Fun with Building Buildings

Having been bitten by the 28mm WW2 bug, I decided to try my hand and building some houses and ruins to adorn my game table. I thought I would start with a ruin because that would require the least skill. I gathered up some material: 3mm MDF for basing, black foam core, card 5mm cork, sand, thin card, thick framing card, coffee stir sticks and wire. I used super glue, PVA and tacky PVA as well as pins to hold things together.

Flushed with a bit of success I tried my hand at a couple of simple building designs. I decided on designs and cut the bases from MDF and cut the buildings using a square to make sure things stayed straight. The roof is made of thick framing card. This part went fairly quickly...

The challenging part is adding in on the detailing. I tried my hand at making shingles with thick card indented with a pen. The roof on the smaller building has cereal box tiles made from strips. Next time I will make some shingles shorter than others. The chimney was made of foam core and covered in spackle. I marked in the brick work while it was still wet. The larger building had its windows framed with cut strips of thin card. The eaves and timber framing was made from coffee stir sticks. This part of the project was very time consuming. I am glad I did two buildings at one as I could work on one while the other dried.

The Devil is in the Details

The next step was adding ground detail, black undercoating and painting. I built the rock walls by laying a strip of tacky PVA and pouring aquarium gravel on top. Repeat three times and voila. I have used this system for my 15mm rock walls for 15mm ACW. They came out a little short but will do the trick for providing cover.

Next I will do some Italian style buildings in hopes of doing mid war Italy skirmishing on the Gothic Line.