A town during the Peninsular War

Over the last month or so I’ve been busy making a number of buildings from Florian Richter and Peter Dennis’s wonderful book European Buildings: 28mm paper models for 18th & 19th century wargames.

You simply cut these buildings out of the book, and then fold and glue them together. I did add some  inner strengthening with heavy card to make them more sturdy, but otherwise my models are straight from the book.

Today I set them all out on my wargames table, along with some existing scratch-built buildings (top centre) and a few commercial models (top left).

You can click on the above picture (and also all the other pics in this posting) if you want to see these models in more detail.

Here’s the main street, with a walled house and stables on the left, and a church with some porticoed houses on the right. The walled house is designed for a northern European setting, but I think works perfectly well for the Peninsular War.

The town has a beautiful chateau, which I’ve given a walled garden. In front you can again see the walled house (left), and the same building on the right made up as a free-standing inn.

You can also see both the paper churches in this picture – the Spansh-style one in the foreground, and the more northern European church in the background.

I particularly like the watermill. It again is probably more suitable for northern Europe, but fits well here too.

On the other side of the street are a range of various houses, some with arched porches. By glueing on different doors and windows, you can make various versions of the same building, as you can see with the two porticoed houses.

These buildings have of course been specifically designed by Florian and Peter to accompany the Paperboys range of paper model soldiers, like these 18th century British infantry. But I wanted to see what they would look like with 28mm metal figures, so …

… here comes a battalion of Front Rank Portuguese infantry marching into town.

Whilst the figures are a slightly bigger scale than the buildings, they look fine together.

The Portuguese deploy into line in a field behind a 3-storey balconied house. Again, the slight difference in scales looks fine.

Meanwhile, a section of Portuguese Cacadores takes on white-coated French infantry in the town square.

Hmm, I think I know these two chaps standing in the gateway of a walled house.

The sound of rumbling wheels and jingling harnesses echo from the walls of the narrow street, as British artillery trundle through the town.

A French staff officer gallops past a row of houses to deliver important messages.

A French officer rides up the driveway of the local chateau.

So, as you can see from the above photos, these buildings will work perfectly well for wargaming with both 2D paper soldiers and fully-rounded 28mm figures.

Paper chateau and Mediterranean church

My previously-reported paper chateau now has some walled grounds and a wrought iron gate. As you can see from the picture, the finished model goes well with 28-30mm figures, such as this eighteenth century gentleman by Willie Figurines.

I used some brick-paper to make the driveway, and flocked the lawn. The trees are cheap buys from a Chinese mail-order company, attached to some large square washers that have been given a ground effect. The front lawn is completely surrounded by a paper walls.

Both the chateau and the walls come from Florian Richter and Peter Dennis’s wonderful book European Buildings: 28mm paper models for 18th & 19th century wargames. You simply photocopy the drawings and assemble them. I did add some  inner strengthening with heavy card, but otherwise my models are straight from the book.

Here’s the rear-view. I imagine those French windows looking out over a rolling Capability Brown (or Bloody Stupid Johnson!) landscape.

The building can be removed from the garden. I intend to make some more removable walls to fill the gap, so that this terrain piece can be used as a park, churchyard, graveyard, or anything else I want.

And here’s the other building I’ve made recently from the same book – a Mediterranean church. The walls also come from the book. This model will fit nicely into Peninsular War games.

This 28mm Perry Miniatures figure gives a good idea of the size of the model church. As you can see, the church doors are actually a little bit too small, but the overall effect works well, and provides a smaller footprint than if the church was to exactly the same scale as the figure.

Here’s the rear view of the church, with its classical Mediterranean style.

Keep visiting this blog as I report on further buildings from this great book.

More cardboard buildings from Paperboys

I’ve been quietly boxing on making some more of the cardboard models from Florian Richter and Peter Dennis’s book European Buildings: 28mm paper models for 18th & 19th century wargames.

In addition to the windmill I have previously posted about, I now also have a mansion, a church, and a watermill.

This impressive mansion will be perfectly at home as either a country house or a town hall.

