Quick Scenery
by Jonathan Leboeuf

Near future wargaming is completely new to me. I need terrain that is cheap, good-looking, and easy to build. With this in mind, I went to a local miniature train shop. Model railroading's "O" scale is in fact 1:48 scale, which is quite close to our 28mm miniatures. I had a good look around for cheap models, and found a few cheap cars in 1/43 scale (around $3.00-6.00 each). I modeled the car to represent a clean ordinary city car... some future collateral damage, if you prefer... Since there were no cheap "O" scale buildings available I looked for other options and found these companies online: Fat Dragon Games & Worldworks Games They each produce paper terrain specially made for wargames. Fat Dragon thend to be a bit cheaper, store flat and are lot easier to build, but Worldworks are a lot nicer, although often overly complicated to build.

I did what any compulsive wargamer would do, and bought a basic kit from each company and mixed them together. Both companies offer many instructions and tips to begin paper modeling so this hobby is very easy to begin. It took maybe one hour to build and paint the car, one lunch break to build the two Fat Dragon buildings, and one evening to build the Worldworks warehouse. I prepared the roads and built many props (dumpsters, some barrels, some crates and pallets, among other things), during a viewing of Bladerunner . Ì now have enough scenery for some urban action. Some greenery, traffic lights, signposts, and a few other props will in the near future only enhance the look of my table. All of the props I mentioned are included somewhere in the kits I bought, so you see that I got more than my money's worth. Worldworks provide interiors with their scenery (Fat Dragon buildings are only exterior shells), and my next goal is to expand my collection of interiors. I'll show you that next time.