Object Camps

Overview

Object camps are designed based upon a single item (object).

Traveling around the world you will find tourist or devotional knicknacks that are perfect as the centerpiece for a camp: models of castles, towers, Hindu deity statuettes, small Buddhas, pyramids, and the like. Some of these objects can serve as a camp by themselves, without modification; others need a little modeling work.

Keep an eye out for this sort of thing when you visit museums, dollar stores, and the tourist shops associated with historical sites. The flea market sections of wargame conventions are also good sources for useful knicknacks, and sometimes you can find plastic, resin, or MDF kits that work well.

Finally, gaming is now solidly in the era of 3D printing -- some beautiful 3D printed items can form the basis for camps with little work except painting them. Some of these camps are examples of what you can find for that purpose.

Generic Small Castle

Small walled hilltop fortification. Comes unpainted, but painting it is easy. No idea what manufacturer made this.

Classical Temple

Simple ceramic cast model of a Classical period temple. Would work for Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, Macedonians, Hellenstic period.

Crusader Castle

6mm (1/300th) scale model of a small crusader castle.

Works fine for Early or Later Crusaders, their enemies, or a lot of Medieval armies in the Mediterranean area from 1100 AD onwards, as advances in castle building spread from Outremer to Europe.

Generic Tower

Maybe my oldest camp. Cast of clay, not resin, so it is heavy. Works for any army that did square masonry fortifications with crenelation, which is an awful lot of armies.

Mayan Building

This is a commercially available Mayan building, made as a wargaming accessory. I bought it at Enfilade in Seattle, maybe 2009? No idea who makes it.

Works fine as a camp for most Central American armies.

Aztec or Mayan Souvenir

I found this in some tourist shop while on a cruise on the coast of the Yucatan somewhere. In every respect it was perfect as it was. I've done nothing to it. Size is good too.

Good for a Mayan or Aztec or any other Central American army.

Blue Mosque

Tourist souvenir of the Blue Mosque, from Istanbul. Good for Later Ottomans.

Hagia Sophia

Tourist souvenir of the Hagia Sophia, built by Justinian in Constantinople. With some mods it could work for any Byzantine army -- you'd have to break off and grind down the towers, which are "call to prayer" towers built by the Ottomans. Or it could work for a Later Ottoman camp as is.

Cappadokian Cave Dwellings

Picked up this tourist thing in Cappadokia. Building by delving into the soft volcanic rock is an ancient technique there; this would be a good camp for any army in the region from Ariathrid Kappadokian to Komnenan Byzantine. Needs a bit of work, but mostly good as is.

Dollar Store Castle

This is a fantasy (imaginary) castle I picked up at a dollar store for a dollar (shock!). It would work fine for any Fantasy Triumph army in 15mm scale (a bit odd for a 28mm figure army), or for some Late Medieval armies in Central and Western Europe.

Dollar Store Baptistry

This is another dollar store find -- a replica of the Baptistry in Florence, right next to the cathedral. The construction is 15th century; it would be great for any Italian Condotta army as is.

Ephesus Library

This is a tourist item I picked up in Ephesus (Anatolian coast of the Aegean); it is the front of the Library of Celsus. Ephesus was an important center through the Hellenistic period and Imperial Roman period; it was sacked by the Goths in 263 and declined thereafter as its harbor silted up.

This works great as a camp for any army that would have Hellenistic architecture -- essentially anything in the Mediterranean from Alexander the Great until Septimus Severus or later.

Temple of Hadrian

This is another tourist model I bought in Ephesus, Turkey. It shows the portico of the Temple of Hadrian that survives in the ruins of Ephesus.

Hadrian visited Ephesus in 128 AD, so the temple (dedicated to Hadrian and the goddess Artemis) was probably built soon after that. This makes it suitable as a camp for most Roman armies from the Early Imperial period onward, and early Byzantine armies as well.

Pergamon Altar

This is a tourist knicknack of the Pergamon Altar, sometimes called the Temple of Zeus. The original was moved to Berlin from Bergamo (modern name of Pergamon). It was built in the third century BC; it would be great for Seleucids or Pergamene armies.

Prague Bridge Tower

This is a tourist knicknack model of the 15th century tower at one end of the Charles Bridge over the Vltava in Prague.

The statues are 19th century, but I don't have the heart to grind them down for accuracy. The tower itself is an excellent 15th century structure as shown. The tower was begun in 1347, but the details shown here are more 15th century in my eyes.

