Building Fronts: Part 2

Once we have the building fronts constructed the next thing we need to do is build doors, prime them black and paint them.

Cutting stir sticks to size and using white glue to build them.

Once the doors are glued I reinforce them with some matchsticks.

The wooden doors are glued to a bamboo skewer and once dried inserted into the front and the base,  Cut them off flush with the bottom of the base.  They should be able to open inwards.

Once you have the fronts assembled, hit them with spray paint or brush them black.

Once painted black, choose your basic colors and paint the walls like plaster and wood or stone or a combination.

Once you have the building fronts built and some corner stones you can assemble them into a city street for your campaigns.

Adventurers are engaged by a a group of city guard,

Building Fronts: Corner stones.

One of the issues when building these fronts is gaps when you place them next to each other.  Not a deal breaker.....BUT...could be cooler.

My first thought was pillars.  I placed round pillars in the gaps and it was ok, but I thought square ones might be cooler.   The bases are 1 1/2 inches wide so I attempted to build a stone column that size.  I decided it was too large.

I have decided to make the columns at .75 of an inch to fit in tighter to the wall.

Scored along the lines and folded into a column.

I decided to base these on a 1 1/2" base so they matched the height of the building fronts.

Test fitting into the wall sections to see how it fits.

Primed black and sponge painted with grey and light grey.

Walls with painted corner section added in to fill the gap.

Building Fronts. Part 1

As I continue to prepare for the start of my adventures in the Hyborian Age, I realized I would probably want to start in a city.  Further to that I know I didn't want to craft whole buildings.

1) It would be a monumental undertaking.
2) I felt they might get in the way of the actual play.

I went over to DM Scotty's Facebook group and made an inquiry about what other people do to handle this.  I had an idea from DM scotty already, but wanted to see what else people had come up with.  In the end I decided to go with a building front system.  False fronts to give the impression of buildings without the bulk allowing the layout of streets and other city features. Scotty's original youtube video on these is located here: Tilescapes: Building fronts.

I have now begun working on these so I can make a few simple and interesting layouts.

In addition to the pieces I am working on below I have completed 3 test fronts, and have 2 blank walls ready to be painted (assembled and primed).

Going forward I am going to use a measured base so I can make some uniformly size pillars to place as corners or building divisions to tie the fronts together.

Started laying out 6 fronts.  In this case 5 full size ones and 2 1/2 size ones to add a little variation and interest when they are set up.  As well I have made some sketches on the front to remind me what I am doing with each.

Pieces cut out with a sharp knife and beginning to cut out doors and windows.

Cutting some texture and depth elements for a stone/wood building.



Texture pieces glued down with a combination of hot glue and white glue.

Adding some detail to one of the end caps.

A selection of the building fronts.  Still two more basic walls to do from this set.  One will be a wall with windows and one a solid wall. 

Lost in the Jungle: Ruined Huts

And so our brave band, after being shipwrecked on some lost coast of the Black Kingdoms and fighting their way past hostile tribes have come to a once open settlement that is now overgrown with jungle and in ruins.

The village huts, once likely thatched, only remain as rings of rough hewn stone.

Cut out a piece of foam core larger than you want the stone hut to be.

Shave the edges down to create a nice slope.

Draw a circle approximately where you would like the hut to sit.

Cut polystyrene blocks for the structure.  These blocks are about 1" x 1/2" x 1/2".

Begin fitting the stones to your circle by cutting corners at appropriate so they fit together.

Glue the blocks into place.  I used hot glue, but the high temperatures melted the foam in some places.  Next use your x-acto knife to distress the first level of stones.

Repeat with the second layer of blocks: fit, glue and distress.

Base coat the entire project in black.

Roughly paint the stones with a dark grey.

Add a lighter grey over the dark a little heavier than a dry brush.

Use a white to hit the edges of the stones.

Cover the base in white glue to prepare it for a covering of sand

Base covered in sand.  Once it is dry add more watered down white glue to cement it in place.

Paint base sand with a dark brown.

Dry brush with a lighter brown to bring out detail.

Add some moss flock to the edges.

Completed ruin.

Fenced in.

After building the farm/frontier house and looking at it for awhile and thought it would be unlikely they would have no fenced pens, no way to keep some small amount of livestock.

I have seen many fences build, and I doubt mine are revolutionary, that being said, here is a modular fence system.

