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.

A Mars a day keeps you busy ...

Today's post is mainly about terrain I have been making for my upcoming IHMN game (and future ones) set on Mars. I've also included some pics of the steam tanks I painted a while ago as I might be using one on Friday, and the 1/1200th stuff I've been painting off and on ...

In my last post, I included this photo of the beginning of my Martian Fort ... as I said then, its moved on quite a bit, as the following photos show.

This one is a close up that (hopefully!) allows you to see the detail of the plastic sheeting I've used to clad the foamboard. The sheet has an embossed pattern of 'stone setts' and not bricks as I mistakenly said in my last post.  You can also see the wall filler I put inside the wall to give it a bit more weight and stability - which has worked very well!

 The pic to the right shows the wall post undercoating (using Halfords' Red primer) with the cocktail stick palisade in place ...

 A close-up with Sgt Barker behind the palisade ...

Another close-up, but from behind the wall this time.

I'm very pleased with how this has turned out so far; it still needs some paint so we'll have to wait for that  before final conclusions are drawn though ...

To the left is the first of the Martian tiles I've made. It's from the World Works Games Mars Station set and it'll certainly do the job until I can get some flock'n'stuff on it. FYI, it's a 7 inch square

In this pic to the right is my first attempt at Martian Flora using some of Products for Wargamers DIY jungle plants. I was wondering how I would be able to get paint to stick to the plastic plants effectively, so have tried using a red permanent marker. I'm pretty pleased with the results so far.

Next up is the first of the terrain pieces I got from 'The Square' at Valhalla, "The Hatch". At only £2, I think it was a bargain and am looking forward to using, not in the first IHMN game, probably the second. (If you're reading this Andy, I do have cunningly cunning plan! BWAHAHAHA!!!)

And here is the set of "Alien Trees" from 'The Square'. To be honest, they look a lot like they've been moulded from pine cones, but I like them and the tentacles at the base are a nice touch. Once I get them painted and some orange scatter stuff on them, I think they'll look a lot better (I hope so anyway!)

Some steam vehicles I painted a while ago ...

Steam01

Steam04 

Steam06

And finally, on the left is a Turkish Aeronef and the right a section of Turkish Ironclads.  I was hoping for some feedback on the colour scheme; do you think it works?

   

New Shop and New Terrain

Andy had mentioned to me that there was a model shop close to me that I knew nothing about, so Saturday saw me in the new(ish) realworld presence of the webstore SnM Stuff.  Despite the myriad numbers of goodies sold by Sean (the proprietor), I was able to discover some self-control and spend less than £15! You can see to the right what I purchased - some red(ish) flock, orange scatter stuff (both for bases of my mars figures), 1mm drills, slottabase pack, a new pin-vice and a large plastic sheet with moulded brickwork on it. A very nice haul, I thought, and I'm already planning what to get next time!

Something I will definitely be getting again is the brick-sheeting, as I've already used most of it in my first piece of terrain for the game of IHMN this Friday. I'm planning to get at least one wall of a Martian fort on the table - here's a WIP photo of it:

I took that pic on Saturday and it's moved on considerably since then - it's almost ready for undercoating now ...

In other news:

• An informative (as usual!) post on the evil mastermind Colgar6's blog may well see me making first  mail order to Japan in the near future!
• It seems that Wilkinsons' have tiles that are useful for IHMN - as seen in this post
• Still trying to get the latest issue of 'Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy', but it's not in WHSmiths (where it normally is) nor can I get the pdf yet :(
• Vampifan's condition seems worse than I had at first thought :(  Vampi's brother (Mikie) is keeping us up to date via comments on the latest post on Vampi's blog here; thanks to him for doing that! Get well soon Vampi!

Spam comments, Gaming table solution and a MUCKy Car-park

First the bad news; I've been getting so many spam comments on this blog, that I've turned word verification back on ...

