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.

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.

A Rubber River Runs Through It: Part I

For those unfamiliar with SAGA, the game is typically played through scenarios laid out in the rulebook.  The scenarios each require certain elements, like baggage trains, roads, or rivers.

These scenarios take the game beyond simply having two bands of thugs bash each other with axes.  They also require additional scenery or figures.  That's also extra investment of time, money, and effort, all of which I'm increasingly unable to give.

I did decide my last big scenery addition would be a river for the scenario, Battle At The Ford, which requires a river running across the board with two crossings.  I also just wanted a river.  I've never had any water terrain pieces and my small scenery collection seemed empty without it.

After spending a few days searching the Internet, I settled on Burgh Terrain.  I liked the look of the bridges more than any of the other offerings I'd seen and the price were certainly good.

 Within a few days, a package was at my door containing the seven sections I'd ordered.  The long sections are roughly 12" and the bridges are a bit under six.  They were all cast in a soft brown rubber.

The casting was nice, with only very small air bubbles.  There was some warping on a few pieces but I'm not too worried about it.  The only thing that's causing me some concern is that the rubber isn't very stiff; excessive flexing may cause paint and acrylic water to separate from the casting.  We shall see.

In the mean time, I've started work on the river sections.  Using PVA (white glue) diluted with water, I've added some ballast to the river bed.  The pieces were then primed black and sprayed with Krylon Ultra-Flat Khaki.  It's from their Camoflage line, which is readily available at PXes and Wal-Marts everywhere.  For wargamers or casual mercenaries, the stuff is phenomenal.  The superflat finish takes washes and drybrushing well and it's quite durable.  Conveniently, you can base-coat your figures on the hood of your MRAP and not even fuss about overspray.

In the mean time, I've got to go place an order as it turns out that I order the Woodland Scenics Water Effects when I meant to order the EZ water.  Whoops.

I've Got A Boat!

To recap, SAGA is a game of skirmishing factions from across Europe and the Middle East during the Dark Age/Early Medieval period.  There's quite a bit of variety to the factions, especially in the later expansions.  The game goes beyond Anglo-Danes bashing Anglo-Saxons.  There are also Skraelings (Native Americans), Pagan Rus, Byzantines, and Merovingian Franks.  It's a real United Colors of Benetton ad.

While those other factions add depth to the game, the one faction that is above all others as an icon for warfare in the period is the Vikings.  When we think of Europe in the 800s, we think of raiders rowing longships across stormy seas to plunder and pillage.

Outside of gaming, I love of all things maritime.  It therefore stands to reason (that word probably doesn't fit in this post or even in this blog) that I should endeavor to build a Viking ship model to decorate my SAGA games and give my wife something else to shake her head over.

There are only  a few options for 28mm Viking ships.  Old Glory will sell you one for only $36 without crew, but in order to get the rudder, you have to buy the crew.  Getting it with the crew adds another $30 dollars.  The Tapestry did a write-up of it a while ago. Sixty-six dollars puts this one at the high end of the offerings.  Then again, that Old Glory Army card saves you 40%, which is great if you plan to spend enough in a year to justify the $50 cost of the card.  I'm not totally sold, given that I don't know if I'd use that membership to full effect.  I do know that if North Star offered such a card, I would have abused the snot out of it this year alone.

Plastic model maker Revell produces a very nice kit that comes in right around $28US.  The only downsides are that it doesn't have a crew and it has a full hull, so it will need to be cut to the waterline.  Still, for someone who just plans to park it on the beach as scenery (as I do) and is willing to break out the razor saw and miter box, it's an easy choice.

Option three is Gripping Beast.  They do a series of Dark Age vessels.  There's a large trading ship, a small trading boat, a "Pictish/Scots/Irish boat", and the "Oseberg Style Long Ship".  The last one is the largest by a wide margin.  I find it impressive that Gripping Beast has a bothered to create a full line of vessels to populate the beaches near your little resin abbey.  What's frustrating is that the images on the website, with one exception, look like they could be spy satellite imagery imagery taken during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Tiny, fuzzy little pictures and little sense of scale do not sell these models.  Also, no masts or sails.  Old Glory at least provides dowels for the masts.  Even if you were willing to take the leap on such an unknown quantity, you've got to deal with the fact that they're frequently out of stock.

