Update No1; What We Did On Our Holidays

     Well what we did or rather I did on our summer holidays was prepare for Sharp Practice at Britcon which including building forces and characters which I did blog (see my earlier posts...not quite figured out how to put in links to the pages yet so you may have to rummage around in the blog for those posts) and, on top of that, put together a tables worth of terrain which is what this blog post will cover. 

     Now your average, organised, polished blogger would have done this as he went along but, even though I mentioned it briefly in an earlier post, I got carried away and then forget to update stuff so, luckily for you, you will only get an overview here.

     To start with I had a few buildings produced by Warbases.co.uk from their modular series set that I had bought, built and hadn't quite gotten around to finishing. One was still in a fairly raw state and another I had painted and based but it looked, to be honest, a bit meh!

First set of the Warbases modular buildings that I planned to use. Eventually this would be a small farm I had fitted on doors, window frames and laser cut roof tiles from Warbases. As you can see the windows and doors stand proud of the walls in a somewhat unconvincing manner 

This received a coating of Das Clay, to give it a nice, rustic look. This also made the windows look like they were built into the wall, noyt plopped on the eoutside

Here's one I prepared earlier...An earlier build, literally thrown together for a game of Black Powder. I have started adding the window and door lintels from Das Clay.  

The Signal Tower. The tower itself is a Pringles tube that has been coated in Das Clay with doors and windows from the aforementioned Warbases. The signal arms on the top are also from Warbases. 

Signal tower with figure for scale

I had recently enjoyed a game of Warhammer's Legends of the High Seas at my mate Danny's place, the Dan-Cave. And there I was able to see in the flesh, so to speak, some of the lovely Mediterranean style buildings that Charlie Foxtrot produce. So imressed was I that I ordered their Small Hermitage building which duly turned up and turned out to be....a stable

A small mix up had led to the stable being mis-labelled and sent to me instead. Rather than faff about or get all hot and bothered about this I contacted Colin at Charlie Foxtrot, explained the error, kept the stable and re-ordered the Small Hermitage so that my small, Peninsular town now had a stable as well as a church. Curiously enough, this led me to buy yet another building from Charlie Foxtrot, their carthouse, as a stable on it's own would look silly, right? 

The collection of buildings (pre Cart House) The fountain is from Airfix's 1/72 scale terrain pieces.

During this process of putting together a town I had been watching quite a few terrain builds on Youtube, not least Mel Bose, the Terrain Tutor. I also stumbled across an easier way to stucco my MDF buildings. This was on the Knights Of Dice Youtube series called rubbish in, rubbish out, I think. Basically, you get some ready mixed plaster, stick it on a plate, add some water then dab it on to the building till it is covered in stucco! Much quicker than the Das Clay method. So I went to it with a will over the remaining buildings and here's the results. 

Stucco-ed and painted. The large building

and the Hermitage and stables

The small farm painted back...

...and front

I then based the farm buildings. I put various bits of grass around the buildings to tie them into the base. I felt there was something missing here and, after a beer, I realised that what was needed was dust and debris; the usual natural detritus that gathers around buildings in hot, dusty conditions so, some white glue and clean, crushed cat litter later I had finished.

Whilst I was happy with the farm, it appears this local farmer wasn't and had decided to pack up and leave, breaking both his missus' heart and mine, the cruel, thoughtless swine!! What's wrong with my lovely farm, you ingrate!! 

I did something similar with the signal tower, adding a small wall to give it some cover for any troops who might need to defend it

The Charlie Foxtrot buildings I left on their integral bases apart from the Small Hermitage as I wanted a bit more flexibility with them. Here they are in all their glory

The wagons are from Warbases and the barrels are from the Depot Battalion range produced by Colonel Bill's

The Small Hermitage. I fitted that onto a larger base as I wanted to attach a living quarter at the back for the local priest and to give a rear entry/exit to the building

The Casa Grande (or is that the Big Hoose?) I removed the roofs which I had originally, in my haste, glued down and fitted an removable upper floor in the main building with the balcony and a fixed one in the upper part of the tower. Turned out alright, methinks

So that was the actual buildings done for the small town but what of the surrounding areas. Well I had quite a few pieces of resin dry stone walls from a local railway model shop that decided to use. Most of this I mounted onto large lollipop sticks so that it would give it a little extra height and so that I could also texture the bases too.

Pre painted walls with 28mm figure for scale 

This was duly primed black then dry brushed progressively grey then white. You can see the results below as I added some of them to a couple of pieces of carpet that I used to make ploughed fields

Mel the Terrain Tutor has done a whole video on creating these. I added to the results as they looked a bit bare so besides adding small patches of green shoots I also glued on some cat litter, clean and unused of course, to represent the dry, rocky terrain that might be encountered in the hotter parts of the Peninsula. And I am mightily pleased with them, I must say.

Mel the Terrain Tutor also does a couple of videos on scatter terrain and these are my efforts, based on old CDs that I no longer needed, which is just as well. 

I bought some 4Ground Poplar trees too, and did the bases in a similar style to the scatter oieces

Lastly, I put together and painted up a couple of optional focal pieces for the village; a cross and a fountain. The cross is from HokaHey and was a gift from the very nice chap. Alan, who owns HokaHey. Admittedly it is a Saxon Cross but I figured that there is was a strong enough link between Ireland and Spain for such a cross to have, maybe been built by an ex-pat Irishman living in Spain. Anyway, it looks the part

The fountain is a 1/72 scale resin piece from Airfix that I picked up in Home Bargains here in UK for the princely sum of £2.99 sterling!!

The completed buildings awaiting careful and well thought out packing

In use at Britcon

the road is mine 

        And that was that. I really enjoyed putting all this terrain together. I do now, have to put together my Peninsular British and my Afrika Korps so that this stuff sees the light of day again. But thah'll be another blog post or ten from now, till then,

pip pip,
The General