Yet More Buildings: this time with (Sarissa) precision

I've spent so long wishing for the time to just sit at home, working on painting and modelling.   Who knew I'd get it in a way that only The Twilight Zone had predicted.

I had time to nearly finish one of 4Ground's larger kits, halting only when I discovered that their laser had ruined one of the window frames.  I've still got to see of they'll replace the sprue.

After stalling on that project, I happened to be trawling the Internet looking for new ways to convert euros to MDF.  3D-DZYN's production is halted for the rest of the year for reasons I can't go into here, and the really colorful kits by wargame-buildings.com have left the marketplace.   Luckily, Sarissa Precision has a huge catalogue and happened to have a few buildings on sale and shipping rates that are criminally low.  I was able to pick up two new buildings plus the optional peaked roof kits for only $29 shipped.  How am I supposed to pass on a deal like that?  I'm only human!

The kits arrived here in Germany in less than a week, packed with a candy, which I did appreciate, even if my parents drummed into me the importance of not taking such things from strangers.  The box with all four kits was half the size of the one containing my most recent 4Ground model, which was almost a surprise.

As expected, the kits are pretty basic.  There are no moving doors or extra gubbins.  The sheets are thin, but it's MDF so it's not a real drawback.  The point with these is to affordably fill out your western town, which isn't going to happen with $50 4Ground kits unless you have piles of cash.

One thing that surprised me was the accuracy of their laser.  There are no over cuts and the lines are perfect.  Parts fit together quite well on test fittings.

I hit the interior walls and the windows and door trim with white spray.  The facade got a brush of GW's Squig Orange, unthinned to leave in the brush marks.

The roof was washed with varying thickness coats of Dryad Bark to give it a streaky weathered look.  As the paint started to dry, I wiped the paint away with a paper towel to leave it looking more like untreated wood and to camouflage the dark tab ends you see at the ends of the roof.

The back of the facade got sprayed white, just like with the barber shop; in both cases I forgot to mask that part and chose to live with it.  At least my mistakes are consistent.

The kit went together smoothly.  Are there things I'd change, of course.  The roof is a bit too steep and tall, peeking over the top of the false front.  The window frames could have been thinner, but that would have required an additional sheet.  There are also really no frills.  The first thing my wife said when she saw the completed model was, "Do the doors open?"  Finally, it could have used a sign.

On the other side of ledger, there is a lot to like about this kit beyond the great price and ease of assembly.  The proportions are the best I've seen, ignoring the steep roof.  It's long and narrow, unlike the more toy toy-like kits out there by other manufacturers.  It really replicates the dimensions of 19th century western buildings.  The facade is more delicate, which is helped by not having to beef up details to accommodate moving doors.  I can't get past what a nice model this is.  It hits a sweet spot for being useable for gaming while looking really good. 

One other benefit to this model is that it feels anonymous.  Everyone can spot the 4Ground kits a mile out.  They're nice, but every western gamer owns Rogan's Bar.  Seeing an easily identifiable kit pulls one out of the sense that they're seeing a unique and interesting setting.   It's like watching "The Phantom Menace" and seeing the characters use a Schick razor as as a communicator.

There is something very gratifying about making a few tweaks to a kit and seeing it come together as something unique.  A few hours of work resulted in a model I really like.  A really nice, personalized old west town is possible with kits that go together easily and only require a small bit of effort to sharpen up.  I see myself coming back to Sarissa again and again.

Another MDF Building

My second MDF building project was the cleverly named Small Business 01 by 3D DZYN.  The company popped up in a discussion on Lead Adventure and I quickly placed an order.  The choice of what to buy was limited by the fact that there were only a few kits available and this was one of the only ones with a photo of the product.

I was pleasantly surprised by what arrived.  The kit was quite small, with minimal extra wooden sprue material.  The paint was far darker than it appeared on the website.  It did come with a selection of precut signs to hang on the facade.

After giving the interior walls a quick shot of flat white spray paint to make the interior appear more finished, I set about assembling the kit.

While it's not a large structure, I was stunned by how fast and easily it went together.  It felt like the tolerances between parts were just a touch more forgiving than the 4Ground kit, resulting in a build with no need for trimming and sanding.

I touched up the exposed edges with Vallejo paints, washed the roof with thinned Citadel Dryad Bark, and called it a day.  The whole thing took less than four hours, painting and drying time included. 

While I like the kit a great deal, I would have liked to have a boardwalk included.  Additionally, the tiny lettering on the sign was a pain to paint.  Finally, I would have preferred to have only the facade painted.  As it is, it looks a bit too civilized.  If these quibbles seem really minor, it's because they are.  The model is a little gem and at $20, a good deal.