That last hindrance is the most baffling to me.  Try Googling these things.  There aren't a lot of bloggers writing up their experiences with them.  In fact, there are only two that I can find.  One fellow built up the knorr trading vessel to use as a raiding ship (it's a bit small) and another bought the Oseberg ship for a fantasy game.  Beyond those folks, no one seems to own one.  I've asked in several SAGA groups and just get crickets.  My suspicion is that they're made in small batches and then immediately scooped up by one those large English wargaming groups that love to stage those massive convention demonstration games showing the entirety of the fall of Incan empire or a 1:1 model of Wagram.

I really wanted a Viking ship, but wasn't quite willing to lay out that much cash on such an unknown quantity.  As luck would have it, a gentleman on Facebook happened to be selling off some SAGA things and put an Oseberg long ship up for sale.  As he was only in the Netherlands, that would make it a quick ship to me and not terribly expensive to do so.

Turns out, shipping was a bit pricier than initially thought.  Sorry, Arvid.  It was fast, though.  Only a few days after shipping, it was at my doorstep.

The ship is surprisingly large.  I measured it at 18" from stem to stern.  The picture below is with a 28mm Empress T-26 for scale.  It's certainly impressive.  Given that SAGA games are supposed to be played on 3x3 or 4x3 boards, it's almost a bit too much.  It's the size of a small village.  Anyone who has seen the real things in Oslo or Roskilde will know who much this conveys the very real mass of the subject.


The ship comes with the rowing crew shown in the pictures, a mast cap, a fitting for a crossarm. With masts and sails installed it will definitely draw the eye to a gaming table.  A Dark Age board on it's own may not make a clear impression in a convention or shop game, but adding a full-sized ship like this let's people know at a glance what the game is about.

It's about Vikings!

Cabbages & Kings

Wargaming leaves you doing some strange things.  Yup, I was spending my nights making cabbage patches.  At least, a single cabbage patch.  Rarely has so much effort had so little payoff.

The model cabbages are O scale model railroad accessories ordered from Hobbylinc.  Seven bucks gets you twenty cabbages.  Almost immediately after ordering, I realized that I should have ordered two packs.  I didn't.  It's just that it seemed like such a frivolous purchase that doubling down on it seemed insane.

Then I had to go around about making them all red versus all green versus a mix.  I really didn't like the mix option and my father weighed in with a vote of red or green but no mix.  I initially liked the all red option as a bit of color sounded appealing.  My trees are green.  My buildings are brown. Red would break up the monotony.

Then it hit me I had made the decision to exclude blues and any bright yellows from my Norman army.  The Normans are colorful, but my focus on creating color profiles for armies would be undone if my scenery was colorful.  Pieces should blend into the scenery.  After all, they are scenery.  

Without getting too nerdy with this (too late), I returned to an earlier idea I'd had that armies would be defined by a color palette and scenery by a textural palette.  Early on I had started doing tree bases differently from my building bases, but went back and re-based the trees (almost done with that) to conform in shade and base texture.  

All this goes back to some ideas I was mulling over about clarity of intent in gaming trumping scenic beauty or diversity.  That post is in the hopper now.  

So, green.  I primed all the cabbages with black primer.  The base coat was a heavily watered down, almost wash of Vallejo Olive Green.  Once that was dried, I used a Games Workshop Camo Green, dry brushed initially, with a more careful highlight followup.  Finally, I made some super light marks with Games Workshop's Rotting Flesh, which is a greenish shade of white.  

 The overall measurement is 14cm by 11cm, which works out to roughly 6x4in.

By day, I work a desk job.  By night, I'm Chris, King of the Cabbages.

Mad Mats: Furry Load

In race to get things together for this game, the pace has definitely picked up.  Turns out those months I had to leisurely assemble a little skirmish game have somehow disappeared.  What hasn't been winnowed down as quickly is my shopping/to-do list.

Every few weeks, another package arrives and each time I open it and smack my head as I remember something else that should have been bundled into the order or ask myself why I felt the need to add some really pricey 1/600 Phoenician galleys onto the order and maybe one of those new packs of Bavarian infantry.

What do you mean there's no dignity to be had in here?

What's also a given is that my little helper will find her way into the order as well.  If the great sagas were written in blood and iron, mine is written in cat fur.  Long, black cat fur.

The latest was no exception.  My Hobbylinc order showed up with some more Squadron green putty as the last tube bizarrely went dry after a few months, some model railroad O scale cabbages, Woodland Scenics acrylic water, and a big green Woodland Scenics mat.

