Stalingrad: Scratch Built Ruins and Roads

 The planed Stalingrad table will be 10x5 feet and will depict Central Stalingrad from Red Square (Univermag Department Store), the Train Station to 9th January Square (Pavlov's House) and then down to the Volga.  Because I'm an idiot, I'm trying to make this as accurate as possible.  The table will require a lot of ruined buildings (100 or more).  Buying them becomes cost prohibitive so certain landmark buildings will be purchased or 3D printed (the Department Store. Pavlov's House, Trainstation #1 etc) but others will need to bee scratch built.  SInce these buildings will all be damaged that makes this project a whole lot easier!

The building material of choice is 1/8 inch thick matt board.  Matt board is cheap, light and easy to work with, plus it's what I had on hand.  1/4 inch foam board would be too thick for 15mm scale.  The test ruins were a 3" by 12" wide strip where I marked windows every half inch and used one inch for my floor height.  Each window is 1/2 inch x 1/4 inch.

Cutting out all these windows is REALLY tedious but I like the result as you can see in the first picture.  The faces of the buildings were dressed up with some styrene strips and they actually look pretty good.  The sharp eyed amongst you might notice there are no doors - I forgot to draw them in - sue me, it's just a test.

I like how the tests came out but need to figure out an easier way to punch out the windows - maybe a square mortising bit

In addition to buildings, I needed to figure out how to make streets that can have 90 degree intersection using hexes.  Here's a test shot using some of the buildings I got from Gamecraft Miniatures with some street hexes.  More on this topic in a later post.  I do realize the building on the left is too high for Stalingrad.  I'll cut it down on my band saw and use the cutoffs to form two "L" shaped ruins.  I highly recommend Gamecraft.

Why am I using hexes?  Well several reasons - one of which is the aforementioned idiocy.  One of the most important factors in running a large participation game is keeping up the pace - speed is your friend and keeps all the players occupied.  After moving figures one of the more time consuming aspects is players measuring distances for either movement or shooting.  You're also guaranteed to have at least one player in each game who is determined to measure down to 1/32's of an inch because he can.  Using hexes allows me to dispense with tape measures and use the hexes themselves.  For example if the rules say a rifle armed squad can move 8 inches and shoot 24, that becomes 2 hexes for movement and 6 for shooting.  I've also found building and the scenicing the hexes to be oddly relaxing.