From MikeP (Ready): 28mm 18th/19th century German Farm (125 pts)

With the clock running out on this year's Challenge, here is a significant terrain project I've been working on for 18th century Seven Year War gaming in the big scale.   These are both 28mm MDF kits from Warbases, from their Napoleonic Prussia series of buildings.

One is a farm cottage, the other obviously is a barn.   Both were labours of love.  To give the cottage a stucco style look and as bare MDF walls look rather sad, I coated the exterior walls thickly with LePage plastic wood filler, painted the walls an off-white cream colour, and then stained them with Agrax Earthshade.  The slate roof is made of cut-up cereal box, glued in place and painted blue.

Likewise for the barn, a three-story model, I used the cut up cereal box method to suggest that the ground floor was made of field stones cemented in place.  Not sure if that's common in 18th century Prussia, but you still see it in old barns in SW Ontario where I live.

For the barn roof, I saw the error of my ways with the cereal boxes and ordered some roof tile sets from Sarissa.   Two sheets wasn't enough and I had to cut a few strips to finish the job.  The barn is a massive thing, as you can see from these 28mm figures.

The bases were made as well, following a recipe from my friend Joe Saunders, who runs a clever YouTube channel called Miniature Landscape Hobbies.  I had hoped to make some scatter to add to the bases, to make it all appear lived in, but that will wait for another day, along with the three more Warbases buildings still in the flatpacks.  

The barn is a bit of a beast, 7" wide, 10" long, and 8" high.  The farmhouse is 6" wide, 3.5" wide, and 5" tall.  I can supply photos later to verify this, but as I'm pressed for time, I'd be grateful if a kind minion can take my word for this.   Not counting the bases, I would say the buildings would need five 6" cubic boxes to hold them, so I'm asking for 120 points, but honestly, since I pretty much made my goal this year, I'll take whatever you award, and if you want to reward my stupidity for all those cut up cereal boxes, I'll take bonus points for stupid.

I don't think there's a Challenge planet dedicated to German agricultural so no planet bonus claimed.

Cheers and thanks for looking, MikeP

From DaveD. Thats a fine bit of work you've completed = i always like seeing these mdf buildings brought properly to life - lets  call that 125 

From ByronM - Northern Lights Terrain 28mm European Buildings ( 120 Points )

The first of two posts today and it is something I designed, cut, and started selling almost a year ago through my side business "Northern Lights Terrain".  You have all likely heard the story of the shoemakers kids and how they never have shoes, well that is normally the story around my house with terrain.  I design and cut a lot of different pieces and inevitably end up with most of the test / sample cuts piled in my garage waiting to be painted and used.  This was one of those projects.

Playing a lot of Chain of Command, Bolt Action, and dreaming of one day getting enough napoleonics together to play a game in 28mm scale, I thought I should design my own line of 28mm buildings for a very European look, so I did.

I then got stuck for a name for the line so our snow lord graciously stepped up and gave me a hand throwing out several great ideas.  I chose "Rue de Guerre" as the lines name as I thought it was both a real sounding street name and a clever play on words for a line of wargame terrain.

As you can see from the pictures, the terrain is fairly basic, there is not a huge amount of detail on the buildings.  This was done on purpose for two reasons, firstly the more detail you add the longer the laser cutting time is and therefore the higher cost to produce. A major goal here was to be able to sell a set of buildings cheaply.  The second reason was to provide a base set for people to work from and add their own details.  There are many fine producers of terrain out there, from places that make super basic kits to ultra detailed kits, with prices all over as well.  I normally aim to put enough detail that players can build, paint, use them as is, or detail them how they like, while keeping the cost as low as I can, while still justifying my time to produce.

The painting on them is rough on purpose, as I used a large brush on the beige areas and used a few different colours and just stippled it on to give a rough real world look, rather than airbrushing it on and having it super smooth.  The roof and bricks were done with a base coat and then randomly picking out components and painting them in slightly off colours to form a random look.  I think it worked better on the bricks than the roof, but looks ok for either.

While the buildings are designed to come apart to allow access to each floor, we rarely play with guys inside buildings as we tend to loose track of where everything is, so I just left the interiors bare.

So, I finely have my own Rue de Guerre set fully painted.  Each house is roughly 5" x  5" x 6.5" to the peak of the roof (ignoring the garden on the one with an outside garden), the shop is 6" x 5" x 7", the corner building is 7" x 7" x 8", and the outbuilding (garage) is 5" x 7" x 5".  Each one is almost a 6x6x6 cube, however some needs to be taken off due to the roof not taking up the full space and for the outbuilding that is a little smaller, so this is likely worth about anywhere from 80 - 100 points?  Up to you Curt, I am just happy to finally have them all painted up and done for my own use!

I am tired of getting pictures from people who have bought them from me where they are all painted up and in use, and mine were still bare MDF!

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These buildings really look terrific Byron. Your relatively minimalist approach to the design and painting are very effective and the series of structures together do a great job in giving the impression of a street in a provincial French town. I particularly like the brickwork, chimneys and the sign above the Boulangerie / Patisserie. The way they break down into their separate floors is a great touch - I can see why these are popular with customers. Will you be expanding the range to a few taller buildings, a town square, or perhaps the local Hotel de Ville? 

As to points, let's go with a base of 90 for the base buildings and another 30 for your efforts in the design of them. Lovely work Byron! 

- Curt