28mm: The Middle Eastern Village

Introduction

A few months ago, I started to prepare for Scenario 3 in my Pulp Alley "Perilous Island" campaign.  As written, this scenario takes place inside a large warehouse that is full of goods and inhabited by a few night watchmen.  I did look for warehouse models (I have quite a few crates and the like already), but didn't really find any that were both large enough to fit my vision and at the same time cheap enough to be affordable.

One day, I was browsing the Hoka Hey Wargaming/Timeline Miniatures website when I happened to see some 28mm MDF Middle Eastern buildings.  Suddenly, I changed my plans: Tarzan and the Nazis could fight the scenario at the hideout of the Snake Cultists instead!  Since my cultists are vaguely North African, some adobe buildings would work just fine.

I'll add some trucks and some crates & other goods for clutter (hmm - the Cultists obviously are in the middle of some nefarious plan, such as shipping copies of their manifesto to unsuspecting bookshops across the civilised world!).  Of course, the night watchmen will then become a handful of cultist guards instead.  Muahaha!

So, the rest of this article describes the 3 buildings that I have constructed...

The Small Adobe Building

The smallest of these models is basically a simple, wooden box.  It has been detailed slightly by the addition of wooden beams that protrude from the tops of the walls to hold the roof (these are just about visible in the picture below).

For all 3 models, the laser-cut MDF fitted absolutely perfectly.  I suppose that I should expect that these days, yet it always comes as a pleasant surprise when a kit such as this goes together so well.

I've "upgraded" the basic MDF shells by coating them with a mixture of white glue, sand and a ballast powder (I used an old tile grout).  Of course, this required some fixing up after the mixture had dried, to clean any excess from the joints between the walls and the roof!  Oh, well...

The Medium Adobe Building

My second building is slightly larger than the small, simple one above.  It also has a second storey and a canopy over the front door.

Like the first building, the interiors are playable.  In this case, the top lifts off to reveal the upper floor, which I have decorated with some printed paper planks and rugs.  I've also added a piece of dowel in the centre of the floor, to act as a handle...

...allowing the upper floor to be lifted out easily to reveal the ground storey.  I've left most of this space empty, but there are some more rugs, a table and some pots to hint at habitation.

The Large Adobe Building

The 3rd and final building in this collection has multiple rooms, a dome (a resin hemisphere) and a courtyard.  This latter has allowed me to add some exterior detail; in a couple of the nooks and crannies there are large pots that contain lemon trees

Once again, the top storey lifts off to reveal the upper floor.  Again, I've added a dowelling handle to make it easier to remove the next piece...

...which then shows the 2 rooms on the ground floor.  Once more, I've added minimal detail to these space - just some rugs - thus allowing plenty of room for figures or loose scenery items.

Conclusion

Timeline make only these 3 types of Middle Eastern building, which is a pity as they're really nice models.  I think that repeats of the largest building would look a bit strange (it's quite distinctive), though I'm somewhat tempted to get more of the small and medium ones.

These kits are easy to build and could be painted just as they came.  However, I'm glad that I added the plaster mix to the walls; it gives texture to the otherwise completely smooth MDF.  It was a messy and slow process, though!

I'm in two minds about my interior detail.  Part of me thinks that there should be much more to be realistic, whilst the other part says that open space is better for playability.  I'm really not that sure...

I note that other manufacturers exist: Knights of Dice (in the USA) have a larger "Tabula Rasa" range that includes quite a variety of adobe buildings.  These seem to be specifically designed for the model-maker to add detail (the name of the range is a bit of a giveaway!) and are very similar in concept to the Timeline models.

Frostgrave: a quick Ruined Building

Introduction

Since I started on my Frostgrave adventure, I've built plenty of wizards and quite a few undead monsters, with some soldiers and more critters to come.  However, the game is heavily dependent on terrain as well, so I thought I'd better plan for that too.

Having ransacked my spares boxes, I came up with this:

It's a relatively cheap kit that I bought long ago, though I'd never built it because I'm not a great fan of the "techno gothic" look.  It never occurred to me that these ruins could be built in any other way - but they can!

The Ruins

OK, so I had a kit, but what could I do with it?  The box came with 6 identical sprues, each containing 1 long and 1 short wall, as well as 1 tall and 1 short cylindrical joining piece.

Now I really didn't want to spend a lot of effort on this project, so I cut the parts from the sprue (quite crudely, by my standards) and glued them together.  This took only part of 1 evening, so not a great deal of effort at all.  In the end, my 12 wall pieces made 3 "L" shapes, 1 "T" and 1 "Z" shape.

To paint these, I wanted to keep it easy.  I sprayed the built models just once, but with a "stone-textured" paint that I bought from my nearest D.I.Y store.  As well as adding some black and white flecks to the overall grey of the walls, this had the added effect of covering up or softening much of the "techno" detail.  It's not something that I would wish for in many models (indeed, it would be something of a disaster for most!), but in this case the effect was just what I had hoped!

My only concession to extra painting was to apply a thin, dark green colour vertically to some areas, to simulate water stains.

The walls still looked a little bare, so I added some vegetation growing out of various nooks and crannies in the ruin.  This was made from rubberised horsehair, covered with glue and then flock (there's slightly more to it than that; I'm keeping it simple for this article).  However, it didn't require much work at all.

Conclusion

So there we are: another old kit saved from an eternity of pointlessness by being turned into a model that I hope will be very useful.  There are enough parts here to build quite a substantial ruined building, or possibly 2 smaller ones.

I did consider adding full or partial bases to these pieces and I also thought of adding snow over the highest points.  In the end I avoided both these ideas.  Firstly, it would have added extra time and effort to what was supposed to be a really simple, cheap build and secondly, snow or a particular colour of dirt would reduce the versatility.  After all, as it stands I could use these ruins for games in other settings too: grassy plains, scorched wildernesses, overgrown jungles...