Dave Graffam Models 08 - Frontier Barn

This post is about my build of Dave Graffam Models' Frontier Barn, currently a 'silver best seller' on Wargames Vault and available for £2.42.  As with my more recent posts, I've again used Ironclad Miniatures' 28mm Tobias miniature  as a size indicator.

This first pic to the right shows the finished build. I've made a few changes to the supplied model in my build - specifically the first (2nd to the US) floor doorways and the grille in the centre of the roof. The model has parts for a small tower to go on the roof's centre and solid walls on the first floor. I decided to add the first floor doorways to give the building more versatility in a firefight.

The second pic on the left shows the door to the hayloft. As designed the building has only one of these (at this end of the building) which has a porch like structure, which I didn't build (couldn't be bothered with it tbh!).

This pic shows the other side of the barn. On this side I chose to have a double door - the model allows for a double door on any and/or all sides of the model, giving great versatility and many rebuilds. You can also see in this pic the small extension that is part of the model.

As usual (now) with my builds, I made the walls from 5mm foamcore and the removable roof with 2mm mounting board. Most DGM buildings don't come with interiors, but it's (relatively) easy to use exteriors as the interior as I've done here. I used the 'Gray-Green' layer of the pdf file for the exterior and the 'brown' layer for the interior, intending to give a contrast indicative of weathering. I'm quite pleased with how it's come out! As with the Finger and Toe Multi-Storey Warehouse I used 2mm mounting board to create partial floors allowing access to the entire building while mini's could be placed beside windows. I used wooden floor prints from DGM's Low Ruins Paper Models Set to cover the partial floors. For the earthen floor of the barn itself I used a plain earth print from DGM's Garden Ground Tiles

 This next pic shows the interior of the barn's extension and the edges of the foamcore used to make the walls. If I could be bothered, I'd stick some wood effect print on them, but I'm happy with colouring them in with permanent black marker.

Finally, here is a whole build shot with the roof removed. Unfortunately, Tobias seems to have escaped from this shot ...







In other news ... I placed my first non-solo wargame in at least 2 years on Monday evening. It was against Keith Armstrong - the megalomaniac behind the excellent Armies Army 15mm miniatures - at the Guildford Wargames Club. It went exceedingly well and is, I hope, the first of many such games.

Tommygun Towers & Sloped Roof Shanty

So to the next build. This actually consists of two different models, both of which are free to download from www.modelpaperworld.com and were designed by Tommygun; they are the 'Towers' and 'Sloped Roof Shanty' kits. I call them kits as both of the pdf files have bits to enable the creation of mulitple different buildings - marvellous value I thought! ;) Again Ironclad Miniatures' 28mm Tobias miniature is providing a size reference.

You can see to the left the finished products. Also in the picture are the contents of a set of ladders from Warbases which I was going to use to create a ladder up the side of the smaller tower. However, when writing this post I saw that Warbases now do a long ladder set, so instead of having to glue 2 of these shorter ladders together, I will probably get the longer set and use them.

Anyway, the towers themselves are very simply made - glue the prints from the file around a pringles tube, stick the top cover on and that's it - job's done! Just use elastic bands to keep them in place (as in suggested in the file). The shorter tower was made with a tube of supermarket's own brand version of pringles and adds a nice touch of variety IMO. I think of them as some kind of storage tank - some liquid (fuel maybe) or gas perhaps, so made the small building as a 'control room' of sorts. My intention is create a scenic base for the towers and building with a chainlink fence of some sort surrounding it.

To the right is closer view of the building's exterior and the Warbases' ladder. Also, you can see the excellent texture of the towers.

The building itself is a hackabout of one of the buildings in the shanty file and I'm very pleased with how it's come out

Finally to the left is the interior of the control building. There are no interior details for the buildings in the shanty file, so I used the exterior prints to line the interior walls and the floor is, yet again, provided by Dave Graffam Models' Low Ruins set.

I am very pleased with these buildings; now I just have to pull my finger out and build the base for them!

Finger and Toe 01 - Multi-Storey Warehouse

This post covers my build of Finger and Toe Models' Multi-Story [sic] Warehouse which is available to download from Wargames Vault at (time of typing) for £2.40.

To begin with, to the right, you can see my finished build of the model, with an Ironclad Miniatures' 28mm Tobias miniature in front to give an idea of the building's size. Also, the pavement (US: sidewalk) surrounding the building is not part of the building; it is from Grekwood Miniatures' 28mm Residential Roads pdf (IMO the best representation of UK pavements I've got).

The building was made with 5mm foamcore for the walls and base; the roof and interior 'floors' from 2mm mounting board.

