Market Forces

Oh no it’s yet another not completely finished nor painted cork building thrown up on this humble blog as a symbolic expression for my conversion to making cork buildings – quite a few cork buildings.

This time its a bazaar, with six shops on the ground floor, rooms on the first fllor offering firing in all directions and a reasonably defendable roof. I also wanted some screened windows like above, a snipers dream.

The one feature I wanted in this one was and external staircase to the first floor. This is what I ended up with and it was pretty complex to make. I could have made it a lot easier had I not placed it in the centre, but that’s what you get for charging ahead wildly and not properly planning the thing.

Despite the accidental over complexity, it’s a sweet little building which a four or five man squad could defend easily and quite well. Why not try something similar yourself?

Confounded, Unbounded and Compounded

Heavily influenced by the rather excellent Matakishi’s Tea House, not least because he happens to be doing an Afghan project just as I am at the moment, but also because he’s rather brill at what he does plus he does a lot of it. He’s been working on a few compounds in cork tile, and I rather fancied one of them but I wanted to make mine a bit more urban as I’ve enough of the more rural looking ones.

Here’s the result, although it’s unpainted at the moment it gives an idea of the modelling involved as my aim was to have a building in which every room could be accessed but without giving away what was in the next room. This giving away of what’s on any given floor or area of a building is common to a lot of buildings which allow you to get inside. In these first few pictures you can see how this building breaks down level by level.

The idea of the seperate rooms is to make it very playable, but also a bit spooky if you’re the player tasked with trying to enter and secure the building. Imagine a hostage rescue mission, hunting for an IED factory, or taking a top Taliban prisoner etc, especially when some of the rooms are quite difficult to reach.

The whole thing is based on MDF and mainly made of cork, with foamcore for the staircases, and some rectangles cut from a cheapy placemat from the Aldi supermarket chain for the screen like windows and balcony. These stand out as they’re the only pieces with paint on them, as undercoating them in-situ might prove difficult.

The whole thing was rather a quick build once I’d decided on what I was after, which was a relatively complex building with a wealth of defensive positions and some very crafty lines of sight for shooting which wouldn’t be immediately apparent on a first or even second look at the building.

I expect painting it will be a rather drawn out affair, but once finished it will feature on here again.

Above you can see the two entrances on the ground floor, although not immediately apparent there’s a clear line of sight between them which is a deliberate part of the crafty layout of the building.

Here you can see what I see as one of the advantages of having small sections removable. Once through this entrance you can only see the room itself, and out into the courtyard beyond, along with the opposite window through which you should expect some furious Jihadist to be pointing his AK.

A good view of the other entrance, which has a wealth of defensive possibilities, namely four windows, a balcony, a doorway and two rooftops. I’m looking forward to playing this, although I think I’d prefer to defend.

Man the Barricade!

A reasonable barricade made from a shagged model of a Bentley which I gained as part of a won auction on that there Ebay. I’ve just based it, added a few details including some of that rather neat mock barbed wire from Antenocitis Workshop, a Fenris Games dustbin, a box from a forgotten manufacturer, and some corrugated cardboard from chum Em and a few scale bricks from a too-damned-expensive bag from an Ebay trader- not so much forgotten as wiped from my memory from the shock of the cost.

It’s a reasonable piece which will be blocking a road near me soon, especially as I’ve a VBCW game in the pipeline for November. It’s manned by late WW1/ early WW2 British Renegade figures, which is my figure of choice for the bulk of my BUF as they have caps and long puttees which I decided was vital. It’s also worth considering what insanely good value they offer- 24 infantry for £12.95 plus p&p… BARGAIN!

Jerry Built

Rough photos, but stunning figures and cracking painting from the boy Slug with these BEF Miniatures early war SS. According to Uncle Crouchie* these are all sculpted for him by the same chap who does a lot of the Artizan range, of course he was more specific but I’m pretty poor with names hence I’ve forgotten who it might actually be. However Artizan figures do have a great reputation, we’ve plenty of them ourselves, so it’s worth mentioning it even if it’s pretty vague.

We were lucky enough to pay another visit to Crouchie Towers today, primarily to grab a pack of BEF’s last release of Germans, but also came away with an Allied Boys rifle team, a Vickers HMG team plus a pile of Belgians. All of these will eventually feature on here, but we still have a couple of outstanding vehicles underway so expect to see those first.

* As the boy Slug now calls him, and to be frank it does rather suit the man himself.