The book also provides roof connectors to so you join more of this model together to form a larger building – making the entire Palace of Versailles wouldn’t be out of the question!

I’ve made this and the other models straight out of the book. The only additional work I have done was to strengthen the inner structures with some heavy card.

The northern-European church looks surprisingly solid for a cardboard model. I think it is the buttresses that make it so sturdy-looking.

If you wanted to super-detail this model, you could cut out the windows and then re-inset them behind the holes to give more depth. However, the original artistry is so good that the windows look sufficiently 3D just as is.

I did this watermill in one afternoon.  I’ve made it fit with my existing latex river terrain by adding a foundation to the main building so that the wing with the wheel sits on the upraised bank, and the wheel itself hangs down ‘into’ the water.

I also added some piles made from sprue to support the overhanging wooden outhouse.

Here’s the first building I make from the book. It was probably a brave move to pick this one as my prototype, as it is the most complex. But it came out surprisingly well.

There are still plenty more buildings to make in the book – a Spanish-style church and windmill, farms and houses from both northern and southern Europe, bridges , walls …

Simple-to-build cardboard European windmill

I made this complex-looking cardboard windmill in just one evening! It’s a cut-out model from Helion Publishing’s latest Paperboys book, European Buildings: 28mm paper models for 18th & 19th century wargames by Florian Richter and Peter Dennis.

Despite the intricate design of this windmill, with protruding attics and overhanging annexes, it was surprisingly easy to make. It was simply a matter of scoring all the folds, cutting out the pieces, folding them into shape, and gluing. Everything fitted perfectly.

This windmill is one of the many cut-out buildings included in the book, which covers both Northern and Southern Europe settings. Other buildings include two churches, a mansion, a watermill, houses and farms, bridges and walls, and much more.

Unlike the Paperboys model soldiers I’ve made, which need to be photocopied before assembling, these buildings can be cut straight out of the book. The pages are printed on light card, with only some instructions and explanatory photos on the back of each page, which (if necessary) you can simply capture with your phone camera before you start cutting out the model.

The book’s front cover also shows a column of figures from Peter Dennis’s other new Paperboys book The War of the Spanish Succession: paper soldiers for Marlborough’s campaigns in Flanders.  I bought this second book too, intending to use it just as reference.  But, boy oh boy, Peter’s figures are just so colourful and eye-popping (especially the French Maison du Roi) that I don’t think I’m going to be able to resist assembling some regiments!

The figures shown in these pictures of my windmill aren’t paper, though – they’re from my Minden Miniatures army.  But they show how well these cardboard buildings will go with any traditional 28mm army.

Peter’s preference is that his buildings are a little smaller than true scale so that they have a smaller footprint on the battlefield. But you can easily photocopy them larger or smaller if you wish.

Probably the most complex part of the assembly was the beam structure on which the windmill sits. But in fact this was surprisingly simple to put together. The trick is to score all the folds first, and then use Uhu All Purpose contact glue for very fast bonding.

The finishing touch with any cardboard building is to use a wash (I used green wash) to disguise any white card that shows through the folds or on exposed edges.

So there you have it – a wonderful windmill in one evening …

Gorgeous 3D-printed governor’s mansion

‘Every local despot needs a stately mansion to flaunt his wealth and influence,’ says  Printable Scenery’s website in the description of their  model Governor’s Mansion.

I’ve been really enjoying painting this 3D-printed model over the last couple of nights.

I love the quaint look for this building, with its saggy roof, diagonally-placed overhanging tower and intricate half-timbering. It wouldn’t look out of place in the city of Ankh-Morpork (as per the screenshot below from the old Discworld computer game).

The model was a cinch to paint, with lots of luscious detail that was easily picked out by dry-brushing. I chose a colour scheme that hinted at Bavaria, with its light blue and white shutters and doors.

Printable Scenery deliver this model as a .ZIP file pack containing STL files for use on a home 3D Printer. The files are set to 28mm scale but can be rescaled before printing.

