Thursday, December 7, 2023

Piles of Poo: Quar Scatter Terrain

I love scatter terrain. I find it really helps make the table more immersive and gives the wargaming table a character and sense of place. 

Roadside shrine to the Ancestors

I've been thinking about uniquely Quar scatter terrain. What would make you say "oh that's a quar village!" rather than just somewhere in Napoleonic era Germany? Without making completely new buildings, that is.

What might a quar farm look like?

I've already made garden patches and wood piles for my Medieval village. Those are already being redeployed to Quar tables. But what else?

Quar like to eat bugs. Worms, beetles, grubs, crickets, etc. So Quar farmers would raise bug. Lots of bugs. So boxes to raise bugs in.

Bug boxes, dung heaps and a pile of random stuff I made years ago

I had bought some half inch wooden cubes years ago, for some abandoned game design. I simply added feet cut from match sticks, glued them to spare Renedra bases and then painted. They don't need to look tidy or precise, because most farms I've seen everything looks rather worn and repaired.

And dung heaps. Because bugs like poo.

In progress, assembly completed 

HO scale shovel from bits box

Hmmm, looks a bit like a coconut cluster before inking

I made the dung heaps by trimming a chunk of off cut insulating foam into a rough pile shape and gluing it to a wooden craft shape base. I then smeared it with Gorilla Glue and buried it in coarse model railway ballast. Dark brown with highlights and then I glued on some dried grass static grass. This was too bright so I toned it down with watered down brown ink.

I also made a roadside shrine to the local clan ancestors. I haven't seen any official fluff, but I imagine a very old carved stone, on a platform with votive offerings of cakes and flowers.

A rectangle of insulation foam and a plinth made from layers of cardboard. The cakes are disks of plasticene. The vases are cut off plastic coffee stirrers with some flower tufts glued in. The insulation foam pitted a bit from the aerosol paint, but I made that a feature since it's an obviously ancient stone.

I also made a village well. Something that has been an oversight until now. Big Pat gave me some stone construction kits which I've used before to make ruined walls etc. One kit had some curved stones. I used these for the well itself, glued to an mdf disk from the discarded onion dome of my Russian church. The cover was banged together with matchsticks and cereal box card. The bucket is from some spare artillery equipment.

Village well. Useful for Medieval and Napoleonic era Europe too.



3 comments:

  1. Splendid ideas, well executed.
    Alan Tradgardland

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  2. I agree on the little bits and pieces on a table that add character. Maybe a paddock with some weird looking, alien livestock in it??

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