Moving on, I've been wondering what to do about a gaming table for a while now. My dining table - the only flat surface I have big enough to use (well apart from my bed or the floor, and there would probably be problems if I used those ...) is only 30" wide. So, I was in B&Q the other day, when a brainwave struck and I bought 2 packs of their loft boards, which were (IIRC) £6.98 for a pack of 3. These are made of chipboard and are 1' x 4', with tongue & groove edges so they slot together nicely. I bought 2 packs as I needed 4 (and they're in packs of 3 ... bleeding typical!), and have a bit of DIY for one of the spares and the last will probably be used for hills or something similar. Here is a pic of them on the table:

Loft-board gaming table

The omni-present problem of storage has been solved with the help of a no-longer required curtain and the handy fact that the table is up against the wall when not in use:

cunningly hidden loft boards ...

So having got my table solution, I thought I'd lay out the car park I've been working on from my latest purchase from  Stoelzel's Structures - Undeveloped Real Estate (URE). This contains a whole bunch of road, grass, sport courts, roundabout ground tiles, plus a wide variety of props and other stuff. As a first for Stoelzel's it's split into multiple bookmarked files - hoorah!! It's been frustrating trying to find (and then remember exactly where it is) individual sheets in earlier Sotelzel products, because of the massive variety of prints Carl supplies (as an example Historic District - Olde Towne is 461 (!) pages of building brilliance).

Anyway, enough whinging about how much you get for your money ...

Here is a shot showing the car-park tiles put together (with Stoelzel vehicles) along with my new MUCK (Stoelzel's Modular Urban Center Kit) building at the back, with the Food Market to the left, the Local Put to the right, and my version of the clinic on the far left:

a Stoelzel-heavy demo layout

Astute observers who own URE may well notice in the next picture that I've reversed the arrows on the car-park tiles to change the direction of travel around it. This makes it better for a British car park, as the tiles as they were supplied would have created a queue for it that went past the entrance.

close up of the arrow for the exit

 Also, in the next pic, you'll see a tile that I created from those in the URE; it is a British T-junction. However, in retrospect, I'm going to change it as I think it should be an entrance only, and I'll make a tile as exit only for the other side

t-junction exit

As a note on the tiles, I had problems with the foamboard being warped slightly. To get around this, I trialled out using cocktail sticks as connectors between them - i.e. you push it half into one tile and the other half into its neighbour. (This wasn't my idea; IIRC, I read a discussion I think between Zabadak and Vampifan somewhere.) This worked really well and although I didn't use it for these pics, I will use it when I game on them.

This next pic shows more of the MUCK building. I made it as an 'edge-filler' and as such it has no back, nor opening doors or proper windows. (ducks as Vampifan begins to get upset :) )

left side of the MUCK

 This is the right side of the pic, showing the sign that I'm going to replace due to its spelling mistook

'parlor''?!? come on!

 Something else about the tiles that I've changed is the pavements. The URE pavements come with a black tile pattern on them, which is too dark for my tastes. So, I copied the pattern from Grekwood Miniatures Residential Roads and with that created my own pattern. I then stuck these to 2mm mounting board to create raised pavements that you can see in the pic below. I'm very pleased with these and will be doing this for all my pavements.

pavement close-up

So there you have it; my progress on the URE car park (or parking lot as it's called in the file). I've not made any of the props supplied with it as yet - those will come eventually, but not soon, as I'm currently building the garage from the Stoelzel Auto Park Playset and working on a kit-bash derived from URE

By the way, if there's any interest I'll put a post on the Stoelzel forum about how I flipped the tiles and made my own.

Stoelzel's Structures' Local Pub

After the tease in my last post, I thought I'd do a proper post on my latest build, Stoelzel's Structures' "The Local Pub. When I began this build, I wasn't too keen on the building, having several reservations about its layout, but as I've progressed, I've come to like it and, although the reservations are still there, I think that I will use it as my survivors' home when I begin my zedalypse campaign.  Anyway, on with the pics!


First up are the exterior shots. To the left you can see the pavement pieces that I made from the prints in the file. Also, you can see that I renamed the pub to a more patriotic 'The Crown' (as supplied the pub is named 'The Winch'). Apparently, 'The Crown' is the second most common pub name in England (after 'The Red Lion') and if you included all the derivatives (e.g. 'Three Crowns', 'Crown and Cushion', etc) it would be far the most popular, so I redubbed the pub. You can also see that I cut out all the windows in the building and 'glazed' them with clear plastic - mainly saved from blister packs. This is the first build I've made where I decided to glaze it before I'd stuck the walls together and it's much easier to cut the windows out then, I can tell you!

