran across some SHQ and a few JR Miniatures buildings that seemed to work well. 

To get the look right, I studied various images of Southern German town images on the web. Remnants of such period buildings exist and they present a colorful and cheerful appearance that I wanted to imitate. As such, I tried to use colors and objects of life to give a good representation.

The walls were the one part that made me the most uncertain. At first, I wanted to go with generic rock walls. Such a look would not be entirely wrong and would offer texture and relatively little painting challenges. On the other hand, stucco or white-washed style of walls were also common for more developed areas. The lighter color of a white-washed or stucco wall does brighten it up. Had I gone with rock walls, it would just give a bit too much gray when considering the cobble stone streets.

For the walls, I used cork board along with balsa wood cut to act as posts and buttresses. The cork board has the texture and the flexibility to curve where needed. It also cuts easily and after being painted, stiffens up.

I ran across a 15mm accessory pack from Musket Miniatures that had supplies, ladders and tree stumps. I forgot to include a picture of the wagon loaded with barrels and bags. As much as I wanted to include lot of additional items, I didn't want to clutter up the town and risk not being able to place figures.

I chose to use hardboard for the base and then further stiffening that with glue and sand for the area around the town. I made sure to leave handling room along the perimeter so as to protect the walls from being pressed when being picked up.

This well on the left is from Brickdust Miniatures. The trees are removable for both storage and for game play.

Having learned from my Peninsular towns, I used the same construction for the walls and basing material. Rather than just use a more natural ground effect for inside the town, I went with the iconic cobble stone look. There are different options for this, from rubberized pieces with the cobble stone appearance or rollers with the design upon them that can be rolled over a medium to leave such "tracks". Being unsatisfied with those options for a wider area, I went with high quality printed cobble stone paper packs that are designed for a seamless fit. This turned out to be much cheaper and flatter than the other options. 

Now my Austrians have a good scenic place to invade when they attack my Bavarians.