The mat was the highlight of the order.  All the other stuff could have stayed in the warehouse, but that mat was the essential element.

As I've said before, I try to put a hard limit at $80/month on my gaming madness and usually keep it far under that level.  That sort of limit keeps me from piling up stuff faster than I can paint and assemble it and staves off the worst impulses when browsing new releases on Board Game Geek or The Miniatures page.  I can be really impulsive.

So back to cats and mats.

A decent mat seemed like a literal good basis for a game.  I also really wanted some more trees.  Maybe some animals for the pens I had yet to construct.  Some Renedra fencing for those pens.  Some Renedra barrels and sandbags to paint up as grain sacks.  Oh, and maybe some of those nice Woodland Scenics plants to make the fields look lush.  And doesn't every village need a good church?  From either Grand Manner or Curtey's that'd run a fair bit, but how could my village remain so impious?  Can't have that church without some clergy, so add them to the list.  It goes on and on.

There was now so much on that list, and I still hadn't decided on a mat yet.  Deep Cut Studios makes beautiful mats for around $70US that would fit the bill.  I had already IDed a mat by Cigar Box Battle Store for my Hellenic galley project, so one of their other mats would fit the bill.  The Mat O War offerings looked really nice as well.  I had plenty of options.  I also knew that whatever I ordered, it would pretty much take up the month's gaming budget.  That meant no more trees.  No cabbage patch, and no pig pen.  Just the mats, ma'am.

One night, after work and unwinding with a few tall glasses of water, I was assembling my latest order.  No Phoenecian galleys and no Napoleonic infrantry.  Just the essentials.  Yup.  I had resolved that this order would be my April expense and then I'd buy the mat in May.  It made sense.  The mat wouldn't require work, whereas the gubbins I was buying now would all require assembly and with time running down, I'd have to prioritize my projects.

As I was browsing Hobbylinc, I found a section of grass mats.  Really cheap grass mats.  It was like the I was suddenly told that, in fact, I could have my cake and eat it too.  I could place an order for some extras for that river project I hadn't started and still get the mat, all while keeping the order cost low.  There was one Bachmann 50"x100" mat for just under $20US.  How could I go wrong?

Well, I could first go wrong by ordering a smaller mat.  I had ordered the smaller Woodland Scenics mat that was 50"x33"  Why would I do that when the game size is 36"x36" or 48"x36"?  Three inches isn't much, but why?

Another way I could go wrong was by not just ordering a quality cloth mat, instead getting a cut-rate sheet of craft paper covered in green flock.  Unrolling that thing out onto my dining room table tonight, I realized that I had seriously erred.  The crinkly thing shed green dust everywhere.  It will have to do for now.

As far as the cat?  She loved laying on it.  She shed on it and it shed back.  I'm sure that for years I will be finding green flock mixed with black fur on my gaming materials and furniture.  SAGA, memories to last a lifetime.

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.

Trees: Part 1

Given that the game is supposed to represent pre-industrial northern Europe, I was going to need some trees.  Probably quite a few.

Sadly, the Grimdark world of the 41st millennium hadn't prepared me for the need for conventional plants.  As usual, I had to go shopping.

Having a model railroading background, I immediately started looking for trees from those sources.  Woodland Scenics has some nice stuff, but I needed to keep cost in check and didn't feel like paying for serious model railroading foreground quality trees.  Instead, I looked to the staple brands of cheap model railroading: Life-like, Model Power, and Bachmann.

I was surprised to find that only Bachmann remained.  The others had disappeared in the overall collapse of the model railroading hobby in the last decade.  Still, Bachmann had what I needed.

The Bachmann Scene Scape line has several varieties of trees in multiple sizes.  Best of all, a box has six trees and has an MSRP of $15US.  That meant that for less than $60, I could forest my game board.  Hobbylinc has the 5'-6" trees for $10.49 per six pack which worked out perfectly.

There's a Woodland Scenics pack of 24 4"-6" trees for $24.89.  They definitely will do for gaming purposes but having seen them, I had to give them a pass.  The Bachmann trees are 5-3/4" to 7-3/4", whereas the Woodland Scenics trees are the height advertised.  I know it's fussy, but I don't want my knights to be able to look over the tops of the trees, even in games that don't use true line of sight.

Now on to figuring out how to base my new forest...