Gangs of Rome - Pottery Shop

In anticipation of running Gangs of Rome at MOAB this year I've completed my first building as a sort of prototype of the style I hope to achieve for the whole table. I intend on making as busy a table as I can manage with lots of buildings and scatter. I did quite a bit of procrastinating and research as I am want to do before undertaking any build and watching HBO's Rome was a great source of inspiration (and very entertaining).

This kit is Sarissa's Semi Detached Small Mixed Shop/Domus and represents a home with attached shop (or taberna), which in this case is a pottery shop. I have decided to try and make each shop a unique business if I can. Here my 3D printer comes in very handy, allowing me to make all the little details that sell the building being a real lived/worked in place.

 

 

Re-watching HBO's Rome is a great source of inspiration.

Building a 28mm WW2 Era French Garage

When my group decided to get into Chain of Command I starting putting together terrain for a Normandy table and building a French garage was always high on my to do list. There were already so many great examples out there and I had a lot inspiration to work with. One of the problems I faced with building a garage was the lots of little bits I considered essential to bring it to life. The acquisition of a 3D printer gave me the ability to print everything I would need. What follows is a brief step-by-step of the build. There are quite a few images of the finished garage at the end, along with the sheet of sign and posters which I have made available to download should anyone wish to use them.

The finished garage.

Gathering all the integral components. Walls are 5mm foamcore.

Assembling the basic building and mounting on some plasticard.

Removing the outer layer of card and some foam to accommodate the exposed brickwork.

The exposed brickwork is simply DAS clay rolled out to 2-3mm and textured with a Greenstuff worlds texture roller to imprint the brick design.

Fixing the brickwork, 3D printed windows and rolling door channels.

The walls and brickwork, textured, painted and weathered, and the light fixed in placed.

Dry fitting the 3D printed doors and a Citroen for scale.

The removable roof was made out of foamcore and card.

Cutting strips of tried and tested card shingles...

...old school, but effective.

Giving the doors a lick of paint and weathering.

All the bits and pieces laid out.

My sheet of signs and posters.

Test positioning the tank and the other bits. All the greebles were glued to a piece
of blister plastic to make it easier to paint and then fix them in.

Almost done - everything fixed in placed.

A Sherman for scale.

Some Warlord plastic Airborne for scale.

My sheet of signs and posters.
To download, right-click the image and select open in new window,
then Right-click Save As.

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.

What a Cowboy! at Cancon 2023

This post is way overdue but time has just gotten away from me.

In January me and two mates ran a table over two days of the new Too Fat Lardies game What a Cowboy! at the inaugural Lard Down Under at Cancon.

It was a great success and we all had a blast. I even got to play in a Sharp Practice Sudan game. There were so many nice tables and demos put on that I wish I could have played in many more.

The rules were well received and attracted a lot of attention. Richard Clarke even sat in and played in the last game I ran. What a Cowboy! will be available to purchase as I write this.

What follows are some pics shot over the two days along with two short and poorly shot videos.