A Town House for 'Dark Nights in Trashburgh'

After having the bare cardboard sitting on my windowsill for months, in the end I completed a scratchbuilt 28mm town house piece for my 'Dark Nights in Trashburgh' 17th century urban skirmish project. It is mostly made from cardboard, balsa wood, plasticard and texture paste for the walls.

6mm Scenery

I'm in an odd situation where I actually managed to paint a lot of things, it's just that I either lack the motivation to take photos of them, or there isn't enough natural light to do so. This post was not made under natural lighting circumstances, but I thought it was time to do photos again.

Anyway, here's a small review of the 6mm terrain pieces I have been working on for my Schultze-Böhnstadt project. All of them are handmade on the cheap and are based on 2mm plasticard.

Ottoman Galiots (and Islands)

Originally I wanted to play the Battle of Denmark Strait on this year's International Naval Wargaming Day, but as usual, I got sidetracked and finished other ships instead. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen shall wait.

Instead, I've completed a pair of corsair galiots and four island sections, so the Mediterranean it shall be. I wrote a scenario to playtest my Block Galleys rules live for the first time. I'll play the game on the coming weekend and submit the AAR on the blog.

Additional Scatter

Here's some more terrain pieces finished. You can see smaller ones, like the hand carts I started building earlier, a few resin barrels from Green Stuff World; linear objects, two sections of different plastered walls and a fence; a group of stakes liberated from the Perry HYW infantry set; and then a gun emplacement of four gabions.

Besides the barrels everything is scratchbuilt.

 

The gabions are cloned with green stuff from a single master. I made a press mould of the master, but instead of using a two-piece mould, I cut the bottom off and made hollowed out casts from GS using the butt end of a brush to spread it inside the mould. The compression actually helps the green stuff cure to a very firm finish. Once cured I pop the cast out of the mold and that's it. It works well for cylindrical objects and saves you some resin.

I put some dirt and toothpicks on top and used successive layers of drybrush for the paintjob. The base is also raised a bit with pieces of corkboard so figures don't have to duck that much behind. 

I think they look banged up enough, unlike some pristine injection moulded gabions would. There is a recast Bloody Miniatures matchlock placed at the inside (you can see it on the first photo).

Down on the Farm

Let me present to you the large terrain project I've been working on. It's a rural farm complex with a bunch of buildings and greenery. I sort of made it up on the go, so things are of a bit mixed styles, but I think they look good together.

Whatever floats your boat.

This month has mainly been about terrain projects. I might have mentioned that I've got some pirate themed gaming in mind, and for that I needed a longboat at least. (A one-mast ship with four guns is a work in progress.)

It's made out of balsa wood, the outer planks were soaked then bent to shape as with a plank-on-frame model ship. It includes six oar benches and forks, some equipment for longer voyages, and a swivel gun at the bow.

The pair of random Bloody Miniatures figs are just there for scale. 

Santa Claus to the Rescue

I've long wanted some wheeled pieces of scatter terrain to decorate my gaming table. The main trouble is, wheels in the proper scale are hard to come by. When I was at the Vasa Museum in March I contemplated buying some 25mm pewter cannon sold at the museum shop for such a purpose, then put the idea off. Later, when I received a plastic Warlord Marlburian WSS gun, I tried to make copies of the wheels, but the space between spokes of the copies was too narrow, even for my sharp needle files.

In the meantime I built some barricades and other scatter terrain which I posted here, and then, come pre-Christmas sales of decorations, my wife and I went to a local Interspar and she pointed out this lasercut Santa Claus train which was at half price and had no less than eighteen wheels per set, all well scaled for 28mm figures!

I promptly bought two sets for the total princely sum of about five Euros, so now I have all the wheels for a lot of hand and horse carts, even perhaps a Gulay-Gorod for my Cossacks.

You can see the first three items built of my newly found resources, a wheelbarrow, a small hand cart and one with a resin barrel attached, assembled, placed on 30mm round bases and coated with PVA.

Floyet House WIP #1

On my 'auxiliary' Battle Campaigns blog I hinted at a mini-campaign, comprising five scenarios, which would culminate in the siege of a fortified house. 

Thus I've started building the house in question, a distant relative of the Hungarian hussar fort, the Romanian cula and the English/Scottish borderland bastle house. This will be the most ambitious of my cardboard buildings so far, being quite large in 28mm scale, with a playable interior, LED lights, and many other features.

The Tiny Monkey Inn

I have a terrain-heavy seventeenth century 28mm skirmish project in mind, titled "Dark Nights in Trashburgh." It is mainly inspired by the Alatriste and Fortune de France books, and centers on urban combat, a sort of baddies vs. catchpoles/upright civilians type of game.