As is my (now) usual practice, I've removed all the doors and windows from the building - it does come with them! The building itself is - as the title claims - multi-storEy; it has parts for a ground level, what it calls upper story [sic] and then a top story [sic]. This enables you to have as many 'upper' storeys as you might want and they are designed in the model to be removable, but for my build I've fixed them all together and only used the one upper storey.

To the left you can see the right and rear sides of the building as seen in the first pic - the corner pointing at the camera is the one that was on the back right in the first pic. I made a change to the designed model here - the wall with no windows that is now at the back of the ground level is actually one of the upper storey walls, but I reasoned that it would be more likely that the ground floor would have no windows so swapped the 4-window ground floor wall with this 0-window upper storey wall. Making this swap also enabled me to have 4-window walls front and back for the upper and top storeys.

To the right you can see the left and front of the building. This shows the single door entrance at the back of the left side.

As the building is designed to have its interior used, it does come with interior surfaces, has a staircase model included and even has 2 pages of alternate doors and windows! There are storey 'connectors' that will disguise the join if you made a disassembling version of the building, but as I haven't, I've not used them.

And finally the last pic shows the interior. As you can see, I've not made floors for the building, instead I've rabbeted mounting board into the walls where the floor would have been. The board has then been covered with the wooden floor supplied in the model (which is quite a good one actually) and the ground floor is the concrete floor from the model. You can make out the yellow and black stripes on the ground floor - above this on each floor there is a slightly smaller similar area that represents where a lift would allow access for heavy goods to each floor.

Given its modular nature, it would be relatively easy to make a taller and/or wider version of this building. At £2.40, the versatility of this model is, IMO, good value.

Note: I don't have the building with me or I would have given its dimensions; when I'm back with it, I'll try and remember to add them to this post

Buildings and ANMA

Well, I've finally taken pictures of most (but not all!) of the buildings I've made (relatively) recently. As I said previously I'll do a post on each - hopefully quite quickly!  Before I start that series of posts, though here's a teaser/montage of the ones I've taken pictures of...

Also, I've actually managed to play a game!  Shock!! It was a board game from Wargame Vault - Astro Navis Merchant Advanced (ANM). It's a space trading game and when you get it you get a basic version as well as the advanced version. When you've printed the components off and set up to play a game, it does seem quite complicated - as the picture indicates - but it's actually really quite easy to play.

I managed to get a 'minor win' result for my first basic game which was pleasing! I got this game ages ago, and my recent interest in it has been to use as a framework and scenario generator for the Five Parsecs from Home sci-fi skirmish rules. I believe that it will be great for this, especially given the 'events' included in the advanced version of ANM, which is my planned next test.

The basic version of ANM is, IMO, too reliant on dice rolls - one bad roll can really hurt your chances of winning, but the extra rules in the advanced version will reduce this by a great deal. I am going to make one change to the rules, but I'll report on that after I've played the advanced game.

Dave Graffam Models 07 - Coach House

The first detailed report on my recent building spree covers Dave Graffam Models' Coach House (curerntly a 'Copper Best Seller' and a 'pay-what-you-want' product on Wargames Vault).

In my last post on a Dave Graffam Models' (DGM) build ( dave-graffam-models-5-low-ruins ) I said that I was using 2mm board as a building material.  Since then, however, I've become disenchanted with that as it looked too thin next to 28mm models. I've now started using 5mm foamboard for the walls instead (which looks much better IMO!), although I still use 2mm board for roofs.

As you may be aware, DGM use the 'layers' functionality in Adobe Acrobat to provide the builder with many different options for the model's surface finish and placement of doors and windows. For this version of the Coach House, I decided on the 'brick' finish and not to use the 'Coach Door'.

In the first pic to the left you can see the north wall of the model. I've cut through the foamboard to create openings where the windows and doors appear on the prints of the model and coloured in the exposed white foam with a permanent black marker

To the right is a pic of the building's southern wall, again with the windows cut out, although the one at the peak of the wall was too small to bother with IMO.

The unfortunate thing about DGM buildings is that they do not come with any interior detail at all, so if you want to use the interior, you need to come up with something to use there.  This pic shows what I've done. The wooden flooring is from DGM's Low Ruins Set, while the interior walls are the Coach House's walls with no 'wall' layer selected. This gives an off-white finish to the wall with green and grey streaks that - to me anyway - looks like a neglected plaster finish. It's far superior to leaving it as bright white foamboard anyway! You can also see that I've 'framed' the openings in the walls with black marker

This second pic of the interior shows what I've done with the first (or second if you're American) floor. With previous builds, I'd made a removable floor (as you can see at the end of this post - dave-graffam-models-1-pub), but, through use, I'd found that unsatisfactory (constantly having to remove it to get to the ground floor and having it discarded on the table when not used, being 2 reasons). So now, I've decided to make a platform from 2mm board that I rabbeted into the foamboard wall where there are windows and covered it with bits of the low ruins floor piece. I hope that this solution will be more satisfactory.