One thing to note is that it is small.  The comparison photo with the 4Ground building should clarify just how small.  There's nothing wrong with that, and I like a variety of building sizes, but it won't take up much space on your board.

Operation Coffeyville

Nearly five years on, I've still got my little Norman force and its simple early medieval village with cabbage patch and vacant pig pen.  There's still work to do, but it has been a fun project and one I plan to keep working on, if not with my full attention.

While I enjoyed SAGA for the most part, the rules struck me as being patchy and built more on exceptions than rules.  The turn phases were byzantine and kept us going back to the rulebook constantly.

Luckily, there's a new version of SAGA on the shelves and supposedly it fixes a lot of the first one's sins.  While I would really like to pick up a copy, I've been dragging my feet on doing so.  The new rulebook is only £10, which is great, but the necessary "Age of Vikings" supplement is another "£30.  It's not that I can't splash out nearly $50 on a new ruleset, but damn if there aren't a lot of other shinies out there competing for my very limited hobby spend.

And that brings me to the most recent direction, or as I'm calling Operation Coffeyville after a disastrous event in the annals of rapid bank withdrawals.

While sourcing reasonably priced structures for my Norman settlement, I came across 4Ground and it's outstanding range of MDF kits.  Most of the dark age kits failed to wow me (except the astounding great hall, but that would have been a missed car payment), their growing old west line was stunning.  Bright facades and working batwing doors added to their appeal.

Then there are the figures.  While Artisan and Crusader do some nice models, American manufacturer Knuckleduster has been churning out a huge range of computer-sculpted westerners.  The entire line-up is beautiful and without equal in gaming.

As my previous posted hinted, I've been kicking around ideas for Western gaming for a bit.  In the last few years I've painted a half dozen cowboy figures and picked up a few building kits.

So there it is.  Another project on the table, but not really a project in sense of the SAGA one.  This time it's less structured and lacking a timeline.  While doing this, I do intend to continue my slow development of my SAGA force and scenery.

MDF: the F is for folly

Back around 2007, my cousin called me up and pitched me on the idea of buying a laser cutter to manufacture and sell MDF dice towers and 28mm-scaled shipping containers.  I told him that it was a waste as the market was flooded with those and I couldn't see MDF scenery ever taking the place of resin and plastic kits.  I mean what buildings could possibly look better as lasercut basswood?

And here we are, 13 years later, and there are countless small companies cranking out surpringly beautiful scenery from sheets of wood.  I was wrong and the limits of my imagination led me there.  If anyone could have made it work, it was my cousin, a skilled modeler, tinkerer, and professional draftsman.  That said, I still think dice towers are dumb and everyone who wanted sci-fi shipping containers bought them early or raided one of the many liquidation sales when AT-43 was rejected by gamers who didn't feel like spending $35 for a pre-painted model of a gorilla with a bazooka or a set of rules that hadn't figured out how combatants could jump or climb.

Last winter, I was looking for a small project to occupy me during the cold and dark months, which here in northern Europe can run from October through April.  I had just finished painting a few Artizan Designs gunslingers and looked around for a building to put them in.  As luck would have it, Northstar was running a sale.  I tossed some Copplestone gangsters, two dozen Crusader hoplites, and an orange single story false front building from 4Ground into the virtual shopping cart.  Obviously, I'm not one to get bogged down by little things like focus or goals.

The building kit was a hefty bag of lasercut sheets that smelled like a campfire.

Over the course of two afternoons, most of the kit went together.  I'm not sure how much was my unfamiliarity with this type of model, or the fact that it was one of their first western kits, but the process was as smooth as taking the trash out by heaving the bag dowstairs to the cans and picking up the scattered trash afterward.

The directions were largely just photos, which left me scratching my head at times, trying to puzzle out what the picture was telling me to do.  When I did figure out what to do, the pieces often barely fit together.  My file set got regular use.

The final insult came while assembling the roof.  The main roof piece is large and on my kit, badly warped.  Even after spending days clamped to get it straight, there was still a pronounced bend.  Even after gluing in the supports and leaving the assembly in a mass of clamps, the whole thing is still warped.

I can say that I've done three other MDF kits since then, two of which were by 4Ground, and none have left me so frustrated.  Ironically, it's far simpler than one of their other kits I built, but it still took the most time.

The moving doors and roof hatch are neat features and the pre-painted aspect was nice.  A lot of thought clearly went into designing it.