Prague Town Hall

Some more nice 15th century architecture on a knicknack from Prague, showing the old town hall.

Tower of London

Hummel-style tourist knicknack of the Tower of London (the White Tower). The Tower itself dates way back to Billy the Bastard (William the Conqueror), but the architecture shown is much later -- some of it 16th century. I wouldn't hesitate to use it for a War of the Roses English army, though, because it is distinctive and cool.

Trojan Horse

On a recent trip to Turkey (and Troy) I found this beautiful little plaster casting of a Trojan Horse. After sanding off some text and adding some Mycenaean / Minoan figures, I've got about the nicest little Later Mycenaean / Trojan War camp that ever was.

I think this casting is partially based upon the Brad Pitt movie Trojan Horse; my trip was definitely after that movie came out.

Afghan Buddha

In the 6th Century or so large Buddhist statues were built in what is now Afghanistan. They were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

I built this camp soon after, based upon a small metal Buddha figure I had.

This would serve well as a camp for the Hephthalite Huns (who might be their originators), possibly the Kushans (right before them), and many other cultures along the Silk Road from the 5th through 9th centuries.

Egyptian Temple

This plastic and transfer kit is at some scale below 1/300th -- maybe 1/600th or so? It's a little large for a camp, but really nice. I did almost nothing to it -- a bit of drybrushing to bring out the detail, and that is it.

I use it for my Early Egyptian army, but it would work for lots of other Egyptian armies as well.

Can't recall where I got this kit.

Babylon Gardens

This is another plastic kit that creates an architectural model. I added some vegetation in the underlevel to make it more of a hanging gardens thing, but otherwise it is unmodified.

It's a good size for a camp now.

If I had it to do over, I might do some water treatment in the upper level with waterfalls, fountains, more vegetation, and put the whole thing inside a garden or something. Not sure.

As with many of the plastic kits, 20 years of fading memory means I don't recall from whence it came.

Fantasy 28mm

Found this in a flea market at Historicon and bought it.

28mm scale. Based on a CD. Nice little camp. Haven't really got an army for it, but may do eventually.

Wizard's Tower

28mm scale. This is a plastic kit of some kind, four sides that interlace the walls and a roof. I did a number of minor crafting steps to improve it:

Reinforced by putting it on a foamcore frame (painted black so you can't see it looking through the windows)
Added some wooden doors of scored balsa
A little bit of rework with greenstuff on the interlace stone walls to make them look better
Primed and repainted

But the basic look of the outside is essentially as it came.

Good for any high medieval fantasy army, especially one with wizards (who are known recluses and often live in towers).

Aquarium Pagoda

Repurposed pagoda from an aquarium terrain piece, suitable for a 28mm scale Oriental army. Too big for 15mm, and if it ever fell over on them, oy.

Frozen Wasteland

My 28mm (80mm base width) Ice Barbarian army needed a camp -- this is another aquarium terrain feature, repainted with several layers of white spraypaint, glued to an MDF base, and then some snow effects to flock it.

It could have easily been made of pink foam insulation as well, but hey, work I don't have to do is work I don't have to do.

Serpent People Altar

I've got a couple of Serpent People armies in 28mm, and they needed a properly snaked-up terrain piece. Some searching on the internet (Etsy, I think) brought me to this thing, which is 3D printed and very nice. Came unpainted, so I did the painting for it (prime gray, drybrush white, then do some detailing) but otherwise it's just the way it came.

Now my Serpent People can fight my Lizardmen without negotiating first to see who gets the Jungle Pyramid (my earlier solution for a Serpent People camp). Life is good.

I was thinking about having the altar covered with blood, like with Aztec altars on their special days, but I decided that mostly Yuan-Ti sacrifices get fed to giant serpents rather than have their hearts ripped out. Less mess that way.

Pod Bunker

This is a laser-cut MDF kit from a company called miniaturescenery.com in Australia. I love these MDF kits, they're so fun to build - like 3D puzzles. In this case I didn't do anything much creative except paint it and drybrush it to make it a little distressed, which is why it's in the Object Camps category.

In the 20 years since I built it, the original company has refined the kit a bit, so if you get one, it will have a few more details. Even nicer, I suspect.

This is for 28mm armies (80mm basing); it's really too big for smaller basing, and the firing slits and doors look stupid for smaller figures.

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