This final pic shows the interior of the ground floor. You can see that I've not made any furniture for the build, nor do I intend to.  It struck me as I was beginning this series of builds that my aim is not to create detailed model buildings, but rather create terrain for wargames - hence the lack of furniture. Following this logic, I am unsure at present whether or not to put doors on the buildings ...  I might do so as they could be useful for zombie games - i.e. to indicate if the door is shut or not.

I think that I will (at some point!) build another version of this building actually as a Coach House! :)

even more buildings and 2 bridges

For once I've managed to keep to a target for posting!  Below you can see a group shot of the more recently constructed buildings that I'll be posting on.  This time though, I'll tell you what they are!

At the back is a World Works Games' Swift Scenics range Office Block, in the centre front is a Finger and Toe Models' Multi-Story [sic] Warehouse and that is flanked by two Stoelzel’s Structures The Cottage. Unfortunately, the last three do not have (yet!) finished roofs ...  As threatened, the BTD British section is deployed to the front.

I tried to get the pictures for the first building post as well last night, but was having real problems with lighting :(  As it was only bridges that I used for the test shots, I thought I'd post them anyway, so here they are - again with the infantry included

Both bridges in the pics were constructed from Dave Graffam Models' Covered Bridge. As with all DGM products, the 'layers' included in the files allow for a wide variety of finished models.

I think that I'll be making at least one more bridge from this set - a 1" wide wooden bridge with a stepped approach (as you see in the pics, both of these have ramps) to use as a footbridge.

I made both of these with 5mm foamcore, except for the ramp surfaces and vertical sides of the brick bridge which used 2mm mounting board.

The kit includes layers for cobblestone, wooden, medieval brick, victorian brick and stone bridges, but no tarmac surface. Also the only sides included are wooden, but I reckon you could make brick or stone sides from the bridge surface.  It's set up for 2" wide bridges, but again I think you can make wider bridges without much difficulty. In fact, I think I'll have a go at that myself at some point!

Finally for this post, thanks to all of you who've made such supportive comments on these recent posts - they are both very much appreciated and very helpful - thanks guys!

Buildings ...

Not much of a post today ... some 'teaser' piccies of the buildings that I have most recently assembled. These are 'group' shots with multiple buildings in each and I intend to do a more detailed post on each of them. As well as the buildings below, I have put together some 'ruined' buildings, and I'll do some posts on them after the buildings.

These are all 28mm-sized and are Dave Graffam Models made with foamcore as the main building material

Apologies for the quality of the 2nd & 3rd pics - I took them this morning just before leaving for work and them seemed to be ok on the camera view-screen :( ... anyway, hop you like them!

6mm City

Waaay back in this post :  not-city-but-building, I posted pictures of the first of the 6mm buildings I made for ATZ: Mass Hysteria.  Well, I made quite a few and got them out to take pics today. In this first one you can see the building from the first post in the centre right of the pic, and in the centre background is one of the 6mm police bases I've done

This next photo shows the police base a lot closer and 28mm zed-me to give an idea of size

Here we have the city as it is right now; I intend to add a few more buildings

 From a different angle

And a close-up of one of the bigger buildings at the back with the police base on the roof

For those who don't have ATZ:MH, it uses 3" square city blocks, which is the standard I've used above. All the buildings above are free from here: http://www.hawkwargames.com/blogs/downloadable-buildings

They are designed for 10mm games, but I printed the A3 pages on A4 which is about 60% - just right for 6mm

Building Again ...

For a variety of un-interesting reasons, it's taken me a while to post once more; sorry guys (& any gals that might be there!)

Hobby related stuff that I have been doing recently is creating more buildings from print & build kits that I've got via Wargame Vault.

Having played - & thoroughly enjoyed! - WW2 skirmish most recently, I decided that I wanted to have a ruined village. As a result the first model I put together was Dave's Games' Wrecked House. You can see the first pic of this to the right with Zed-Me in front to show the size. The model assumes that it will be made from card, but I used 5mm foamcore for the walls as card (or 2mm mounting board that I've used previously) simply is not thick enough to seem 'right' with 28mm models. This meant having to cope with the inner walls each being 5mm too long; not a problem, but definitely something to consider if you do the same

 I've also decided (at the moment) not to put half the roof in place (as you can see to the left). The roof is made from 2mm mounting board (basically just 2mm thick card from Hobbycraft), as it 'seems right' for that to be thinner than the walls. The floor is foamcore, but I've put a layer of board under that. I made it larger than the model's "footprint" as I was intending to add scenic bits to it, but I'm not so sure now as that will make it harder to store safely - always a problem ...

