My second project was inspired by the trip I planned to take my family on to the U.K. A lot of research was going into the holiday; what to do to see and do and this gave me an idea. I’d do a medieval village! My next consideration was which figures to use and after a quick look on the Plastic Soldier Review site…bingo! Stretlets Medieval Britain and some Roman Civilians. 

Whilst painting the figures took up most of my the time on Dio no 1. it was finding a technique and jet building all of the houses with this one. It was once the building structures were complete that I began thinking about the base. A village of a reasonable size would need a fair bit of space so I settled for 72×62 cm. (Warning I did not think about later storing these around the house so be careful). Another initiator of this project was a castle the kids gave me for Christmas. After putting this together and what, with all the town houses the scope was getting far too big. The castle will have to wait patiently in storage for now. 

Because of how many houses the kids and I built (far too many) I discovered that having options to play with is not a bad thing but instead enables you to change things around as you proceed. I generally end up with 20 to 50 figures left over too.

I started this in January 2014 and finished it in October 2014. It seems a long time but the original number of people increased somewhat when the was-to-be arching competition turned in to a market place. Not being an archer myself I didn’t realise how far they fired arrows in real competitions, so thus the market. 

One problem I faced was the hard time I had finding good quality and detailed items you would find at a market in 1:72 scale. The ones that did come up on the web were too expensive for myself. What I couldn’t purchase, I’d make. A quick example is the use of seeds from my kitchen spice rack as fruit and vegetables on little balsa wood trays, (*see: Market produce) a dab of paint and there we have it, as many as required, cheap and easily made. 

I think the hardest part was the river; I had already used Realistic Water on the Napoleonic one but that was only a stream. Well with a bit of experimentation I got a reasonable effect in the end. I look at it now and there is little I would do any differently. As I say, the web is highly resourceful and there is so much help out there. If you do choose to use Realistic Water I would recommend researching it first as it is not cheap and will save you money and energy (I nearly botched it up on the first job).