If you haven’t got access to a 3D printer, Printable Scenery have a list of licenced third party printers all over the world.

Paper buildings for the Jacobite Rebellion

To complete my paper armies for the Jacobite Rebellion, I’ve put together some of the lovely Scottish buildings that are included in Peter Dennis’ book Battle for Britain: Wargame the Jacobite ’45. Whilst the figures in Peter’s books are flats, the buildings are fully 3D.

Firstly, here’s a hamlet of four typical turf, stone and thatch ‘Black Houses’. As the only chimney was a hole in the roof, these houses became blackened both inside and out, thus the name.

The book also includes a peat pile, which I assume is a feature characteristically found in the Highlands.

The civilians, too, are paper figures from the book.

And here’s the ‘Big House’, with its exterior circular stair turret. The windows come separate for you to glue wherever you like, and the wings and tower can be configured in different ways – so you can make more versions of this house with no two alike.

By the way, the figures in the second picture aren’t paper, nor are they flats – I have included them to show that these buildings will work just as well with metal fully-rounded figures too.

This is actually the second version of this model that I have made, as the first one (see below) suffered a spray varnish disaster when I tried to give it more of a matt finish and the varnish went white. Frustrating, but in the end it was just some time that I lost, as I only had to pay the cost of another colour photocopy.

 

 

Two WW2 Dutch farms in cardboard

This weekend I finished the final two Dutch card model buildings by ‘Gungnir’ that I had bought recently from WargameDownloads. I’ve posted previously about the first four buildings for a small Dutch village. This latest pair consists of two farmhouses.

The first is a massive farmhouse/barn complex from the province of Gelderland. Like the other card models I’ve made so far, I have replaced the windows and doors with snippets copied from digital images of real-life buildings. I’ve also added some different coloured tiles to the roof to add a bit of interest to the large area it covers.

The second building is a smaller brick farmhouse. It is apparently modelled on one near Arnhem, though the shutters are my own addition. Note the traditional ‘Tree of Life’ decoration on the fanlight above the front door.

Talking of shutters, I’ve since been told that they are traditionally painted in distinctive designs and colours for each province. So for these two buildings to be on the same wargames table, I’ll have to change the shutters on one of them so they are both the same.

I’m now looking for a nice paper windmill, which is almost obligatory for a Dutch wargame setting!

 

 

 

 

 

A whole 28mm Dutch village in a weekend

My WW2 Dutch army isn’t quite finished, as I await the release of the May ’40 Miniatures Landsverk armoured car and a couple of artillery pieces.  So in the meantime I’ve been working on some terrain for them to fight over. This small Dutch village is the result.

My budget for terrain is somewhat limited, so I needed to find a reasonably priced solution. And the card models by Dutch wargamer Gerrit Postma (also known as ‘Gungnir’) certainly meet that criteria – $6.00 for a six downloadable buildings from Wargame Downloads. I had to spend another $15 to get them printed on light card, but even at $21 for six houses, that’s still a steal!

My other criteria was that the models had to look … well … Dutch. Anyone who has travelled to the Netherlands knows the neat and tidy look of the Dutch countryside, which carries through to their traditional architecture. Gungnir’s models achieve this look very well.

You could simply print, cut out and assemble these kits as is. The above picture from Gungnir’s website shows how attractive they look straight from the kit. But I decided to do some extra detailing.

Firstly, before printing the models I used my graphics programme to replace Gungnir’s drawn windows with ones copied and pasted out of suitable front-on photographs of real houses. This made the windows really come to life, with intricate frames, lace curtains and even pot-plants in some of them – typically Dutch!

I also added some additional time-appropriate sign-writing to the shop and to the bar windows, also located by searching images on the internet.

For my first attempt at printing, I used my home copier to print onto standard A4 paper, which I then glued onto card backing. But the resulting lamination had a lot of air-bubbles. So I went to a printing company instead, and asked them to print the designs direct onto light card.

A bonus of using a commercial printer was that their industrial-grade copier provided crisp resolution that I could never achieve on my home printer. Well worth the extra $15!