Finally - for this build - to the right you can see the staircase as I've made the first* floor removable - not a standard feature of the build. To do this, I had to glue the roof piece in place, but I'm happy with teh result.  I'm going to cut down the board under the model so that it is a rectangle of the model's size (IIRC 6 x 9 inches) and cover the exposed corners of the board with some kind of 'rubble'.

*- I believe those on the wrong side of the pond would call it the second floor

Next are 2 versions of Dave's Games' Ruined Longhouse. This shows the versatility that the 'layers' in Dave's Games' models gives to all their products. Buying one model gives you access to lots of different appearances for your builds. Again, I made the walls from foamcore and and very happy with the result.

Sometimes though, this very versatility can cause problems ... with this build to the right, it wasn't until the final assembly that I realised there was no door! Easily remedied though, by hacking a hole through one of the end walls!

Waaay back in this post: dave-graffam-models-5-low-ruins, I posted about the low ruins I'd made.  I've never really been happy with them due to the wall thickness I mentioned above. So, I've made another couple of them using foamcore instead and they 'feel' much better.  I've used the same options for them, so at first glance they look identical, but have put different internal walls in them.

The internal walls aren't part of the kit as standard, but I just printed some extras walls with 'yellow concrete on both sides and then hacked them about until I was happy with them

This time though I've cut out the windows and doors and they look better for it!

Finally, to the left is a snap of the ground floor of my next build as a tease ... anyone recognise it?

Last Friday's game

Last Friday evening I went to my local club - Farnborough Wargames Society - and played another game of Platoon, the club's WW2 skirmish rules derived from Peter Pig's PBI2 rules.

I took more pictures this time (as you can see)! The one to the right shows my Germans in a piece of club terrain (in the centre) and one of my Dave Graffam Models' Low Ruins builds in the corner (more about that excellent model is in this post: dave-graffam-models-5-low-ruins).

 To the left you can see Graham's British Para's (with my medic) at the start of the game. The game works on activating (by a d6 roll) the figures in a particular 6" square, the result giving the number of action points available. Casualties and being under fire give penalties, which is why there's a dead para and a rifle -1 marker in the square. The casualty markers do give a good look to the game - IMNSHO of course!

This pic gives a larger view of the centre of the table and as well as 2 of my low ruins, the roofless building is one I 'bashed' from Dave Graffam Models' Village Pub (more on that in this post: dave-graffam-models-1-pub).  The 2 buildings closest to the camera are held by my German section, the 2 by the centre crossroad hold Graham's British Para's and the one at the top has Alec's German section. This is where things started to go very badly indeed for the Brits

Graham's hand is in the pic to the left as well as my section in the centre bottom. In the wood to the right side is part of Neil's section, the rest in the building at the bottom right corner ... despite Neil's section in those 2 places and Graham's in the low ruin to the centre left, as well as the Brit Vickers MMG in the ruin by Graham's arm, the Brits were unable to force my section out of their ruin ...

Here we have a closer view of my section's position; having both buildings allowed them to support each other, as well as leading the Brits to split their fire. I tried to concentrate mine on Graham's section, only putting the occasional suppressing burst into Neil's. The 'pinned marker' (helmet on a rifle) in the left side ruin with Graham's section indicates that their last activation gave a 'Panicked!' result, which is the worst you can get and gives a penalty for their next activation ...

And here we see the buildings that had been occupied by Graham's section after the combined fire of Alec's and my section finally drove them out just before I occupied the ruin ... victory was close!

Victory achieved!! The remnants of the British Paratrooper platoon huddle in the ruin to the right. Strictly speaking I should have shown Neil's section who didn't have a casualty IIRC, but this pic went through the propaganda machine ...

A really fun, enjoyable game and it was great to get some of my figures (I provided the German force - an infantry platoon of 3 eight man sections, plus command and 80mm mortar) as well as some of my buildings on the table.

No game this week as I have my daughter, but I will be at Warfare tomorrow wearing my t-shirt with my blog address on the back - if you see me, say hello!

Finally for this post, last Friday at the club David and Gordon played a game of Too Fat Lardies' Sharp Practice. It was a Napoleonic British Naval landing party trying to destroy a French semaphore station. The table looked splendid:

But the thing that really caught my eye was Gordon's launch:

It looked great! He said he'd had it '30 years' and that it's still available!!  I'm tempted to get one myself, but I couldn't finish it as well as Gordon has ...