This exterior shot shows off the larger of the 2 pub signs I made. The picture was liberated from the interweb, glued to card and then stuck to a cocktail stick that I forced into the foamboard. I'm very pleased with both of them, although the ground level, smaller, sign is a bit too low. In all 3 exterior shots you can see the problem I've got with the roof - the foamboard I've used is bowed :(  This means that I can't get all the roof to sit neatly on the second floor - bum.

I have made enough pavement to surround the pub (honest!) but didn't use it all for the photos, so this final exterior shot has just the 2 pieces re-aligned. It is surprising just how much of a difference it makes. Anyway, this rear exterior shows where I've put the pub sign again. I'm thinking about putting a billboard on this wall as well. Just need to come up with a poster for it. You can also see the small back door in this pic, which is also glazed.

And the last of the exterior shots - the roof. I'm going to add an access hatch to this (once I've made it!) as it seems a waste to not have any way to get to it. As designed, the pub has solid vertical walls with 'lift-out' interior; I've previously said that I don't really like this, as when I put the Food Market together I found that the 'lift-out' design means you have to lean over to see the interior properly. So I made each floor of the pub a separate removable piece.

This is demonstrated by the pic to the left - the roof has been removed and you can see the interior of the second floor (third to you yankees). The doors in the walls are made using Vampifan's masking tape method, described here on the Stoelzel's forum (as well as somewhere on his blog no doubt!). I must admit to some scepticism on reading it, but it works a treat - thanks VtG!

Having removed that floor, we can now see the next, with Zed-Me on the stairs, the top of which can just be seen in the pic above. As I described in the post about the Food Market, I've not put anything (except the paper print) in the vertical risers of the stairs, so Zed-Me's base is trapped between the stairs' horizontal steps and held in place. This floor is also one of my reservations about the layout. I don't really like that you have to go through one room - the centre room - to reach another - the room on the left. Not sure what I'll do about this, but I suspect that at some point, I'll change the layout by adding a hallway of some sort ...

And removing the first floor we can see the bar itself. I've not made all the furniture supplied in the file, although you can see the juke-box, pool table, example bar stool and example chair. This area is the second and final of my layout reservations - the way that the stairs are placed into the room - very strange IMO. They should be against a wall I think and I might move them or add a wall ... at some point .... Just at the top centre of the picture you can see the edge of the toilets, which I've changed considerably from how they are supplied ...

The detail of my changes can be seen in this pic to the right. I've used walls from Stoelzels' hospital model as they seemed more fitting for a loo, and added a second toilet and sink as well as a hot air dryer on the wall (made by chopping the toilet cistern about).

The dividers and doors of the stalls were made from a piece in the WWG Mayhem Police set and I'm very pleased with how they came out. Again they're hinged with masking tape and do open and close. The bar across the top is another cocktail stick, coloured in with a permanent  marker.

This penultimate photo is an zombie-eye view of the bar's interior showing off some of the extras in the file - the dartboard, chalkboard for score and juke-box in particular.

And finally a shot of the bar itself with Zed-Me ready to serve - not that I'd take a drink from him!

The Pub - a tease ...

Well it's nearly done ... just got a few bits more to do and it will be. In the meantime, here's a couple of pics to show you parts of the Stoelzel's Structures Local Pub as I've made it:

a drive-by pic - that's why it's blurry, honest!

Zed-Me all alone in the bar

I took this with my phone, looking through one of the windows
at the LCD screen - v. pleased with how it came out!

With the Local Pub there are some pavement prints and I made one last night - I'm very pleased with it and will make more

Dave Graffam Models 6 - Clock Tower

So another DGM, this time it's the Clock Tower.  As with all the other DGMs I've posted on (see this page for links to the posts: Buildings), the layers technology in the pdf files from DGM gives a whole world of variations for this building.

