Scratchbuilding with foam core

When I first returned to miniature gaming it was to play Crossfire in 20mm. All my initial buildings were scratch built using foam core and I made them specifically with Crossfire in mind, a set of rules which works particularly well for urban fighting. 

For ease of gameplay it made sense to construct each model as a roofless ruin with interior rooms conforming to the size of building sectors in the rules. That made construction less complex and it meant that roofs and tiles were the last things on my mind.

Those buildings still see use and have made great ruins for other games using Chain of Command. They featured prominently when we played The Road to Bremen campaign, as the final games took place in the ruins of the city itself.

As the units in Crossfire were on 40x40mm bases I limited the amount of rubble in each building as I've never liked the sight of large bases balancing precariously on mounds of debris. While there's no doubt that was functional it had a tendency to leave the ruined terrain looking somewhat sparse. I do have a longer term plan to rework many of them to include a lot more rubble. That's partly for aesthetic reasons but also because now I base most of my figures individually.

I used the same building technique only recently to create a new ruin. We were in the midst of playing another campaign for Chain of Command and a hit on a house by a round of 150mm HE caused it to collapse. As we were refighting over the same map in the following game I wanted a ruin that would match the exact footprint of the original building. A scratch build with foam core was the simplest and quickest solution. 

The main structure is cut from foam core and glued together using PVA glue. I find a few pins inserted through the foam core are a good way to hold things together while the glue dries. The interior and rubble were added using coffee stirrers, household filler and cat litter.

To keep it versatile I made a detachable pile of rubble that could be placed adjacent to the building if space permitted.

The window shutters were a last minute addition from my spares box and were left over from a Sarissa MDF building.

This was a quick build and was ready to replace the earlier building in the next game in our campaign.

Having avoided making roofs for the initial buildings for Crossfire I realised that with a little bit of work I could repurpose one to make the Opium Factory for our 1942 Singapore based campaign Last Stand on Opium Hill. I built a simple frame using balsa wood that would allow the roof to be removed during games and covered that with pieces of corrugated cardboard. At the same time I used wire gutter guard from a hardware store to make very simple window frames. It gave the building a new lease of life.

Foamcore comes in a variety of thicknesses and for my 12mm Second World War project I used the thinner 3mm sheets to make a series of ruined buildings in much the same way as I had in 20mm.

Construction is very straightforward as you can see.

By peeling back the paper coating and revealing the inner foam you can then scribe bricks or other shapes.

The foam core can be textured and for this I use regular household filler.

The end result are a number of light but sturdy buildings made at very small cost.

The beauty of scratch building is that you have complete control over the dimensions, which means you can be sure they are sized to work with the basing of your figures.

While it's fair to say I've used foam core to make a lot of ruins I've also found it useful to build the basic shape of a complete building. I used it in this way to make a 28mm wooden barn (you can follow the full build in this post).

This gave me the main shape and a strong base onto which I could attach wooden coffee stirrers.

The detachable roof was made in exactly the same way except the roof shingles were made by cutting up a cardboard cereal box.

I've found foam core to be a very versatile material. It's light but strong and yet easy to cut to shape with a craft knife. PVA glue works for most applications and extra detail can be added using a variety of different materials. The factory below was one of my early builds for Crossfire and the chimney was made from the inner roll of kitchen foil. To be honest that's very obvious if you look at it closely, something I've always intended to address!

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