(The project title derives, obviously and sort of unintentionally, from Strasbourg, but it's also a sort of ironic reflection that most things we use for scratchbuilding would otherwise usually end up in the litter.)

For this, obviously, I need more buildings than the single guardhouse I built before, so I planned a few: an enlarged version of the old gatehouse I started in 1/72 scale, a multi-storeyed rich citizen's estate and a wattle and daub style inn, with accomodations on the upper floor(s). Some of these would have internal lighting and games could be played at night or dusk, using the light from the windows, bonfires, tokens with built-in LED torches etc. This is the first installment of the series.

As with most scratchbuilds, doing the inn was an on and off type of thing, with large intervals waiting for the glue and primer to dry, then shelving it for something else, all the while contemplating the next thing to do, but finally it turned out to be a rather handsome building. The most interesting and at the same time tiring part of such builds is to think well ahead about the construction process.

I started this project with my wife and the tiny monkey is sort of a catchphrase between us, hence the name plate of the establishment.

Scatter

I've had some spare Renedra bases which were of a not very useful size, along with some bits that I thought I could use for scatter terrain in 28mm skirmish games. 

I've got two bases for barricades, made of plastic and homemade resin barrels (some are copied with Blue Stuff); a torn-down wall with a pile of junk covered with a tarp and some bags; and two bases of wooden crates. 

They were done as simply as possible, a basecoat, a wash, some highlights here and there. They will blend in with the terrain nicely I hope.

Captain Kahlen and the Bog

Perhaps you are familiar with the captioned image about Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor movie (which I can't seem to find right now), where it is stated that the movie is historically accurate on two points: 1) there was a place called Pearl Harbor and 2) it was attacked.

Something similar is true about the recent Danish movie Bastarden, based on a 21st century novel, which we watched in the cinema and mostly enjoyed (the violence against animals and some extended suffering scenes were a tad outdone in my opinion), in that 1) there was a man named Captain von Kahlen and 2) he went to the Danish bogs.

Anyway, this was sort of an inspiration to build a murky bog/heathland, as I did not really have any terrain pieces that are rough going but do not limit line of sight. 

So I took a piece of 2mm MDF board I had lying around, built some pools with spackle and cork, and then painted the thing using my regular methods. The water effect is glossy acrylic medium and some varnish on top. The larger plants are from my go-to fake Ikea plant - they make good jungle pieces for small scale (such as naval) wargaming, or bamboo stalks etc. for 28mm figures.

Captain Kahlen in this image is a Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago plastic crewman figure converted with Bloody Miniatures weapons. I'll post the rest of the bunch sometime later.

 

Guardhouse and Livestock

I wanted to put some scratchbuilding advancements I learned to practice on a larger building, so I completed this 28mm scale two-storey one, the bottom tier built of stone and the top from wattle and daub. The first floor and the roof come off and figures can be housed inside. The building itself is suitable for a variety of periods, so I sincerely hope it will be of use.

The stone fence is an experiment in a more solid type of corkboard, I think it came out nicely so I'll be producing more.

There is also a Bloody Miniatures fig for scale, and some Warlord plastic animals I gave a simple paintjob to, scored during their previous sprue sale.

GabiOff, GabiOn

For any respectable 17th century artillery force, gabions are a must. I know there are commercially available ones, for example the injection-moulded pieces offered by Renedra, but I went the cheap way.

After experimenting some, here's the complete method to Build Your Own Gabion, also called the Gyros Method:

1. Glue some corkboard together in layers, up to your desired height
2. Once dry, using a scalpel shave it down to a cylindrical form (hence the name)
3. Place it on a washer (I used wooden buttons from Pepco)
4. Place six or so bamboo sticks around the gyros meat's circumference, evenly distributed
5. Dunk one end of a long thread into CA glue and tug it under one of the supporting bamboo sticks
6. Once that end of the thread is set, wind the thread around the thing, going from bottom to top
7. When it's covered up to the desired height, cut the thread and add a few dots of CA glue for extra sturdiness
8. Once dry, coat the thing in PVA, the thread will swell and become less pliable
9. Add some PVA and dirt on the base and the top of the gabion
10. Now you can paint it, I used simple brown colours and a beige drybrush (it is preferred to wait 1-2 days for the PVA to dry completely, otherwise the layers of paint over it might crackle).

First I tried making the wicker basket and filling it up, but the force of the thread wound around the supports made it look a little bit weird. By creating the core from corkboard first, you can also be assured of a regular shape and size throughout your production line. It's also a good way to dispose of corkboard scraps left over from other projects.

These are for 28mm figures, but I guess they could be replicated for any other scale as well. Also the same method could be used to produce wicker fences.

28mm Cheapo Ruins

This lot was built from materials found around our home, plus some balsa wood. I've also got some smaller pieces for scatter terrain, not yet photographed.

