Broom Binder House from Thomarillion

At this year's Hamburger Tactica show I bought the newly released Broom Binder House from Thomarillion.



Usually the buildings and terrain I collect for wargaming are made from resin. The buildings from Thomarillion (produced by Ziterdes), however, use a very different, unique material: a light-weight, dense hard foam. Ever since I first saw their products I have been both intrigued and sceptical, but never found a good reason to buy any of these products. That was until I saw the new release the Broom Binder House, at the Thomarillion booth at the Tactica. It is a bit bigger than what I have seen from them and I immediately thought it would fit perfectly with the Stronghold Terrain buildings, such as the Town house.

Tactica 2014

One of the yearly wargaming highlights is the Tactica convention in Hamburg. Combined with meeting friends who live there this makes for a great weekend.

The Tables

If you are a regular at wargaming shows it gets increasingly hard to be impressed by the various gaming tables. My favourite was the huge Zombie board:

I was very impressed with the underground level: The idea of using the edges of the board is ingenious. It's a perfect way of adding another level to the board which is also practical, because you do not have to remove buildings or streets all the time. I am now considering this for my Port of Gierburg project.

Here are a few other tables:

Update Feb, 25th: For more photos visit the Tactica blog.
Update Mar, 5th:  Even more photos at Spieltrieb Frankfurt.

The Game

We played a game of Bushido. The objective was to convert three shrines for victory points over the course of six rounds. I had never played Bushido before and this was a great introduction to the game.

I like how you can have a nice game with only three figures and a comparatively small gaming board. This definately looks like a good game to play in addition to a main hobby project.

The Purchases

Browsing the Thomarillion booth I spotted their Streetlamps (designed by Deltadog Designz for their game Götterdaämmerung). These are really nice lantern posts so I bought a set for use at my Gierburg port.

Street lamps from Thomarillion

Another addition for the Gierburg port is this medieval crane from Green Line and sold through Fredericus Rex. The crane is 1/72 scale but big enough for 28mm.

Medieval Crane from Fredericus Rex

My greatest discovery, however, were the 28mm figures at the booth of Schilling-Figuren. The Napoleonic range by Westfalia Miniatures offers a huge range of beautiful wagons and carts:

Westfalia Miniatures available at the Schilling-Figuren booth

I bought three wagons right away - a British ambulance cart (without crew), a French post coach and an Officer's coach - and ordered another one: a French utility cart with chests and mobile forge.
I also bought a surgeon set (seemingly designed by Ingo's-Figuren) consisting of a surgeon, an assistant and a victim.

I can't wait to get cracking on these. As always the convention was a great inspiration from which I return with a lot of enthusiasm for the hobby.