On the other hand, the warping was frustrating.  Touching up exposed ends with paint still took another hour or so.  The kit is only £24, which at the time was about $32.   This is one of their cheaper kits and the prices can go up dramatically as the size and detail increase.  A word of warning on that pricing, though.  Shipping by Northstar or 4Ground has to come out of England.  That can add another £20 to the order, so plan accordingly.

On the whole, I like the result.  If Cousin Joe wants to buy that laser now and try his hand at MDF western scenery, I'd be glad to try out the result.

Rules of the West Part One

Back in the dark ages of wargaming, before Bolt Action and Cruel Seas, games were either robots and elves, or they were historical.   The latter class of games tended to be either dry war simulations featuring cardboard chits moved across a map, studiously replicating the Second Italo-Abyssinian War or they were masses of annoyingly accurate 15mm 19th century troops being pushed slowly around a board replicating Antietam.  These were only played by men who looked like George RR Martin.

Nearly two decades ago, we got Flames of War, which kept the beardy 15mm scale but went for more mass appeal.  In the process, it disproved years of speculation by the old grognard gamers that any attempt to make historical gaming fun would cause the Earth to spin off its axis.  It also caused steam to pour out from under those old man fisherman caps as gamers pitted battalions of IS-2s against waves of bren gun carriers.  A good time was had by most, especially the folks at Battlefront, selling crudely cast resin tanks for obscene sums of money.

Shortly before this time, the folks at Games Workshop created a little division called Warhammer Historical, which worked to combine the company's well known love of historical accuracy with its collection deceptively simple yet infuriating rules.  The Warhammer Ancient Battles rules were wildly popular and had spun off more supplements than anyone could count.

By the early 2000s, the historical division had added games covering pirates, Trafalgar, and cowboys.  That last one was Legends of the Old West, and it became something of a legend in gaming.  It allowed players to build and outfit their warband, er, gang in a way that 40K players would find comfortingly familiar.

Legends of the Old West, or LotOW for those in the know, was slickly produced, with 136 glossy pages full of background info and color gaming photos.

Behind the glossy cover was a reasonably solid game with an extensive campaign system.   That campaign system had some good elements, but like the rest of the game, had issues that drew calls for a heavily revised second edition.  As it stood, a runaway leader could emerge early and little could be done to stop them as they amassed equipment and gunfighters.

One aspect that marks LotOW as distinctly a product of its time is the amount of bookkeeping required.  Character sheets, infamy tallies, equipment inventories, payrolls, etc.  Every posse should come with one figure in a green visor, carrying a pen and ledger.

For a game with so many things to keep track of, there are surprisingly few options for the types of gangs you play.  It's limited to cowboys, outlaws, and lawmen.  No native groups.  No cavalry. No Mexicans.  Those all get added in the Plains War and Alamo supplements, but how much those factions work in the context of the first book is up for speculation.

The final mark against the game is the questionable handling of minorities and women.  They're all only hired help, and not even allowed to be fully part of a gang.  The powers they bring to the game are cringeworthy.  The treacherous "bandido" has the ability to shoot even when it risks killing one of his comrades.  The soiled dove moves around the board projecting a blinding sexual allure.  While he doesn't get a firearm, the Chinese railway worker has access to ancient herbal remedies, and both he and the Indian have the "heathen" special ability.  Yikes.

It's a game I could see getting into as a long running campaign among friends.  The rules are a touch crunchy, but no more so than 3rd Edition 40K.  Where it doesn't work is as a pickup game.  Just creating a gang requires a ledger and more fussing around than a beer and pretzels skirmish game should require.

Rollin' to Roskilde

Yes, we went to Roskilde.  For those not familiar with Dark Age naval history (I can't even imagine), Roskilde is the site of the most significant Viking archaeological find.  Like Oseberg and Sutton Hoo, it opened up a whole world for researchers.

For us, it was a side trip from a long weekend in Copenhagen.  We took a cheap regional train from the capital west to the island of Zeeland.  The twenty mile trip took about forty minutes from platform to platform.  It's an ideal day trip if you happen to be spending time in the area.

A side note on Copenhagen and Denmark: it's wickedly costly.  The exchange rate seems great.  You hand over your dollars or euros for lots and lots of colorful kroner which seems amazing.  Then you go to spend that and realize that everything, especially in Copenhagen, is fabulously expensive.  On our last night there, I spent 144Kr on a single bottle of good American beer.  A hot dog from a street vendor was was roughly $7.

Expensive as it is, it's still full of happy people riding everywhere on rickety bicycles, pleased with their quality healthcare and high standard of living.  It's a real socialist hellscape.

