20mm MDF buildings

I picked up these two mdf building kits at Britcon in Manchester last year.  Relatively straightforward to put together, although there were no instructions and I couldn't remember who sold them, so couldn't check online for instructions.  Still, they went together well and painted up nicely - I've gone with a chocolate box appearance, rather than making them too grubby and war torn.  I also didn't want to spend too much time on them adding extra realism - if I wanted to spend that amount of time, I'd have made a framework from foam board and added the extra touches to that - these were quick and relatively cheap to add some buildings to the available mix.  Each one was built and sized with dilute PVA glue in an evening, left to dry overnight, and painted the next day.


First up, the Boulangerie from the front.

And from the back.

The other building was a straight forward town house, front view.

Back view.

Both buildings.

These make nice additions to my 20mm buildings collection, alongside an Airfix church, brick-built terraced house and factory unit.  I shall look out for some more to add a bit of variety and increase the number of built up areas I can include on the tabletop.


As ever, thanks for looking.

20mm Anyscale Models terrain pieces

I put in an order to Anyscale Models for various pieces of terrain suitable for the Vaagso game we are putting on at WMMS next year.  I was mainly looking for items suitable for adding detail to harbour and industrial scenes, particularly fish oil factories.

With a factory scene in mind, I've completed an oil tank on stone piers, which should do nicely for fish oil.  This was a three part resin casting, two piers and the tank, with the feed pipe comprising a copper wire cast into the resin.

The piers are painted basalt grey, dry brushed stone grey and the tank is black grey dry brushed oily steel.  The wooden pads on the piers are beige brown dry brushed german camo beige.

As most industry needs a reliable, often copious supply of fresh water, here is a water tank on stone pier.  I think this is intended as a line-side feature for a railway, but a tank is a tank and this will do fine for a factory complex.

This one is painted in the same way as the oil tank.  Next time I'm making up some clear resin, I'll fill the tank with it to simulate the tank full of water.

Still on the workbench is a 10 man tent for a forward medical aid station, a barge and assorted wooden boxes, nets, coal sacks, covered lorry loads, etc.  I plan to order some more scatter items and will add another barge and possibly some fishing boats - after all the fish oil needs to come from somewhere.  The company also does a nice 5-6" gun, which would be great to add to a larger trawler to make it an armed trawler to make into a harbour defence ship with a German crew or an escort/mine sweeper trawler with an RN crew.

Thanks for looking.

20mm 20th Century Buildings

In preparation for the SOTCW game at Gauntlet next month, it was time to organise some buildings suitable to represent South Vaagso during the Commando raid Operation Archery.  Contemporary photographs show a lot of wooden clapboard buildings, similar to those seen in eastern Europe and Russia at the time.  There are no contemporary colour pictures, so I've based the colour schemes on examples from places like Bergen, which I visited a few years ago.

At the Phalanx show last Saturday, I picked up a set of Blotz mdf buildings from Sgts Mess.  These were great value and relatively straightforward to assemble into really pleasing models.

This is Russian village building 2, painted in two tone blues.

Russian village building 1, painted two tone green.

A PoW barracks - I thought this would be useful as the barracks for the Garrison on Maaloy Island.  I painted this in buff, to represent freshly sawn wood.

Then a stone jetty, nominally for 28mm figures, but I think it works fine for 20mm as well.

A wooden jetty, similar scale to the stone jetty.

Then here are the 20mm Russian village buildings by Red Vectors, available from Pendraken.  First up, the large house.

Then the small house.

Then a barn/garage - maybe big enough to house the Pz I.

Another barn.

And finally a pig sty.

Then finally, here is the Airfix bomb-damaged workshop I picked up in a Christmas sale several years ago.  This is obviously a more substantial brick-built building, which will represent either the town power station or one of the larger fish oil factories that were the target of the raid.  The flagstones are "self-adhesive" from Metcalfe.  I placed the words self-adhesive in inverted commas as they were just tacky, but there is no way they would have stayed in place on their own - I had to brush them with PVA glue to get them to stick, with the added benefit that it acts as a protective coating.

