The Grey Harbour House

Introduction

As part of my ongoing efforts to produce terrain for games of Pulp Alley and Congo, I decided that I need a small, coastal village or port.  Obviously that'll require an extensive water feature and some boats (such as the steam launch which was the subject of my last article) - but that isn't my immediate focus.  For now, a village just isn't going to work without some houses or huts...

The Missionary's House

The first building is simple: it could be either the house for a missionary or a local trader.  This MDF kit comes from TTCombat, where it is sold as "Grey Harbor House A" for £10 (note the U.S. spelling of "Harbor", even though TTCombat is, I believe, a UK-based company).  It's a fairly basic MDF and greyboard kit of a planked, wooden house set on brick foundations.

I've scratch-built a thatched roof for the building; this seems more versatile than the kit's original roof for the relatively uncivilised parts of the world in which I'm likely to set games.  It's the first time that I've used teddy-bear fur in a model and I'm not sure I combed it out as well as I might.  One side is much flatter than the other; the fur fabric seems to have a "grain" or direction and I was combing against it on the near side you can see in the picture and with the grain on the far side.

As an aside, TTCombat also sells Grey Harbor "B" and "C" models which have a similar style but which are a bit larger (the "C" house has 2 storeys).  It would be entirely possible to build a complete settlement from just these types.

Now here's something of a mess.  I've tried twice to fit the interior of the building with a plank texture, printed once on paper and then (when that failed miserably) printed onto cardboard.  The glued-down result has been as you can see: wrinkled, shrunken and with extremely poor colour retention.

I really don't understand why this has been such a disaster (twice!), but I'll have to do something to remedy it; I cannot leave it as it is.  The floor of the model did have scribed planks, but I thought it would be awkward to paint these and I chose the printed paper route instead.  I'm wishing that I hadn't gone down this route now...

As sold, the model has a simple, MDF, tiled roof.  I painted this up as well; you can see it in the photo above.  This gives me the option of making the building more or less "civilised" to fit in with the setting for a particular game.  Indeed, the tiled roof could probably be used for games set in the present day for many of the warmer parts of the world.

Conclusion

I'm sure that this will be a very useful building, especially with the choice of roofs, but it's not enough on its own!  And I'll need to fix the flooring; it's really awful...

TTCombat: the Construction Office

Introduction

This has been a fairly busy weekend, with a full day's gaming on Saturday (2 exciting battle reports to come, in due course!) and my daughter's Christmas Dance Show on Sunday afternoon.  Consequently, I've not had much time to put together a blog article for today.  Still, here's a short discussion of a piece of MDF terrain that I was given for my birthday.

The Construction Office

This model is a "Construction Office" from TTCombat.  It looks very much as if it's intended to be the office for a construction site or a builder's yard - some form of Portakabin or other prefabricated building and is described as "Great...to use with...28-35mm wargames".  Very useful; I can think of many scenarios involving modern or even sci-fi scenarios where such a hut could be used.

The kit costs a mere £3.95 and (like other TTCombat kits I've built) is extremely easy to assemble into a very sturdy model.  The parts are relatively few in number and fit together very well indeed.  Although there is no interior detail in this hut, the roof can be left unglued to provide access so that you can decorate it yourself, if desired.  Excellent!

So why haven't I painted it yet?

As soon as I had finished gluing the parts of the hut together, I felt that something was wrong.  The building was fine in itself, but it just seems too big!  I placed a fairly average-sized 28mm figure alongside the Construction Office and my suspicions were confirmed.

Captain Haddock cannot see through the door window, even though he's mounted on a base that gives him an extra 4mm or so of height.

 My measurements confirm that the overall height of the hut is 3" (75mm), whilst the door alone is 2" (50mm).  If we assume that a Portakabin door is about 6' 6"" (2m) tall then the model door is at 1:40th scale.  This is almost half as big again as it should be for my 1:56th scale/28mm models.

So, this lovely, cheap model of a prefab building is so far out of the scale of my figures that I won't be able to use it.  It would work well for 42mm figures, though!  Or maybe 35mm models at a pinch, if they had fairly thick bases on the figures and you weren't too fussy.

Here's a last, slightly flippant thought.  I borrowed a Lego minifigure from one of my children for a few minutes, just to take this photo.  The hut is quite a good fit for him...

Billboards from TTCombat

Introduction

There are some very impressive MDF kits available for gamers these days.  Not only are the various vendors producing the obvious models of buildings, but increasingly they are also making vehicles, crates, pylons and other "scatter" elements.

TTCombat is one such manufacturer; they have a huge range of model kits that I might describe as "gamer friendly" or perhaps "cheap and cheerful".  Their buildings often have useful interior fittings, yet they are clearly designed for use in wargames as they are not totally faithful to real world sizes and layouts.

For example, the TTCombat "Sovereign" cinema has just 20 seats and no toilets or projection booth.  However, it does have plenty of open spaces where one could place figures during a game.  Not many movie theatres in the real world would fit this profile - and yet it's a lovely model that could play a central role in many tables set in urban USA or UK over the last 100 years or so.  Anyway, I digress...

Billboards

So, I bought a very simple TTCombat kit to start with: the billboard set.  This contains 2 identical billboard models for the princely sum of £3.95, postage free.  Yes, that's right; these models are cheaper than a takeaway meal for one!

Construction

Early stages of construction.  I found it easiest to start by fitting the legs to the underside of the platform

There were no instructions in the billboard kit and I didn't bother to look online to see if there are any available for download.  These are reasonably simple models and I put them together very easily with intuition alone.  Just remember that most of the parts plug into the long, rectangular "platform" piece.

On the whole, the pieces of the model went together very well indeed:

• The fit was typically firm enough to hold in position, but not so tight that the pieces couldn't be separated again after dry-fitting.
• I did use some filler on the upper side of the platform to hide the leg joints, though you could manage without this.
• The overhanging lights didn't match their sockets quite as I expected; it seemed as if the sockets weren't quite deep enough.

Finishing

These were incredibly easy to paint, at least in part because I wanted to see how they would turn out with minimal effort:

• Undercoat in grey primer.
• Paint white around the edge of the poster "frame".
• Use a black wash all over.
• Paint the undersides of the lights in pale yellow (though it's actually quite hard to see this detail, so it could be omitted).
• Print a suitable advert onto paper (12cm x 6cm) and glue it to the billboard.
• Seal.  I used a spray varnish, so this only took a few seconds.

Verdict

These billboards are so cheap that your time and effort to build and store them are probably more significant than the material cost.  How do they do that?  For me, the low price actually had the unexpected effect of making me want to finish the billboards as simply as possible, on the principle that they weren't "worth" putting in a lot of work.  Don't be taken in by this; just because they are cheap and easy does not mean that these models are worthless!

Cost: 5/5.  I don't see how these could be much cheaper unless TTCombat gave them away.

Construction: 4/5.  No instructions, but parts fitted together well.

Usefulness: 4/5.  A good scenic element, though the billboards are a bit top-heavy and might need to be based.

Overall: 5/5.  Inexpensive, useful, easy to build, excellent value for both time and money.