Hills A good material for making the classic stepped contour hill is continuous bead extruded polystyrene available from DIY stores for around £10 for a 8' x 4' sheet. Electrical goods retailers are a good bet for picking up 60x60x2cm polystyrene sheets used to protect the tops of white goods appliances and only end up being thrown away. DIY stores often sell their broken packets of ceiling tiles at a knockdown price. A Stanley 'Surform' tool or hot wire cutter can give a more realistic chamfered finish to hill contours. lightweight but durable step contour hills can be mode from foam sponge available in drapers or furnishing fabric departments In large stores. Use different thicknesses of stepped contours to represent steep (thin), or gentle (thick) slopes. Tearing the sponge will produce ragged cliff edges. Fields Make your 'fields' blend into the terrain by bordering with hedges, ditches or walls. Nothing spoils the illusion of reality faster than spying a piece of limp baize lying wrinkled on top of a playing surface. Plain felt squares in a variety of colours can be bought for lees than 30p from haberdashery or craft shops. Yellow felt is effective for 6mm / 2mm wheatfields. 'Teddy bear fabric' a sort of golden brown synthetic fur can be obtained from the same sources as above at a few pounds (£ 2.25 per metre at John Lewis department stores). Makes excellent 15mm wheatfields, which troops can move through it. A stiff bristle front door mat can be bought for £5 for around 60mm x 40mm from DIY sheds and carpet stores. Makes brilliant 20/25mm wheat / cornfields. Ribbed door mats can be similarly purchased and used as fields of crops or ploughed furrows depending on colour. Astroturf mats are available from DIY stores for £5 and once sprayed with matt varnish make good 15mm / 25mm cornfields, or other standing crops. Old corduroy trousers can be cut up to make ploughed fields. A cabbage field can be made by rolling paper into small balls, painting and then and glueing to the ribs of corrugated cardboard fields. A 3 litre bag of Thomas cat litter once sieved (from the bag, not the litter tray!) will provide plenty of rocks, boulders and scree for scattering on the table top. Reeds and fall grasses / cane fields can be made from cutting the bristles from a stiff brush. Leave the base colour and spray just the top 1/4 of the bristles a light green. Now stick into a base of Das Clay (terra-cotta colour needs less finishing). A trip into the countryside will turn up moss and lichen which once dried out can be used to represent heather / bramble / tumbrel. Flock and mount. Check out dried flowers and plastic aquarium flowers for jungle flora. Hedges A cheap alternative for 10mm / 6mm gamers are Chenille Stems. These are similar to green pipe cleaners but much furrier. Available from craft stores a 69p investment will give you 12 x 1ft stems. Make hedges more interesting by adding trees, ditches, culverts, styes or gates. Trees Wire trunk trees can be pushed into bases mode from terra-cotta Das Clay. RIKO Scenic Accessories available from most model, hobby and model railway shops produce a bag of 30 pine trees of assorted sizes from 6mm down (Code No. S9629). All for £3.75. Trees can be made from blocks of foam rubber sponge that are used for making seat cushion pads. The blocks come in different thicknesses and are approximately £1.95 for 18" x 18" x 1 1/2". Tear to rough shape of foliage, in scale required and add trunk from twig or cocktail stick. Chenille Stems can be cut into 2" lengths and based to make cheap but effective pine trees in 6mm. Privet bush and heather twigs make the best model tree trunks. Pine cones make cheap trees once sprayed green. Catch them in the bud for 6mm trees. Scots pine make best firs. Wait for small pine cones to open. Turn upside down and use whole for deciduous trees, or through selective cutting you can have the branches / fonds of palm trees, which then only need a slightly curved trunk added. Buildings Keep on eye out for cardboard model buildings whilst on holiday, at souvenir / gift shops. A pack of 10 Norman churches / cathedrals in 1/300th scale from Bayeux. 1/300th American Provincial town houses in Philadelphia. A kit to assemble Avranches, the immediate land basin, the Mulberry harbour and barrage balloons in 1/600 or 1/1200th scale (7) from the Battle For Normandy Museum, in Bayeux. 