Rubble Piles Made For 4Ground Damaged Buildings

Darryl and many of the guys at Cardiff Wargames club had a crazy idea to make a 12 by 4 table of the center of

After Salute we just had to ask Darryl if he could do a how to about his rubble, and Darryl being the nice chap that he is has made us a great step by step guide.

Cad

By Darryl Morton, Intro from Cad of 4Ground

Villers Bocage. They ordered a huge amount of 28mm 4Ground kits and went at it like a modern building developer on a green field site. Before long they had the site plan drawn, then the roads laid (fantastic use of textured wall paper from B&Q), next came the making of almost 100 of our 28mm buildings. If you went to our stand at Salute 2014, Darryl and is fellow builders were there on hand with their mighty big battleground, playing a hard fought engagement with armour commanding the streets as their supporting infantry made their way through the houses to flank the enemy.

In the picture above the final pieces and their effect above its hard to argue with the impact they have.

This was an epic display, but what made it even better for us at 4Ground is what they did with all the waste from the kits sprues. So many people at Salute asked about the building damage strewn about, thats just what we need for our games and when are these coming out as 4Ground products. Time and again Darryl explained that even though there was loads of rubble about the place, it all cost nothing to make but a bit of glue as all the damage and rubble was made from bits of sprue once the kits were removed.

HOW TOMODELLING GUIDE :01

Starting with all the left over sprues from any of the 4Ground kits, you can make piles of rubble, or destroyed buildings to increase the amount of terrain you can put out on your gaming table.

All you need is a pair of side cutters some PVA glue and a little bit of imagination.

To begin choose one piece to create your base from.

I chose this piece because the angle of the corner means that it will fit nicely around the outside of a bombed out building.

You might want to chose a piece with a straight back edge so that you can push it up to the front of a row of terraced houses.

Experiment! There is no right and wrong way to build your rubble piles.

Heres a picture of the same sprue chopped to pieces.

I have left the main part to use as te base and then cut up lots of smaller pieces which will get layered up to create the pile.

Ive glued one piece in an upright position to the back edge of the base piece - this is done to give the whole rubble pile some depth.

The three pieces in the foreground just show that Ive dabbed lots of PVA glue on to them before sticking them in place. Lots of PVA is the order of the day!

Here you can see the three pieces, plus several more, being glued on to the base - some of them are white-side up, one of them has been glued white-side down.

The only sprue used so far has been the thicker white piece. In the foreground is on of the brown sprues that the staircase was punched out of. This sprue contains some interesting shapes and adds another colour.

Here is the brown staircase sprue all chopped up and ready to be added to the base.

Create a mixture of small and large pieces; use different shapes and different lengths to create some visual interest and ensure that your rubble pile is not too uniform.

Here, I have started adding some height towards the back of the pile by stacking several pieces on top of each other.

Towards the front of the rubble pile, I have then glued some pieces which hang down-wards slightly so that the whole pile starts to slope towards the front of the photo. Note the two dabs of PVA to the left showing where one of these pieces will be fixed.

Some pieces from the blue sprue will add a few splashes of colour to the pile.

I've started cutting up the ladder to make a square window frame type of shape, which will be glued on to the pile.

Any spare pieces left over from your building kit such as doors, window ledges, bits of brick etc., can all add a bit of extra colour and shape.

The edge of the sprue, which originally contained the roof, has some nice broken tile-like pieces along one edge. This section is snipped up and glued on.

Alternatively, purchase one of the add-on tile packs from the 4Ground range and use the tiles from that.

In this photo you can see the window frame and also a longer piece that have been glued to the top of the upright. Both of these pieces add some depth/height to the rubble pile, but also add some strength to the model.

I've also started building up the other corner of the pile and layered it up with more height towards the back and added additional pieces sloping towards the front.

Heres a shot of the finished rubble pile. This took about 5-10 minutes to get to this point and didnt require much modelling skill, though you can obviously spend more time and really think about where you want to place each piece.

Some of the 4Ground kits contain extra bricks, which will add a bit more granularity to the pile

Here is my new rubble pile wrapped around the corner of one of the end terrace damaged buildings.

You may also notice that I like to add lots more rubble damage and general detritus inside the buildings too, which I think makes them look a bit more realistic.

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