With Will's collection of buildings, plus a scratch-built version of the stone hotel building that formed the HQ for the German garrison, being built by Richard P, who also has a useful lighthouse in 20mm scale, we should be just about there.

Thanks for looking.

6mm Roman villa

Steve Oates of the Baggage Train passed me these at the club just after Christmas.  He is building up a nice set of 6mm terrain items, suitable for ancients wargaming, especially Roman and Dark Age periods.  These are his Roman villa and Roman workshop pieces.  I thought the workshop looked  lot like an early Romano-British villa (1st-2nd Century), while the villa looks good for 3rd-4th Century courtyard villa.  I've read that as the Romano-British nouveau-riche landowners rapidly adopted Roman style and culture  after the invasion, abandoning Iron Age roundhouses and moving into rectangular villa buildings, before moving on to more luxurious courtyard premises as styles and tastes changed - so much like the property ladder today.

I've modelled this piece to show the derelict roundhouse as an irregular circle of boulders (hut circle), to the left of the villa in the image below.  The early 1st/2nd Century villa building is now used to house slaves and as a workshop, while the landowners family live in the courtyard villa with its hypocaust flooring, garden and pond.

The front entrance of the villa.  The roof of the villa is a separate casting, so the inner courtyard can be detailed, but I need to glue it down as I see it's gone a bit wonky as I was photographing it.

Another view from the less salubrious side of the complex.

Nice crisp castings, very little clean up required.  I did wash them in detergent in case there was any release agent on the surfaces.  I'm not sure how much these are selling for, but Steve's prices for his other items are more than reasonable, well worth a look if you see him at a show.

Thanks for looking.

20mm 20th Century UK Battlefield clutter

This week I have been mostly painting up some battlefield clutter from Sgts Mess, which I picked up just after New Year from their January sale.  These should all fit in well with most 20th Century British battlefields, but I have them in mind for my late 70's - early 80's British Civil War campaign.

First up, a WW1 war memorial, to be found in just about every British village, town and suburb in 1980.  I also picked up a packet or poppy wreaths which can be placed at the base of the memorial for winter scenarios set after November 11th.

Then one of a pair of telephone boxes.  These could be found on just about every street corner from the reign of George V until the rise of the mobile phone at the end of the 20th Century.  I well remember queuing to use one of these back in the 70's and 80's.

Next, an RAC (Royal Automobile Club) rescue box.  I never had to use one of these, but had a key to one with my car keys until about 5 years ago.  Much more reassuring to be able to use a mobile if you breakdown.

Some assorted sign boards.  The one on the left sticking out of an oil drum is going to have "HALT" on it for an army checkpoint.  The next is crying out for "DANGER MINES" or "MoD Property; Keep Out".  The third is a rural fingerboard direction sign, while the fourth will do as a village or town name board on the edge of built up areas.  I'm thinking of printing off game-specific names on labels to stick on and peel off after the game.

Wherever there are people living, they make waste.  Here a set of galvanised metal dustbins for outside houses or lining the street if its bin day.

A brick-built post box and a cast iron pillar box, when you wanted to get in touch before the days of texts and e-mails.

The collection so far, alongside a kneeling Platoon 20 figure for scale.

As above, with the addition of a couple of Blotz market stalls, also from Sgts Mess.

These should hopefully add a bit of colour and interest to my upcoming British civil war campaign, although they would be fine for any WW2 British settings such as Sealion.

As ever thanks for looking.

15mm buildings

Getting ready for the big Market Garden club game at the weekend.  I picked up these buildings from Ironclad Miniatures at the Derby Show back in October.  They are really nice buildings, for Normandy according to their web site.  Each of the two storey buildings comes in 3 parts, two hollow layers for the ground and upper floors and a roof section.  I washed these in warm detergent to remove release agent and then undercoated them with grey primer.  They are painted in various shades of buff, beige or sand, with basalt grey for slate roofs.  Brickwork is ivory, dry brushed cavalry brown.  Wooden beams are chocolate brown. 

