Fantasy town - how to build diorama?

Even a tiny piece of terrain can make a difference on the battlefield when playing wargames - whether we’re talking through the rules or the visual point of view. If it’s so, then how unbelievably significant impact the whole fantasy town diorama will have on both of these perspectives? You probably already have an idea or two on how to answer this question. Nonetheless, let’s check it together!

Choose a town or cityscape as your model

The case is simple - you need to make one to know how the fantasy town diorama would impact your games. And in that case, “make” is crucial, as finding a whole city maquette for wargames to buy can be both difficult and expensive.

What’s more, preparing the desired diorama yourself has some undoubtful advantages. The most significant one is that you can find such towns in pop culture texts (for example, movies or video games) and take some inspiration from them.

Even here, at the very beginning, the possibilities are already vast. You need to decide if you would like to make a realistic, dirty medieval-style castle like the ones in “Game of Thrones,” a majestic, breathtaking fortress similar to those from “Lord of the Rings,” or maybe a fairytale-themed small town as seen in “Willow.” After all, if you can’t decide, you can always mix all of them!

Collect materials to create the buildings and landscape

The next step is to gather as many resources as possible - even if you don’t use everything, that’s ok. It’s always better to have some in advance rather than be short on them.

Remember - the town isn’t only about buildings, so you might find many unconventional bits useful when building one. Even book piles and shelves should find their place!

If you require some ideas, look at our modeling and basing categories. You can find many tools and stuff to help you raise some amazing fantasy-themed scenery by yourself - including hobby knives, glues, plasticard, hobby chains, and more.

Use paint, paper, and other craft supplies to create a realistic-looking town

When making a fantasy town diorama, you’ll have many possibilities on what to use and how to use it. You can either trust your modeling skills and make everything yourself, purchase some pre-designed terrain and finish it with your paints, or mix these solutions.

There is no one good way. Neither of these ways is better, and neither is worse. It’s up to you and your imagination. The “realistic-looking” etiquette isn’t obligatory as well. You’ll be building a fantasy town, so it’s obvious that sometimes it won’t look much realistic, and that’s ok too!

Remember - after all, the diorama will be yours - you’ll play on it or take pictures of it. The most important thing is that you should be proud of the final results.

Add people, animals, and other details for realism

A fantasy landscape very rarely happens to be empty. Houses and fences aren’t everything, so it’s good to think about some “living” stuff as well. Whether they’ll be people or animals, adding any or both might improve the reception of your diorama.

A great way to make your town more “alive” is to add there a scenery resembling some feast or typical market

The only things to remember when doing so are that the models representing your townsfolk and their animals should be in suitable scale (for example, 28 mm or 30 mm) and theme as well (someone holding a plasma gun isn’t sight to be seen in such town unless you’re making a Warhammer 40k town diorama!).

Display your finished work with pride!

Once you finish your fantasy town diorama, please don’t be shy and show it to the world. You can always take some pictures during the play, or - even if your intent wasn’t to play on it - you can arrange models so that it’ll look like you were playing and then take some pictures. In both cases, consider using our tokens, markers, templates, and similar stuff from the gaming accessories category - they should boost the immersion in your pictures pretty well.

Nonetheless, the final effect visible in the pictures should be stunning, as there is no sweeter sight for any wargamer than painted miniatures on the fully prepared terrain.