Supplies:
Wide craft sticks
Wooden stir sticks.
Wooden match sticks.
Hot glue.
Cutters.
Pumice paste or PVA and sand.

Step 1: Take 2 match sticks and cut them in half

Step 1: Match sticks cut in half. These will be your fence uprights.

Step 2: Cut the end off a stir stick, so that it is flat and then cut to length, slightly shorter than the jumbo craft stick.  These will be your long fence boards.

Step 3: Using hot glue, glue the upright posts to each end of the fence board and then fill in the other two.  You can measure or eyeball.  I just put them approximately in the correct place.

Step 4:  Put a small dab of hot glue on each of the upright posts to attach the second fence board.

Step 4 Cont: Attach the second fence board to the uprights to give you your fence.

Step 5: Place a thick bead of glue along the length of the jumbo craft stick, this will be the base.  Alternatively you could place the glue only in the 4 places your uprights attach.

Step 5 Cont:  Place the uprights into the hot glue and hold it in place till the glue cools.

Step 6: Texture the base either with PVA and sand, or a pumice paste like Vallejo's and let dry.

Step 7: Paint the base colors:  Light brown on the fence and a dark green over the textured base.

Step 8: Add a dark wash over the wood and dry brush the base with a light green.

Woodland Ind...PICT Tribes!

This past weekend I picked up a box of Warlord games Woodland Indian Tribes plastic box set (Woodland Indian Tribes).  Although it comes with a lot of rifles, I figured I could probably get enough out of it for a small pict force for the Conan RPG.

The box contains enough parts to build 24 warriors with miscellaneous pieces left over.  The box also comes with some basic instructions to guide you through which arms go with which bodies.

Box comes with 3 sprues total, each sprue is enough to make 8 Picts.....24 total Picts.

One of the sprues before cutting.  Bodies and arms are labelled with letters to allow easier selection.  I still double check to see how they will look before gluing.  

A Pict cut from the sprue: head, arms, body and base.

Assembled.  Parts glued together with standard testors model glue (red tube).  We will deal with the rifle in a moment.

Rifle snipped off and head dress glued into place to complete the Pict warrior.  I would normally cut the rifle of first, but did it this was for ease of demonstration.

Another assembled Pict next to a Reaper Bones model for scale comparison.

Pictish War Party: One sprue of Picts completed (-1 due to testing and a bad arm choice)

Overall these are pretty nice models.  Assembling them is a little bit fiddly, but they come in at about $1.45CAD per model, so not bad.  I haven't tried painting them yet, but will post when and if I do.

Found a youtube vid on painting similar figs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuccwuShi1w

YouTube Channels

One of the greatest things the Internet & computers has given us, in my opinion, is the ability for the average guy to create content and stream that content to the world.  If you were like me and you enjoyed shows as a youth that showed you how to draw or how things worked, then seeing ideas people have is awesome.  YouTube has all kinds of videos from sample clips to full on walk throughs of all sorts of projects, from electronics to jewelry to woodworking to gaming and everything in-between.

Sometimes this results in channels that start, have a little content and die, channels with poor content, or channels that some people just don't enjoy, but there are many good channels available, and I wanted to go through a list of the channels that I enjoy and find useful as far as terrain, miniatures and gaming go.

Some of these channels are aimed at wargaming and others are aimed more at a roleplaying environment, but all have some pretty good ideas for building terrain.

These channels are aimed at war games terrain.


Terrain Tutor
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTerrainTutor
Excellent overview channels, many ideas and concepts.  Intro to terrain building, making flock etc.

Comissar Gamza
https://www.youtube.com/user/GamzaTheEternal
Aimed largely at Warhammer, some good tutorials on found object terrain.

TerranScapes
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCotNwY5c3SD_sDjejcFJ_7Q
Some beautiful terrain, mostly a commercial site though.

The following channels are aimed more at D&D but all contain some excellent construction ideas on the cheap.

DMs Craft
https://www.youtube.com/user/theDMsCraft

Black Magic Craft
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2Rlv-ug-mtnXuMwlpcqFgg

Drunken & Dragons
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCh5vto8JFstb9Sma9zV25g

Wyloch
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrKJd7jQ989DZvtf5C69mYA

DMG Info
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDMGinfo

Dungeons and Gluesticks
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZvZvalRLgkGXmFTpHEJBiw

I am sure there are other great channels out there, please leave links to any channels you like or find interesting.