In the town of Roskilde is the site of the cathedral where Denmark's royalty are married and buried, going back as far as Harald Bluetooth, the viking who famously made the practice of talking on a cell phone while driving legally despite it being just as dangerous as when one is actually holding the phone.  Dammit, Harald.

This guy's the Danish Norm Abram.

It's also the site of the Viking Ship Museum.  For dark age gaming fanatics, it doesn't get much better.
The museum has a collection of ships pulled up from the bottom of the fjord and a group of replicas that patrols can take out onto the water.  They even have craftsmen onsite, building new replicas and fashioning ship fittings.

All in all, there were over a dozen ships in various stages of seaworthiness, with more than half of them being incredibly accurate replicas.  That means that the Danes have built more real viking ships in the last decade than Gripping Beast has.  To this day, I'm convinced that they only have those things in the catalog to round out the line-up.  It's like Honda continually teasing the idea of bringing back the NSX just so that car enthusiasts will think the company is still capable of more than boring family cars.

Let it go, Rasmus.

My Danish friend Rasmus was caught looking longingly at the ships, no doubt thinking of a happier time when his people had a much rowdier, though less informed notion of what constituted a good day trip.  I think he was ready to chuck his European sports coupe and Surface tablet for a longship and an ax.

His Australian girlfriend was present to remind us of what happened when folks put her people on ships.  No more "green and pleasant land".  Just Paul Hogan, Yahoo Serious, and drop bears.  Pretty grim stuff.

One thing that did surprise me a bit was how low these things sat in the water and just how narrow they were.  With the exception of the knarr, they all had relatively little freeboard.  I'm fairly certain it was so the rowers could dip their hands down and make ripples in the water.

A small knarr, or trading ship.

There's no way I'm painting a Gripping Beast ship like this.

Actual Danes commuting.

Not everyone was as excited about the ships as I was.

Returning and The Game

I've been away from this blog for a while.  I've been away from gaming and painting just as long.  I blame Games Workshop for releasing Age of Sigmar and ruining wargaming for everyone.

During my parents' visit, my father and I did get to play SAGA, albeit only one game.  Travel and gaming don't mix.  One long learning game.  It may have set the European record as the longest game of SAGA ever played.  During the course of it, we may have read the rule book four times trying to clarify what special abilities did and how one could cross a river.

Game length and general confusion aside, it was a lot of fun.  Now we just have to fly them back for a re-match.  Lord knows, I need something during these long dark German winters and one can only stomach so much Tatort and bourbon.

I'd written previously about my unhappiness with the green gaming mat I'd ordered from Hobbylink.  After playing on it for several hours, I came to dislike it slightly less.  It held up and books on the edges flattened it pretty quickly.  Unfortunately, someone else had a stronger opinion it and it is no more.  I'll come back to that later.

There aren't many photos of the actual game.  We started out in the afternoon, but didn't finish up until fairly late in the evening.  By then the light was rotten, especially for such a demanding cell phone photographer as myself.

The setup was pretty much your typical SAGA game.  A few buildings of various sizes, a river, some stands of trees, and one lazy cat.  She counted as high terrain for the purpose of line-of-sight.

We did get the cat to move eventually, but she got her revenge in the end.  Nature finds a way, or something like that.

The Irish faction set its dogs on the furry beast.

The Irish assaulted the farm where the Normans took refuge.

We played the Homeland scenario with the Normans defending against Irish raiders.  What this meant, was that ranged units sat back in the buildings and shot at the Irish as they slowly made their approach.  

The faction dice also weren't my friends in this game.  Turn after turn, I'd fail to get a single helmet on the dice, which ruled out nearly every single special ability.  If it weren't for sturdy walls in that village, my Normans would have been slaughtered.

In the end, the Irish failed to take out the Normans, which was hardly a rousing victory for the Norman soldiers, who saw their knights smashed by their Celtic foes while the archers and crossbowmen took potshots from inside the farm buildings.  Yup, the epic poetry just writes itself.

Shortly after that game, we were all off to train and fly around Europe, seeing Posnan, Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Bruges.  I did pick up a Gripping Beast Wandering Bard at Battlefield Berlin, which was nice.  I'll have to paint him up for my next game so he can sing the praises of Normans who valiantly hid among the chicken coops and fired an angry band of peasants and dogs.  Huzzah!

Upon returning to Germany, we got to see what the cat had added to the game.  She vomited on the river and the mat and shed all over the rest, rubbing the hair into turf.  The river was cleanable, but the mat was a total write-off.