Some "New" Buildings

It's all about urban sprawl here at SOUND OFFICERS CALL as we ponder new solutions for buildings on the tabletop.  With high quality 15mm buildings costing dearly in terms of purchase and subsequent storage, something had to give!  Enter 10mm buildings.  Here and there I've been purchasing some 6mm buildings for bigger 10mm games with alot of units on the table where the "area" of the town or city is more important than the actual structures - with the buildings serving more as decor than as strongpoints.

I had some wooden block buildings that I purchased cheaply a few years ago on amazon and thought I'd try sprucing them up.  Those of you who remember my American Civil War terrain binge from a few years ago might remember I took one of those buildings and, using breakfast cereal box card, made some replicas of the famous Codori Barn, Sweeny House, McPherson Barn and a few other Civil War buildings - why had I not tried this for Napoleonics, Seven Years War, et al?  The plan is to basically make lots of buildings for European Wars from the 17th through 19th Centuries that could do double duty and not look *too* out of place on the table, and also not take themselves too seriously.  Some of you will undoubtedly wonder if I've lost my marbles after looking at my crude paint job.  Anyways,  these will be used for "area terrain" for effect.

I am quite pleased with these little buildings. These are only painted and no cereal boxes were harmed in the development of these buildings but I thought they'd be an easy and cool addition to the gaming table.  I plan on painting quite a few more.

A new unit of Austrian Uhlans posts next to a town to reassure the locals 

I got the idea from Peter at "Grid Based Wargaming - But Not Always" after reading a posting he made about pavements.  It was a brilliant idea which inspired me to make my own 10mm version.  While I have not done Peter justice (his buildings and terrain are phenomenal and a model of artful, elegant, and practical simplicity) I did want to put my wooden block buildings, which I've had for  many years, to good use.  The cool thing about these buildings is the more you use, the better the towns look.  I will likely use them for Eylau and its surrounding environs when the time comes.

Note the cool, random cobble-stone look of the town base.  I'm going to start making these in 4x4 shapes.  I only used this piece of wood because I had it on hand.

As you can probably guess, the small wooden block buildings store alot nicer than their 15mm cousins, which are huge investments in terms of storage and cost.  I bought a ton of crescent root French houses, industrial buildings, and middle eastern buildings over the years and now have no place to put them.  My wife told me we need more shelves.  In my reply I was tempted to quote the man himself and say "what do you want me to do?  sh*t them???"  but I just said yes dear....

Not the world's best paint job but effective none-the-less.  There is no mistaking that these are buildings!

I am also working on a church and more townhouses and timber clad buildings and am using cereal box cardboard for some of these!

Another German building in the works.  

This will be a stone church once completed

Dunker Church from my ACW set - this would be for Grand Tactical games as I have 15mm minis.  The minis you see there are Napoleonic Austrian Uhlans from Old Glory 10mm.

Codori Barn for Grand Tactical ACW games

That's all for now.  Still painting when I get a chance.  All of the Austrian Cavalry in my collection is just about done.  Only a single Hussar and Dragoon unit remaining which I will get around to finishing soon.  Then it's MORE Austrian Infantry, Bavarian Infantry, and unfortunately back to painting more and more Russians for Eylau...

This Friday night game coming up with be a Battle of the Bulge themed game.  I'll actually try to blog about this one.  Dave and I have been gaming every other Friday playing simpler Neil Thomas games since these are night time games and both of us are already pretty tired when the first units cross the line of departure.  Stay tuned!