I got two copies printed of each design. I cut both out, but then on one of them, I also cut out all the windows, doors and other openings. I then sandwiched the top layer with the cut-out holes onto the other layer, giving the windows and doors a slightly inset look.

After that, assembly was pretty straightforward. I glued as much as I could whilst the pieces were still flat. The roofs were the trickiest part, as with so many angles the paper can develop a mind of its own! I found the solution was to glue one side of the guttering to one wall, and wait for it to dry completely. Then I could glue down the rest of the roof later without it trying to flick itself out of place.

To give the models a bit more strength, and to stop them blowing away in the lightest breeze, I cut a thick piece of heavy card to the base-size of each house, and then glued it inside the bottom of the walls.

So far I’ve assembled four of the six buildings (and one of them I’ve done twice, the first being a test run).

• a barn-roofed Dutch house
• a row of two workers’ cottages
• a hip-roofed corner shop
• a small pub (the “3 Hoef Ijses”, which means “3 Horseshoes”)

I still have the small and large farms to go. And, most exciting, I’ve just learned that Gungnir does some other Dutch buildings as well, such as a villa and several factories!

The scale of the buildings I bought was 1:72, which some would argue is a little on the small side for 28mm. However, I am quite happy with the two scales together. But if you do want something a bit bigger, Gungnir also produces pre-printed card kits in 1:56 for 28mm figures. Or you could simply enlarge the prints onto A3 paper!

Overall, these are very nice kits indeed. They are cheap, beautifully designed, and fit together well. And with only a minimum of detailing, you can easily personalise the kits to match your imagination of what a Dutch village should look like.

I guess the only downside for wargaming is that they don’t have removable roofs – but neither do many other kits these days. There are ways you can work round this when playing a game.

 

Sights and sounds of the Netherlands in miniature

Today’s posting has nothing to do with the hobby of wargaming. But if you like terrain modelling, or model railways, or the Netherlands, or video sound-mixing, there’ll be something here for you! Especially if you consider that the above and below photos aren’t of a real Dutch double-decker train, but a model in 1:25 scale.

Although I was born and live in New Zealand, my heritage is Dutch – both my parents emigrated here in the 1950s. So I love visiting the Netherlands to explore my ‘roots’.

Most people when they think of the Netherlands imagine windmills, or tulips, or dikes. For me, one of my first impressions of the Netherlands when I visited for the first time back in the 1970s, was the yellow Dutch trains! I was so taken by the dog-nosed Dutch commuter trains that I drew one in my travel diary!

And that impression has remained right to this day, through my many return trips to the land of yellow trains. During this time the Dutch national railway company has continued to use yellow and blue as their livery colours, albeit in different configurations as the trains have modernised over the years.

Keeping the same colours for so many decades is surely unusual in the corporate world, where PR people will change colours and logos on a whim, with no thought towards preserving tradition.

Another memory from that first trip to the Netherlands was visiting the miniature city of Madurodam, an amazing model town situated in The Hague. Madurodam recreates many of the characteristic locations of the Netherlands in 1:25 scale. Having always been fascinated by models, I was captivated, and spent many happy hours there!

I hadn’t given much more thought to Madurodam for many years, until the other day I stumbled across a YouTube video depicting a railway view of this miniature city. Not only does the camerawork beautifully capture the tiny scenery that so entranced me back in 70s, the film-maker has married the visuals to appropriate audio that adds to the experience. And there are yellow trains – lots of yellow trains!

Watch the Madurodam video:

This is not the first Dutch model railway video I’ve seen recently that uses realistic audio. One of my favourite examples is taken at Miniworld Rotterdam.

It explores this huge 1:87 layout, starting with a small Dutch town and the countryside (complete with windmills!), and ending up in the bustling heart of a miniature Rotterdam, with trams, motorways, and even ship-building at the Europoort harbour. And, of course, yellow trains …

Watch the Miniworld Rotterdam video:

Certainly inspiring model-work for wargamers!

Fantastic new 3D-printed pirate ships!