3 different 10-16mm Scottish castles from Edinburgh castle. 1/300th Cawdor castle from some place. 20 different Greek buildings in 20mm from Crete. Comfokes have run promotions giving 'Free' 20mm HO/OO buildings. Look for Osborne Children Books. They have several very, very useful coloured card cut-out and build sets suitable for 20 / 15mm. Average 18 buildings for £5 (See associated review elsewhere). Supercast produce a 'mould your own' Amsterdam Waterfront kit in what approximates 1/300th scale. There are six different building moulds of a very definite 'Dutch' style for £6.99, suitable for tote C17th / Moriburlans to WW2. Well worth a look as each house can be made for only a few pence each. Particularly good for club purchase. The Supercast range of home moulding kits has other individual buildings which may provide useful and are available from many model / hobby and craft shops. If you only need to represent streets for western gunfights, 1st Battle of St.Albans, that sort of thing, riots and rebellions, why not just draw a whole block of buildings on a big place of card, cut out and colour, then stand on the table bending the cord to shape as required by the streets. If you think the above idea isn't realistic enough, cut out two identical continuous building fronts and sandwich a length of artiste foam board between. This gives your representation some depth and once tiled is hard wearing and looks good. When cutting roof tiles for a model house you're making from scratch, there's no need to cut them out separately. Cut out a long strip and then cut only 3/4 of the way down each tile. The occasional his can be removed or made to look chipped. Remember that the row above will hide where they're not out. Simple terra-cotta 'Spanish' tiles can be mode from laying lengths of cocktail sticks (6mm or 15mm), or B-B-Q skewers for larger scales and scoring In the IndIviduoi tiles. Wash with a thinned down Teuton / White glue solution. Foam board available from art shops is superb for making buildings and free standing walls. Old fashioned plumbers logging felt Is the best material for simulating thatched roofs. Comb it with a wire brush or similar to fake loose hairs out, add thin washes of Teflon and comb book Into shape. Odds & Ends Cheap Emulsion can be got from DIY / home decorating stores who run the Spectrum mix the shade you require service. At John Lewis, cans of unwanted shades (it's not what I expected'), are sold off in their clearance sales for as little as 45p. 'Golden Farm' is a recommended shade from the Spectrum range for grass. 'Grass' colours turn out too dark. Sandpaper can be used to make river sand banks. Certain herbs that have passed their 'expiry date' make good vegetation / scatter, ie. Chives, Rosemary, Oregano and Sage. Sommerfield (Gateway) lightweight cat litter Is brick red In colour and is great for scatter around destroyed buildings, for street fighting etc. A bag of 1,000 matchsticks can cost as little as £5 and has dozens of uses. The string bags that oranges come In can be cut to resemble barbed wire in 25mm. A flat headed steel pin can be bent to resemble an adequate 1/300th scale street lamp. Left over bits of foam sponge can be chopped up In a food processor or blender to make scoffer material for hedges, trees, bases etc. A cheap sat of bamboo blinds (£5) can be split up to produce tree trunks, logs, log cabins, log forts etc B-B-Q skewers can make 25mm archers stakes. Decorative mouldings ( the polystyrene ones ) can be turned Into C17th / C18th star forts / siege works / bastions etc. Cardboard tubes for making windmills / castle towers can be had from carpet and fabric retailers as the rolls the material Is bated on is just thrown away. Chimney pots can be made from plastic rod available for a few pence from most model shops. Thanks to everyone who sent in their suggestions Llam Sorslleld, Jason Devereux, Steve Turner, Peter Wheelon, Tony Quickenden, Graham Hockey, Mike Davies, K. Ead, Peter MacDonald. Back to The Gauntlet No. 3 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Craig Martelle Publications This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com