15mm WWII Diorama Project

I picked up several buildings from JR Miniatures to recreate a scene on the WWII Western Front, France, Late War. The scenario I used them on last was Germans moving on the offensive from the right side of the diorama, all the way lengthwise to the left edge where an Allied (American and British units in defense) oil depot was situated; the goal of the Axis player was to seize or destroy the depot. 

The Germans had to navigate 2/3rds of the right side of the battlefield, which had a central road that divided in a fork around a big pond at center, a rubble building, and some wooded and rocky areas. At the pond on both roads is where they hit barbed wire and minefields before the Allied front line lay. 

The Allies had a couple farmhouses, a church, woods, entrenchments, and the depot to the rear with a road leading in for reinforcements.

The smaller of the two farmhouses had two small rooms, with a removable roof, so infantry units could hide in there and shoot out the windows! The removable roof allowed me to put the units in, move them around, and of course take pictures within. I’ll look for more pics on my flash drives to augment what I initially post here, but they may have been lost long ago.

 

…these are all resin pieces, and the sculpts aren’t 100% accurate, but give enough realism to look great and portray what they are. French buildings, of course. My methods were simple: Craft store acrylics (mostly Folk Art and Apple Barrel), with touches of Tamiya acrylics. Everything as I recall, was coated with a Gloss black… the technique employed is a favorite of mine, where the black in the nooks and crannies add all the necessary depth needed to pop on the diorama… you are viewing Bird’s Eye, so you need to help depth perception along!

 

…top coats of color would be applied afterwards, with red brick, brown wood, beige plaster, and so on. The floorboards inside came out wonderfully… lot black as you see above (that was the base coat), but nicely scuffed up floorboards! I didn’t add any furniture.

 

Progression pics of the roof…

 

 

The other farmhouse was longer, but again, with two rooms and a removable roof. I’ll add here that the roofs set nicely atop the building walls and was quite sturdy, not moving about at any jarring. Again, gloss black undercoats to start, and then, colors added after.

Red brick in the damaged plastered wall… it would be weathered down a bit by end…

 

You can really see the black undercoat coming through the plastered outer walls below! Note the crannies between the boards of the door for instance, where the gloss black adds depth and “wetness” (…a technique used by car companies to make their cars look sexy!). The cracks in the walls are just the gloss black showing through, as well.

 

The aforementioned dirty floorboards are examples below. As I remember it, I used a touch of fine sand sprinkled in the wet paint…

 

…Next small windows for holding units! Below, some progression pics of the roof in two stages…

 

 

Finished shots of this farmhouse…

 

 

Just lovely sculpts! …all in 15mm, I forgot to mention.

The rest of the structures were to be used as obstacles…no removable roofs or such, and limited ability to stack miniatures atop, but not impossible! 



…in the picture above, at the top left is a bombed out Church; below it, a small building, which I thought of as the church priests home; and to the top right, a bomb Ed out Villa. Below, in the foreground, are the two Depot pieces.

…again, these are all solid resin sculpts and didn’t require any file or sanding. Just gorgeous pieces of workmanship!

 

 

 

I’ll get to all the pieces in their finishes form in a moment, but first, the less dramatic in fancy-shmancy, and almost second banana pieces …but crucial to the scenario story pieces: The Oil Depot!

 

 

 

Im super’ proud of these! In scope of the scenario’s diorama, they are somewhat small in number of fuel drums, but they were placed in the outside edge of the back Allied front line, so the idea was the depot stretches well behind what you see (beyond the edge)… The Axis forces just needed to breach the depot to win, conceptually seizing it by eliminating Allied resistance before at at these two two pieces; or with a contingency built in, should the Allie’s still number in a pre-programmed strength of units, attempt a one shot chance to blow it up.

These definitely tested, and saw a dramatic evolution in my weathering skills, in my humble opinion

One last piece was a totally bombed out building, which I imagined a small factory or large workshop, which sat at the far right of the battlefield at the begin of the Axis entrance edge of the diorama. It was meant to be a chance at cover in coming on the board, more than an actual obstacle. It was actually a piece I found at a hobby shop, in their model railroading section… I can’t remember what scale, but either O or HO. I didn’t need to do much to it, since it was pre-painted, but I did do some painting, accenting, and weathering to it.

 

…I added more debris and sand to it. Added washes ti darken the brick mortar to look charred

 

Charred the walls…

 

And added color to the bricks…

 

And the finished products…

 

…I’m pretty sure I put a dull coat on everything, now that I look at the above pic! That was my makeshift spraybooth, long before I had a pan actual spraybooth!

 

Sorry… I wish I had more pics, but I’ll try looking and if I find some, I’ll edit the above posts (letting you know such was done, of course!)

So what did these all sit on? Well, the diorama was a very simple affair, in which I was looking for a basic diorama to fit the scenario scene being played out… plus, I’d never done a diorama, so my skills were very undeveloped! I started with a folding camp table, 2-1/2 x 5 feet in dimension.

 

I used utensil tray mats (the ones you place in the utensil drawer bottom to keep your trays from sliding around); and atop those mats, green florist foam cut to shape…these would provide the armature for hills, under a full table felt covering.

 

Then, a large felt piece over the whole table… this was bought at JoAnne’s Fabric Store, which you find in many Northeast malls. After that, started with diorama elements: The roads were laid with fine sand; not glued or anything, but rather, just laid with a squeeze condiments bottle! There’s a central, main country lane going up center, south to north, with offshoots east (for Allied reinforcements) and west (for reinforcements Allied as well, but a contingency in place for Axis reinforcements, if they met certain advancement criteria).

 

Following this, the structures and woods were added. A view from the German back lines…

 

…a little further up, on the German left flank, showing the Allied front line…

 

…the a little up from the German right flank…

 

And of course, the pond got a shoreline! The pond was simple, blue sheet foam bought at Michaels’s Craft Store, and cut to shape. It laid well, once I was to place foliage, bush, debris, and “boulders” on the pond shore edges perimeter...

 

So how did it all look in the end? Here are some in-game action shots!

 

…The Germans had a super rough go of it, slogging their way up both sides of the pond, taking heavy casualties. In the right side of the picture above, just before the east cutoff road, you will note the tank entrenchment I built in  this  thread. I had a tank destroyer sitting in there, with fortified infantry and mortars. And they just decimated the German right flank for a majority of the game… it was finally brewed up, but my then, it had domes its valiant duty! As an aside, in front of the entrenchment, you see little black rectangles with a small sign…those are minefield markers. Ti the right of the entrenchment are barbed wire obstacles, the left most one I built. To the right of those minefields are the bombed out shop; and in the back, past the east cutoff road are the small farmhouse, and the bombed out church behind, covering the depot entrance.

 

…To the left are the large farmhouse, and behind, the bombed out Villa. In front of the farmhouse are minefields, barbed wire… and the Allies cleverly hid bazooka teams in the shrubs at the pond edge! …those teams staved off what was to be a final German Armored Car assault towards the end and deny the Germans from even breaching the Allied front lines!

Below, you see a formidable array of Allied armor stacked up to the pond shore! At his was also towards the end of the game, and several got brewed up or pulled back, but not before neutralizing the German armor, which led to the armored call Hail Mary.

 

 

 

 

The left flank was able to be defended by a couple armored units… all the big action was on the other side of the battlefield, in the Allied right flank.

 

The game was a ton of fun, for me as GM included! I’d love to see a big game like that played again someday, but it was a long one!!!

I hope you enjoyed this thread!