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum! At last I’m able to mention a project I’ve been working on for the last month, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

I was helping out my mates at Printable Scenery to prepare for their new ‘Lost Islands’ Kickstarter, which launched this morning. They asked me to build a couple of their prototype ship models for use in the photography on their site. I was only too happy to oblige, but I was sworn to secrecy to ensure maximum impact when the Kickstarter came out.

I almost let the cat out of the bag when I posted some photos of the model sloop at sea in my swimming pool (yes, they actually float!) … but that was before I realised there was a secrecy clause, so I had to quickly delete the pics when I found out.

Anyway, all can now be revealed! The models are part of Printable Scenery’s new ‘Lost Islands’ Kickstarter. This is a collection of highly detailed 3D printable port buildings, ships, and tribes for home 3D printers, shown in the short video below:

As the Kickstarter publicity says:

Swashbuckling adventure awaits. Sail with your motley crew from the wretched streets of Port Winterdale to the jungle tribes of the Lost Islands. Defeat monsters, pirates and explore the world with nothing more than a barrel of rum, a fine ship and the stars to guide the way.

Each pledge is delivered as an STL file pack to print on a home 3D printer. If you haven’t got a printer, then Printable Scenery also maintain a list of licenced printers around the world who can do the job for you.

My brief was to build, paint and rig the two ships in the new collection – a sloop and a frigate.

The first model I made was the sloop. The hull was dead easy to paint – just a black undercoat, then dry brushing with a couple of shades of brown, and painting in details such as the carving, bolts and ironwork.

A final dry-brush with the lightest of coats of white really brings out the detail, and weathers it at the same time. But use only a very light touch – if you use too much white, the ship will look like its sailing the polar regions!

The rigging is the biggest challenge of making a sailing ship model. But I found it very easy in the end. I used a couple of pictures of real sloops to give me an idea, then cut some pieces of dowel to size. I roughly scratch-built the cross-trees where the main and top mast join together.

I gave the masts and yards  tapered ends with a pencil sharpener. They were then all stained with normal household wood stain. I chose a rather dark walnut shade that I happened to have on hand. However, if I were to do this again, I would get an oak stain instead, I think.

Once the mast and bowsprit were done, then I started on the rigging. And this is where I found out the secret to ship modelling – use thin elastic instead of cotton or thread. With the latter, it is difficult to keep everything tight. But elastic keeps every shroud and stay of your rigging completely tawt.

I had an added challenge – my project brief from Printable Scenery was to make the ships so they could be folded up to be transported from New Zealand to the USA to go on display at the GaryCon and AdeptiCon shows.

By using elastic, this problem was quite simply solved. I just placed the masts into their holes in the hull without gluing, so they were held in place with the elastic rigging. To fold everything down, all you have to do is lift the mast against the stretchiness of the elastic until it pops out of its hole, then lie everything flat on the deck. Reassembling, you just do the opposite. Simples!

The actual model (though not the early prototype I built) will have accompanying layers to portray the interior, so your miniatures can fight ‘below decks’ a well. Cool!

The frigate was a bit more challenging, as it has three masts. I also wanted to experiment with adding furled sails.

The hull was painted in the same way as the sloop, though I decided to add a a bit more colour, such as the blue and white upper-works, and the red insides to the bulwarks.

I used some cardboard to scratch-build the fighting tops that hold the top-masts to the fore and main masts, and a simple set of cross-trees for the mizzen mast. Winding a bit of string around the masts at intervals adds some interesting contrast to the plain dowel.

The hardest part was that I decided to move the position of the platforms where the shrouds and ratlines are attached to the hull. I preferred them to be smaller than on the printed model, and aligned behind each mast, rather than forward. A bit of cutting and gluing of the platforms, and, hey presto, quickly done!

The ratlines are formed by gluing bits of cotton across the shrouds (tying them on was far too fiddly for me!). The sails are some light linen folded into position and tied onto the yards with elastic.

Of course, I just had to see if this ship would float too, and, sure enough, it did! Hmm, playing a wargame in a swimming pool – that brings to mind some ideas for the future …!