The three buildings.  The shop front is a separate plate that is glued to the front of the building.

The ruined factory.  The kit comes in three parts, the main building, courtyard and a loft floor.

Side view of the factory.

The three buildings with back garden fences - these are again from Ironclad.

One of the buildings in more detail.

The other two.

The shop front.

These are nice buildings and represent good value for money.  They are easy to paint and should be very useful on the tabletop.  I shall be keeping an eye on the website for any future releases and will pick up some more.  Their range of African shanty buildings looks really useful as well.

Thanks for looking.

6mm Modern Timecast buildings finished

I managed to finish off the last of the Timecast buildings ready for the Coldwar Commanders megagame this coming weekend.  I'm going to have to pick up a few more of these as they paint up really nicely. I particularly like the detail of the brickwork, which responds well to dry brushing.

Enough industrial units for an industrial estate.

Including the IKEA themed unit.

A couple of residential blocks.

Some half timbered detached houses and  farm.

Some nice buildings and fun to paint, although some of the windows were very fiddly to get right.  Now I'm going to have to pick up some more residential blocks, some high rise for downtown and some modern German houses, plus some other bits and bobs.  Will have to see how I'm fixed for cash at the Derby/Donnington Park show.

Thanks for looking.

6mm Timecast Scenics

Most of the British are finished for the Battle of Hannover at the end of the month, so I've started on some 6mm scenic items.

First up is a sea level lighthouse, purchased from Leven Miniatures at the Joy of Six show.  I wanted to create a rocky promontory to put the lighthouse on, which I made up out of some chipboard offcuts left over from flooring the new shed, scattered with some small granite gravel pieces that I picked up off a beach in the Scilly Isles about 20 years ago.  I sealed everything with dilute PVA glue, to help stick down all the bits of gravel and provide a base for the paint to cut to.  Rocks were painted black grey, then progressively lighter dry brushing with neutral grey and dark sea grey and highlighted with light sea grey.  Spoldges of Vallejo sand basing medium provide the little beachy coves, with earth basing medium to represent patches of soil on the higher parts.  Sea is dark sea blue.  The lighthouse was mounted on a platform of Vallejo plastic putty, with the base painted NATO black and the lighthouse in Ivory and a mix of dark and flat red.  Window frames and the lighthouse lamp housing were overpainted in white and the windows are azure with a gloss varnish.

  
So now I'm starting on a batch of Timecast modern European buildings that Richard Phillips sent to me almost a year ago.  First of these is an apartment block.  This particular model had been damaged in transit and arrived in two big pieces and several shards.  I managed to glue everything back together, but had to fill several big gaps, some with more success than others.  Still,  it has a knocked about look, either due to the passage of time or because there is a war going on.  I'm not happy with the roof, the ink wash stains are too patchy, so I'll try and dry brush it with the roof colour again to see if it smooths out a bit.  Need to add some clutter to the base to finish it off.

This is a rather dilapidated farm building, I'm assuming not from the modern range as it has a dog cart or similar contraption parked outside.  Again, I don't like the patchy ink stains on the roof.

A half timbered house from the Napoleonics range (I think).  I've not inked this one yet as I want to get a finish on the roof that I'm happy with.

A modern industrial unit.  This needs to be based, but I need to cut some more mdf bases - unfortunately it's raining here so I'm not about to venture out to the shed anytime soon.  The Vallejo flat yellow seems very patchy and has required three coats to get to the colour saturation in the pictures.  Yellows seem notoriously poor for coverage.

So, I'll be getting some more bases organised and I'll need to sort some small scenic items to add clutter to the bases.  Then if I can sort out the splodgy ink staining, I'll we able to churn out a few more.

Thanks for looking!