Wargames Scenery World

Whatever gaming system you play, at some point you are going to want a building or two as terrain for your battlefield. Buildings provide cover, protect units, direct the enemy into traps, can be garrisoned with your troops and generally add to the atmosphere of a game. The bleak future world of Warhammer 40K looks great with bunkers, bastions and ruined buldings in general. Bulidings add greatly to Warhammer fantasy battlefields too, especially if like me you like to tell stories with your games - that Empire farmhouse or village is just ripe for a raid from the Beastmen or Orcs and Goblins. With the 8th Edition of Warhammer out now, specific types of building feature in the rules such as a Wizards Tower or Dwarf Brewery (I'm making one of those at the moment).

So, given that buildings considerably enhance your wargames scenery, how do you go about getting some? You can of course make your own (and see my simple building how-to elsewhere on the site) or buy them ready made, or as a halfway house in kit form. If building your own, the traditional method of making them is to build the structure from foam card, which allows for the possibility of taking the roof off to station your models in the building itself. I made my last building and am making my Dwarf brewery directly from foam blocks ( though these obviously can't be directly garrisoned by your models). You can also short cut the process by buying kit buildings for your wargames terrain. Games Workshop make a nice range of plastic kit buildings for Warhammer and Warhammer 40K but they are quite pricey. You can also buy kits of pre-cast plaster (usually dental plaster) bricks and blocks to assemble your own buildings from, either just as is or in a kit to build a specific building. Hirst Arts frequently provide the molds for these  and produce a wide range of them. Kits of blocks are usually produced by Hirst Arts licensed sellers and frequently sold on eBay. A well put together and painted example of these makes fantastically atmospheric scenery for a wargame.

Whether you build your own from scratch, from a kit or choose a ready made building - you really do have to add some buildings to your supply of terrain for your wargames.

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