The Dark Gate of Trashburgh

We enjoyed a meal of Aldi puddings and I really liked the shape of their packaging. Thought followed thought, and, since I had not done anything major terrain-wise since our move to the new place, I scavenged around and came up with the idea of making a small gate for the adequately named city of Trashburgh. On the image above, you can see the beginning stages of the build.

His Grace the Duke of Rotstein decides the build is proceeding well enough for a personal inspection. The gates will mostly be used for him and his pals to run around in an urban environment, sticking rapiers into each other.

As humidity builds up inside when PVA and the secret ingredient cures on the sides of the things, I had to drill them through at a few points, but this shall not detract from the overall effect.

The base is a piece of foamcore from the stock Dad used to renovate their bathroom. You know where the pudding jugs are from; the tower tops are 2mm balsa, around which I glued some EVA foam and decorated it with 1mm balsa strips. The bulwark is made from the same type of foam, and the gate and main wall piece are corrugated cardboard. And, of course, we must not forget about the secret ingredient.

Why yes, the secret ingredient! It's an artist's acrylic medium called "heavy body gel". It can be used to fill in large gaps and dries to a hard finish. It's great for texturing as well. It can be shaped with a spatula or fingertip for the less sophisticated like myself.

Once I added a few more bits and pieces, I'll cover the walls in a stone effect plaster and paint the thing to an eggshell colour, or some similar shade. 

6mm Terrain

I thought I could use a few more compact terrain pieces, so I did some tinkering with available stuff.

On the left, you can see a bunch of pine trees re-based, two sets on MDF and one on a CD. Although the trees are more distant than they could be, I think the varied terrain adds a touch of reality. There is also a set of rocks covered in vines and flock on the extreme left. The rocks are corkboard, and there are pebbles, branches and dried tea filter stuffing on the bases. 

In the center, I used the same basing technique with home-made trees. The trunks are twisted wires, and they are dipped in the same spongy flocking material. I do sort of lack non-coniferous trees, but the test worked well, so I might make some more. I think rounding down the edges of the MDF base, in support of irregular shapes, is also a nice touch.

The two hills are made from insulation foam that I grabbed at a construction site, they would have thrown it out anyway.

A small fortress in the middle of a lake and a small town are also in the making, both will be based on CDs (I also have an abundance of those, and they are quite practical).

More tiny terrain

This is a small castle and town I had built a while ago. I wanted to prepare a few posts before going on holiday, but then I kind of skipped out, it's time to get things going again.

The castle is build on a CD. Corkboard, pink foam, stone paste, sand and flock were used to create it. I think it looks quite fancy.

Tiny Terrain

I've made a generic strategy game that uses these small bases you see on the left. For that I need versatile terrain, like this great piece of bark. I completed it with different types of rocks and pebbles and I have a large mountain range. 

The small town and the units are built on Renedra bases that come with Perry figures. As you can see from previous posts I base those individually, and the bases are either too large or too small, so I found alternative uses. The unit is made from decor rubber and the buildings are pink foam.

Constructing The Rock Pt. 5. - Test Assembly

I'm about 90% done with this project, which is good because I want it finished by the end of the month. Here's what's completed and what is lacking:

I need to finish the farm and port section. I think there will only be a single ramshackle building at the port and the farm will not be too large either. Now if you look at it, the island lacks vegetation, which can be remedied by adding static grass and the farm will have some green pastures as well. 

On the other hand, I've completed the cliff with its removable top (it can be used as a walled garden or somesuch in other games), and painted the internal space as well - it has a nice consistent look. I just used bright brown (cheap acrylic paint bought at a supermarket and titled 'Martian Brown') and sand for most of the groundwork, and grey, sand and white for the cliff and buildings.

And here's the small island with the rotunda complete. I cut out the walls from a single piece of pink foam and marked them with a pen. The rotunda and fortress door are removable single pieces so the attackers can bash them down. 

I had to think about what sort of cannon to place inside, finally I went with large naval guns that can strike fear in any approaching ship; also I though about building a stone bridge but then decided that a large wooden one will do. Those thick planks can support large artillery pieces, and if the wooden bridge is broken down by enemy gunfire, it's easier to rebuild; I think the water between the two islands is shallow enough to either wade or easily swim through anyway.

Constructing The Rock Part 3

The fort at the second tier is made from a piece of pink foam and clad in corkboard. Another more grainy cork mat is used to create the barracks. I'm sort of out of white so what I mostly use is sand mixed with black.

I took my BB gun and shot a bunch of holes in the ruined keep. The only problem was that is splintered the balsa wood floor. Next time I do this I'll have to make separate floorboard which can be torn up individually.