More painted vikings and scenery

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Another group of painted minis.

These brave warriors bellow are from: Strelets M004 - Vikings, Strelets 250 - Vikings (the unique sprues from the big box "Stamford Bridge" set), Orion 72004 Vikings, Orion 72029 Early Rus (here recruited as vikings!) and Emhar Vikings.

The drakkar is an aquarium scenery that I recently bought - its size is almost perfect for the 1/72 scale, in my opinion. (Only us wargamers would look at such things and imagine these alternative uses!)

On the background of some of the pictures above there are: 

- one of the peasant houses from my other post 

- a couple stone huts with hay roofs I am currently making. 

- a piece of a river I am making for my game table - it is made with EVA foam sheets and EVA putty.

(I've got many, many projects running in paralel and very little time - not much different from most of you!).

Making peasant houses

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 Here are a few little peasant houses that I've made using only cheap household materials such as:  

- empty tea boxes

- mask tape

- coffee stirrers

- acrilic paint

I started by covering the tea boxes with mask tape, because I thought the paint would stick better to the tape than to the box .

Then, for the first house I applied  a base coat of white primer. 

After the primer was dry, I applied the paint of the collors I wanted.

When the paint dried, I cutted and painted the coffee stirrers to emulate those wooden beams that one can always see on the walls of the typical German / Bavarian house (such houses always gave me that "peasant" feeling - rural life, working all day on the fields under the Sun, celebrating harvest festivals, etc.)

- From thicker cardboard paper (e.g. from a chocolate box) I cutted small bricks, doors and windows and glued them to the walls of the houses.

I still have to make triangular frames to fill the voids between the walls and he roofs on the sides. They will be made with cardboard and wooden coffee stirrers too.

For the second house onwards I tried painting directly on the boxes instead of using mask tape and primer and it worked out just fine.

Since these houses were made with tea boxes, it means that they are foldable and thus may be stored in small spaces!

And, of course, they're quite inexpensive. I prefer to prioritize spending money on miniatures over scenery sets (and such sets are usually more expensive), not to mention the joy of making things by hand.

Building wargaming scenery on a budget

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One of the joys of wargaming (and one of the True Joys that exist in our world) is the joy of creation.

Also, our hobby is a rather expensive one, and it can be much worse if we buy everything that we think is necessary to play.

Therefore, in this hobby I think we gotta be more like producers instead of consumers, as much as we can. 

One good way to save some money and also train our "creativity muscles" is to build our own terrain and scenario, as far as our craftsmanship can take us.

I think almost anything scenario-wise can be built with simple, cheap, household materials.

Here is a list of some of said materials I have used so far:

- toothpicks

- popsickle sticks

- empty cardboard boxes and packages (such as tea boxes, toothpick packages, etc.)

- coffee mixers (those made of wood, like popsicle sticks,  but usually thinner)

- toilet paper (when well mixed with glue it can be used to emulate fabric, clothes, etc.)

- toilet paper and towel paper rolls (the cardboard roll where  TP is wrapped around)

- sprues (I often keep the best parts of the sprues in which the miniatures come - some are great to make trees, logs, fences, ladders, etc. And if the piece os sprue is good enough, one may even be anle to sculpt a simple weapon)

- metal wire (including copper wires - good to emulate ropes and sometimes pikes, spears, etc.)

- clay (to sculpt bricks, tiles, etc.)

- Empty cans 

- match boxes (they are usually made of hard cardboard and/or wood, which is good for making shields and pavises)

- scrap wood (such as old pencils, which are good to make palisades)

- bottle caps (the metal ones may be sawed to make shields)