The Buildings: Part 3

Here are the photos of the recently completed buildings.  Overall, I'm pleased with how they turned out.  They're pretty much stock, except for the bases, which are just quarter inch foam core board and the ax in front of one of the buildings.  That little bit was taken from the Wargames Factory Saxon Fyrd box and modified to look a little less martial.

Doing them again, I'd probably add more stuff to the bases around the buildings.  They seem to need tree stumps, sacks of grain, and crude wooden barrels.  I had intended to include them in the buildup, but I haven't gotten around to it.  My gaming budget is restricted by choice (I'm not returning to my old acquisitive ways like when I got started with 40K) and little decorative gubbins are way down the priority list.

The Buildings: Part 2

Being resin, the buildings were subjected to a vigorous cleaning to eliminate an mold release chemicals that would make it difficult to get paint to stick.  As it turned out, there were little blue bits of the mold wedged in the thatched roof.  These were easily picked out with the tip of an X-acto knife. 

Black basecoat, browns overpainted, increasingly light browns dry-brushed.  The result still looked a bit flat to me, lacking any depth.  I re-primered, starting with a darker brown and going lighter with highlights.  Still not the result I was looking for.  

The next step was breaking out the Army Painter Quickshade.  While I know some people really like it, I've only one time liked the result, and that was with a Wargames Factory zombie I painted and dipped as a test figure to see if it would be feasible to crank out a a super fast cheap zombie horde.  The result looked good and painting was a snap, but assembling WF plastics annoyed me more than any fiddly GW stuff has ever managed.

The dip didn't make me happy either, but it was closer.  The result was just too dark.  Taking one more stab at it, I lightened the colors, painted on a thin coat of Quickshade, highlighted that, and then clearcoated with matte varnish. 

The result is far from perfect, but I was mostly happy with it.  This approach is one I've got to remember to keep with me on this project so that it doesn't die out like so many others, killed off by a search for "great" when I should stop at "good enough".

The Buildings: Part 1

It appears I need at least three buildings of varied size.  My first thought was to place an order with Grand Manner.  Their stuff is really beautiful in the pictures on the website. 

Taking a look at their prices, I realized that I might have to break up the order a bit.  Two smaller building one month, one larger building the next.  It's not that I can't order things all at once, but it keeps my hyper-acquisitive nature in check to keep my monthly figure sprees to $80 or less.

I packed a few small buildings into the virtual cart and went to check out.  Forty pounds for two small buildings was tolerable.  It was all fine until I hit the checkout.  With shipping to continental Europe, the total hit 64 pounds.  Then I modified it to ship to my American post office box.  And then it hit 72.  That put the cost of those two fist-sized building at more than $100.  Ouch.  Nice though I'm sure the buildings are, it'll be a cold day in hell before I pay $50US to have a few small chunks of resin dropped at my doorstep.

On to Plan B.  I went back and forth between lasercut MDF and finding an alternate source for resin scenery.  I wanted my buildings to look similar, so it was one or the other.  Nothing I had seen had rivaled Grand Manner's pieces, and while waffling I discovered the Norman keep by Grand Manner.  Not only was it a really cool structure, but the price was surprisingly reasonable.  I could justify it as a centerpiece.  So resin it was. 

And then I put the whole project on hold for several months.  Coming back to the project was marked by two linked discoveries. The first was that Grand Manner had purged their catalog,  including the keep. 

I also discovered Gripping Beast resin buildings.  They're well-molded with crisp detail and few bubbles.  Where they do fall down slightly is in lacking a base or a removable roof.  On the other hand, they're really reasonable priced.  The three buildings I ordered ranged in price between 5 and 10GBP, with the total for the three being only 18GBP.  The nucleus of my little village for less than 20 more than made up for having to fab the bases. 

Gripping Beast's shipping was really fast and reasonably priced.  A week after ordering, a grim-faced postal worker was dropping the box on my front steps.