Thursday, 12 February 2026

A scratch built French Storehouse - Miniature Wargames issue 515


It was back in 2019 that John Treadaway, editor of Miniature Wargames asked me to write a short series of articles showing how I built simple and affordable wargame terrain for my gaming table - 73 consecutive magazine articles later I thought it would be fun to revisit this brief and I set about producing this 28mm scale scratch built French Storehouse.

Built over a core of corrugated cardboard and 'plastered' with a mix of ready-mixed filler and DAS modelling clay with thin foam roof tiles the simple model was constructed over the 2025 Christmas holiday period on the kitchen table as the weather was too cold to work in the shed.

Painting was also simple with a pale cream base and tinted acrylic paint variation on the walls and grey, drybrushed lighter grey for the roof. Detail painting was done with more acrylics and I used watercolour pencils to add distress and streaks.

As you can see I did not add a base to this particular model - a homage to the original 2019 brief and request.


For more information and to see the contents of MW issue 515 (March 2026) see this link.

For regular readers and followers, I can confirm that issue 516 will contain another scratch built model and article - for more information, you will just have to wait a little longer.

Finally; I would be interested to hear from modellers if they would like these updates to include more (or less) information and/or illustrations. My own view is that I could add more images and descriptions without taking away from the published magazine article but I also know that these teasers could help magazine sales and at this moment I am confident that any sales are both good for the publishers and the retail areas.

What do you think?

Tony 

8 comments:

Bluewillow said...

Great piece Tony,

Splendid article also.

I am building a l’octroi (salt tax) point for my Republican French/ Napoleonic village at the moment. The l’octroi just up from our house in Mayenne is quite an impressive 18th century building.

Cheers
Matt

Codsticker said...

Yeah, I wouldn't mind a little more info about the process.

Tony said...

I am hoping you can help me. I'm running out of original ideas for inspiration for new scratch built terrain. Do you have any ideas or maybe a piece that you have always wanted to see on the wargame table. Any ideas, no matter how 'left field' would be appreciated. Tony

Tony said...

I'm hoping you can help me. Do you have any suggestions as to what my next scratch built piece of terrain and article should be? I'm running out of new ideas and would appreciate any help. Tony

Fulford Paints said...

Off the wall ideas? How about buildings for Burrows And Badgers. Saxon and/or generic fantasy, maybe inspired by the anthropomorphic animals that live within...

Tony said...

I have done a couple of Burrows & Badgers inspired models in the past and loved making them. I'm sure there will be more in the future.

Anonymous said...

Have you done anything that would work for the Italian wars in 28mm?

Tony said...

The Italian Wars - at first I though of WW2 and the allies moving up through Italy, but a little research shows that I was wrong. I will give it some thought. Thank you for the suggestion.