Whilst looking at some photos from various WWII battles I was struck by the seas of bricks and rubble that the soldiers seemed to find themselves fighting through. Stories from Stalingrad and Caen described how the bombed out cities resulted in clogged streets of rubble often times taller than a man.
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| Soviet soldiers take cover in piles of rubble from blasted buildings while engaging German forces in street fighting on the outskirts of Stalingrad 1943 | |
Inspired by these photos and stories I decided to try my hand at making some rubble piles for my Bolt Action gaming board. I got the glue, paint and cardboard out and decided to document my process for other gamers to give a try using my recipe! I was going for something (1) quick and (2) easy with the build and overall am very happy with how it turned out:
Step 1:
Using regular cardboard (literally from a case of beer) I cut the rough shape for our pile of rubble. I didn't want a perfectly regular circle or rectangle so I went with a rounded oval.
Step 2:
Next I crinkled a handful of kitchen paper into a ball and places it onto the centre of the cardboard base. I then covered the entire paper-ball-mound with PVA and water (75:25 ratio) and left it to dry.
Step 3:
Once dry and hardened up, the entire base and mound was covered PVA and then in sand. This is the sand I use for basing and is sand I took from a local park.
Step 4:
Next I began by cutting up old sprues into shapes for bricks, scaffolding, wooden beams and other detritus of bombed out buildings. I threw in some random left over bits I had from various kits. Wall pieces from the Warlord farm house, some tires from old rubicon kits and random stowage bits.
I also bought a bag of these MDF cut "Bag of bricks" sold by Battle Kiwi a New Zealand based company. I think I got it for ~$10 AUD and it has enough bricks for plenty of terrain and basing projects.
I glued the bricks and sprue rubble down using PVA glue again.
Step 5:
The entire piece was sprayed with a grey primer. Just regular cheapo hardware store grey paint.
Step 6:
Finally I painted the bricks shades of grey, brown and orange to break up the colours a bit. Various sprues were painted with either flat brown, flat earth or boltgun metallics. Then entire thing was washed in GW's agrax earthshade for a bit of shading. Finished!
I made a bunch of different shapes and sizes for some variety scatter terrain in our bolt action games. Here's a few shots of them in action:
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| The US Sherman is halted by rubble on the roads. |
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| US machine gun team sets up behind the cover of debris. |
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| Sturmpioniere advance over the rubble whilst taking fire. |
Overall I am very happy with how they turned out and this has been a full little project. I imagine this recipe could easily be used for other tabletop war games like 40K or infinity - just throw some sci-fi bits into the rubble! I hope this guide serves as inspiration to other players out there looking for some cheap and easy scatter terrain.
Signing out,
Chewie
