A Church, 2 Cars, a Pile of Crates and a Magazine ...

In my recent post "Time ... where does it go??", I was wittering on about some of the model buildings I've been constructing lately. Well, one that I've just finished (well ... nearly anyway!) is the Dave Graffam Models' Village Chapel. As with most of their models it has multiple 'layers' in the pdf file which means you can get a variety of finishes. I went for the 'medieval stone' with 'blue tiles' for the roof, with the optional annex and the foyer ... and here it is in all its glory:

with a 28mm Copplestone mini (IIRC) to give a size reference

And here it is again showing the entire steeple, which I have left removeable to aid in storage:

The same mini is to the left of the annex

What you don't get in the file though, is any interior detailing. I've used the file to come up with my own. In the pic below, you can see the interior of the church. The wall at the top has had the exterior wall with no textures, but the same windows as the exterior I've used glued to the inside. I've also used one of the floor textures from the Low Ruins set as tiling for the floor. At this, though, I gave up as I wasn't at all sure how to do the rest ...

And here is a shot of the interior of the foyer ... without opening doors I probably shouldn't have bothered with this as it's damn hard to get your hand in there!

Here's a slightly blurry pic of the models I've put together on their shelf. At the left side is the church with the steeple removed and stored inside the main building. On the right are the two Low Ruins I've put together so far:

At the end of my last post - Warfare Convention and other stuff ... - I had pics of a couple of self-assembly diecast cars I'd bought. Well, they took about a minute to put together - if that! - and they've turned out quite nicely ... here's a shot of the Hummer

And another lower-angle shot to better see the size

The second model was a land-rover and that's turned out just as well

Making these buildings has left a lot of little off-cuts from the board I am using ... I was keeping most of them as I thought "they'll come in handy" for something! Then I had a brainwave and found a pdf  file that I had downloaded a long time ago from http://www.toposolitario.com/ a Spanish modeller's site with quite a few free downloads. Naturally, it is in Spanish, but the photos explain very well and the author has provided an English translation for those - like me - who are linguistically challenged. I couldn't find the page that I got the file from, but Google showed me that it is still here. Anyway, it has a bunch of crates, and I've printed it out and am working my way through a heap of the crates that I'll use to populate my Multi-Story [sic] Warehouse when I build it. So here they are:

And another view:

And finally for today, I was in my local branch of Smiths on Sunday morning when I saw this magazine:

I'd never seen or even heard of it before and intrigued, I bought it. It's written in the Netherlands and published in English and first impressions are very good. Have any of you guys seen this before?

Warfare Convention and other stuff ...

This weekend gone was the Warfare Convention hosted by the Wargames Association of Reading at the Rivermead Leisure Centre in Reading. As usual at that venue, there wasn't enough parking :(

Anyway, I was there for about 3-4 hours and spent far too much increasing my unpainted lead mountain with the following new toys:

• about 20 28mm Indian Mutiny figures from Mutineer Miniatures
• a bunch of ECW civilians and causalties, plus 2 wagons from Bicorne Miniatures and Redoubt Enterprises for Witchfinder General that I am getting for Christmas
• 6mm War of Spanish Succession infantry from Baccus
• 2 15mm Grant tanks from Skytrex for my Burma stuff along with some more Peter Pig figures to pad out my infantry
• more 15mm Peter Pig figures for VBCW project

Since the weekend, I've temporarily suspended making card buildings and been getting my purchases ready for undercoating by basing them:

28mm figures

15mm figures

Both the above photos have some extra figures in them - the 28s with the terracotta clay are Redoubt 3 musketeers figures that I've had for years and am now going to use as 'blinders' in Witchfinder General.

Having spent all that hard-earned cash on my own toys, I decided I should go Christmas shopping ... whilst in Morningstar Hobbies in Camberley though, I espied theses 2 kits:

And not having either vehicle for my ATZ car park, I bought them!  I'll put a post up on them when I assemble them, but I thought I'd let you know they were out there ...

Time ... where does it go??

Once again it's taken me ages to post ... sorry about that, but work - although not as hectic busy as it was - is still busy.  That said I have been hobbying in the evening, just not felt the urge to post. Here's what I've been up to ...

I took a bunch of photos of my WW2 Burma stuff to post, but they came out quite bad so I'm going to try again before I post that.

Having been alerted to its existence by Shelldrake, I ordered a copy of Witchfinder General: Days of Revelation as a christmas present along with a bunch of figures from Warlord Games for it. I'll post more details when they arrive.

Readers of my eariler blog may remeber that I tried making buildings with the various card/paper print pdfs you can get over the net and using foamcore as the structure. I found foamcore a horrid, horrid material to work with though and rapidly gave up. The other day though, while in Rymans Stationers, I found some artist's acrylic/oil board - which seems to be 2mm thick cardboard in essence and tried some of that. I've fouind it a much better building material and below are pics of 4 of the structures I have built so far:

Small Chippy

Garage

'Cottage'

'Split Ruin'

The Chippy and Garage are free to download from www.germy.co.uk whie the 'Cottage' - their name for it; it doesn't look much like a cottage to me! - and the 'Split Ruin' are from Dave Graffam Models that I got from Wargames Vault. I'm in the process of 'bashing' one of the DG models to create a pair of terraced houses and more on that and the other models I'm building soon (ish!)

edited: the board is called "the artist oil & acrylic board" and is £5.19 for 3 sheets, each 20 x 16 inches in my local Rymans, although that might be a reduced price - not sure

Ironclad Village

First of the promised bunch of posts is a 15mm village I've constructed from buildings and fences  from Ironclad Miniatures. These buildings are described as 'eastern front' which is how I'll use them - when my russkies and rumanians are painted - but I also intend to use them with my Splintered Light Minis 18mm fantasy. Accordingly in the pics I've included an 18mm fantasy figure and a 15mm Peter Pig Japanese rifleman.

So to start, a group shot of all the pieces with some 18mm figures as a size guide:

The village on my table - all the other pics will have the model's dimensions

Then close-ups of 15-H1 Small Log House. I have two of these and very nice they are too. The only quibble is that - unlike the other buildings, these have a chimney, but no fireplace ... but that is a real pedant of a moan ...

76mm x 53mm x 53mm incl roof, 27mm w/out roof

Next is 15-H3 Eastern Front Barn another nice building:

105mm x 70mm x 55mm incl roof, 30mm w/out roof

Then we have 15-H5 Small Eastern Front House which is also available as 15-H6 with a different roof. This model comes with a seperate lean-to shed - a nice add-on that can be put next to the building on any side. Another fine model

69mm x 52mm x 57mm incl roof, 30mm w/out roof

Last of the buildings is 15-H4 Eastern Front House

75mm x 82mm x 59mm incl roof, 30mm w/out roof

And last of all are the fences, comprising 15-fen1, 15-fen2, 15-fen3 and 15-fen5

long: 75x16x16mm; short 30x16x16mm; corner 35x35x16mm

These are really nice models and the interior detailing is good. I especially like the windows. When I got them, there was a thin skin of resin in the gaps between the frames which I removed without too much trouble, although some of the frames didn't quite survive this ...

Anyway, I recommend these models to anyone gaming in these scales