Lucky I am to have two sons who are full-bore wargamers (albeit one plays with funny spaceships but, oh well, one must accept life's strangeness). Not only has this given me immense satisfaction over the years (two wargaming sons, not the spaceships) but it also makes choosing Xmas gifts infinitely simpler. As they both traditionally give me gaming presents, I try to find something for each of them to add to their existing collections (spaceships aside). This year, I was in the mood for buildings. And the itch to build was a bit strong this time...
On the Oromocto gaming table in the New Brunswick hinterland, Captain Dan plunked out his embryonic War of American Inconsideration collection to show off the new buildings.
The top-left building is Captain Dan's birthday pressie (see previous post here). The church at the bottom left of the village is from Renedra and the small cabin (top-right) is from Perry Miniatures. These were fairly straightforward builds and painting was quick.
The large plantation house was anything but straightforward or quick. This started as a seemingly easy conversion of a Warbases WWII mdf shell...
...into (hopefully) something like this beauty from Charlie Foxtrot:
Oh my, but was I mistaken about the level of commitment and perseverance it would take to pull this off!
The first step was to clad the mdf shell in scribed card to represent white clapboard. Along the foundation I added some plastic stone sheeting and constructed a small rear door and steps from card and balsa. Easy peasy!
The next thing on the agenda was the front porch... how hard could it be? Let's just say that although I've scratch-built many things in this hobby over the years... this little piece was probably the most vexatious.
For the roof, I decided to use my extensive in-house stock of Warbases laser-cut shingle sheets. This process is quite easy but time-consuming. I try to treat it as a sort of meditative process (with variable levels of success). Before I even start, I try to accept that it's going to take a long time and that seems to make it easier. You can see the result in the last picture below.
Next up were the windows. My first thought was to scratch-build all of these from card and balsa but I soon was disabused of this idea. While the process of creating a window is quite simple, the thought of creating seventeen large and three small windows with all those panes was... well a pain! I don't mind scratch-building but I decided this would be too much. Onto the Warbases site I went and ordered up some of these:
The parts were painted separately (frames and shutters) for ease of access then glued onto card stock and balsa sills added. The whole combination was then glued onto the outer wall. I discovered many years ago that I don't need to actually cut the windows into the walls (which is a particularly onerous process). Mounting the entire window structure onto a card base provides the same effect (granted, you can't see figures when they're inside but that's a non-issue for me).
The finished product!
And some gratuitous shots of Captain Dan's budding AWI collection...
Very nice. That is a great looking plantation home.
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