Welcome to "Adventures in Lead", a blog dedicated to the hobby of miniature wargaming. The figures and terrain on this site are mainly for a campaign set in exotic "Indostan", a distant land bearing remarkable similarities to 18th century India during the Seven Years War. Bits and pieces from other projects may pop up here as well from time to time, including colonials, gladiators, pirates, dinosaur-hunting and even some RPG'ing.
The actual campaign journal and after action reports for the Indostan campaign can be found on their own blog - "Indostan: The Jewel in the Crown", the link to which is found by clicking the small image below-left.
If you do find anything remotely interesting on this blog please leave a comment, it's what keeps these sites going and their authors motivated - Thanks for looking.

Saturday, April 1, 2023

Small Farm from Dark Castle Terrain


A mate who lives near Newcastle discovered he is about five minutes away from a small Australian business called Dark Castle Terrain that produces quite a decent selection of MDF buildings and scatter.

When my mate pointed out that Dark Castle's Small Farm set was on sale for just $25 I jumped on one to support the local business and to give their kits a go.To be honest I usually like my MDF buildings to be of 2mm thickness, not 3mm, because I believe it scales better, but I am well aware of the difficulty some Australian manufacturers face acquiring the 2mm stuff locally.

The kit is a fairly bare bones affair that contains three buildings and two yard and wall sections that combine to make a small walled farm. The kit comes all loose in pieces in a pizza box without instructions. This wasn't a problem for me at all because I've built my fair share of MDF buildings but to someone new to MDF and afraid of jigsaw puzzles, this could prove a problem. This is what the kit looks like built courtesy of Dark Castle's site:

 

 

I always add to any MDF buildings I make and this was no difference. I cut out more windows in some of the buildings to give the farm some better use for Chain of Command, added a chimney to the long farmhouse and turned the gateway into a small gatehouse of sorts. This was meant to be a dilapidated farm in Normandy, so I added crumbling exposed brickwork made from texture rolled DAS clay and finished the yard in a similar way. I added simple 3D printed windowsills I designed myself  and applied some shutters I had bought years ago from Warbases. Lastly I fixed on the cardboard shingles.

All in all I am very happy with the way the small farm turned out and it is proving a very versatile piece that can be used as three small individual buildings or as a much larger terrain piece. All for a very reasonable price as well. I do think however that Dark Castle's designs need to move into incorporating greyboard into their kits, if not 2mm mdf itself. Many of the features on their other buildings are just way too chunky and out of scale for my liking.






5 comments:

  1. What a diffference a few simple bits of scratchbuilding can add to a very bland MDF farm.

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    1. Yeah totally agree Joe. I do understand people's reservations with mdf buildings but I see them as a great base for scratchbuilding.

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  2. Very nice, loving the exposed brick work.

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    1. Thanks Stu - the exposed bricks are pretty easy to achieve too.

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  3. Hey Frank, I ordered some too as they were having a sale. I think a few designs are available on various sites so probably licensed designs, but great price for basic mdf builds that need a bit of a spruce up. Dark Castle contacted via sms and provided email instructions which were a life saver for the complex pieces in the church set.

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