Note: I use Foxit as my pdf viewer of choice, but I've had problems when attempting to print layers with it, so use Adobe Reader to print DGM files)

Once more the hurtful critic valued interior designer Van Fampi is appearing in the photos to give a sense of scale and add his own comments.  I went for the 'red brick' option on the outside of the tower, and this time, have cut out both the single door and the windows that I chose to put on the tower (with the layers you can have different windows and doors in different positions). Also, I printed the clock itself a couple of times and mounted it on a piece of board to give it a 3D appearance, but I'm not sure how well it comes across in the pic:

"Wow! An openi door - at bl**dy last!"

As you can see, I put a ruler in the pic to show the height of the tower.

I also 'bashed' the build a bit. As you will be aware if you've read the other DGM posts I've done, you will know that the DGM models have no interior detail supplied with them. However, for 2 reasons, I added some at the top of the tower:

1. It made such a perfect sniper/lookout spot I felt I had to
2. Van Fampi threatened me with physical violence ...

So you see I had to. Anyway, this next pic shows what I added. I put in a floor with a trapdoor and papered the walls with interior detail from Worldworks Games' Mayhem Apartment set: The pic also shows - just how I did the clock:

I do like this build, but I'm really not sure how I will use it. As it is, it is quite top-heavy (especially with a figure in that room!), which means the slightest touch of an arm during a game will send it over. The model does come with a small 'foot print' - which would definitely help - but I have not attached it yet, as it would prevent placing the tower next to a building - something I'm considering.

Anyway, I'll post again on the tower if I have a brainwave and devise a solution!

Dave Graffam Models 5 - Low Ruins

Another post on my Dave Graffam Models (DGM) builds. This time 2 builds I've put together from the 'Low Ruins' product. I did wonder whether to post on these builds or not, as Vampifan the Great (VtG) had already made a post on his build (here: daves-games-low-ruins-and-crosspiece ), but I decided to in the end, to show the great versatility of DGM, through their use of layers in pdf files.

Just a couple of points on my DGM builds:

1. All my DGM builds are printed from the file onto A4 paper by a colour laser printer, which is then cut down to the size of the prints
2. The prints are then glued - for the first couple of builds with PVA glue, but latterly using a glue stick - onto Rymans' stationers Oil and Acrylic Board (which is 2mm thick)
3. The board is then cut to the paper's dimensions with a craft knife.

Anyway, as with my previous DGM posts, Van Fampi - the interior design consultant of legend - has once more consented to be present to give a scale indication in the pics. This first pic shows the side elevation of the first build, which is a 6" x 6" model. The interior wall for this build is made from the Low Ruins file - VtG used components of the Crosspiece Ruins set for his - and was added for support and a bit more cover. Having seen VtG's build, I'm thinking of adding some more interior walls.

"What a surprise - no see-through windows or opening doors!"

This next pic shows the same build at another angle. You can more clearly see the rubble layer that can be shown on the floor (if desired), mainly in the corners. At some point I'm going to use some model railway ballast/gravel to build this up.

" ... hmmm, I'm liking therest of the interior, though."

For this next 'Low Ruin' I chose the 6" x 4" footprint and the brown brick exterior (the first had red brick). Again this build has the rubbled floor.  This pic clearly shows that I have used black marker pen to colour in the cut edge of the paper and board. It doesn't - IMHO - look particularly fantastic. My idea is that it represents soot - or something like that anyway - to give the suggestion of fire damage. I might try painting the edges a more appropriate colour at some point. (I think VtG painted his grey.)

"Once more - disappointing .... "

I've just checked and there are 9 different layers that can be used for the walls of this build (or 10 if you include 'no layer') and 8 different floor layers (again 1 extra if no layer is counted) making this an incredibly versatile model, that I'm very pleased I bought.  This last pic is another elevation of the 2nd build.

"Not bad, I s'pose - apart from the usual of course ..."

The only slightly negative point is that it can be a pain to make sure you are lining up the doors and windows correctly when you print! Against that, of course, is the incredible versatility of the model and the fact you can use the floor piece as flooring in different models - as I did with my DGM Village Chapel here: dave-graffam-models-2-village-chapel and DGM Pub here: dave-graffam-models-1-pub