Repairing an old building

Roughly 30 years ago, I bought the "Warhammer Townscape" set from Games Workshop. It had a set of cardboard buildings, very usable for a beginning wargamer. I still have all the buildings in that set (you might see them in some of the photographs on this blog), and still use them. Although there are many more high-quality buildings available these days, the Townscape set is still a favourite of mine, tapping in the nostalgia of my early wargaming days.

Anyway, the set also has a windmill, which is very fragile. The sails (or blades) regularly snapped off and I had to repair them many times. But I never did it in a good way, but with the clearing up of Lowenheim, I finally made a decent repair, with the sails detachable for easy storage.

The windmill, roof detached, sails all loose.

The separate sails. The idea is to make a more sturdy axle (using a nail), and some paint brush protectors as a shaft.

Gluing the sails on a piece of balsa wood.

Sails put together.

Nail attached.

Nail and shaft together.

Gluing the shaft inside the windmill.

Test 1.

Test 2, now all that remains is to glue the roof back together. Ready for another 30 years of service.

Imaginations in 42mm (17)

I finally painted one of the buildings I acquired some time ago.

Technically, they are a too small for the figures, but I think they go well visually with the 42mm toy soldiers.

Gedemco "Versterkte Toren" (4)

I painted in some more details, added some cardboard windows and doors (always useful to have a collection of those lying around), and some heraldry (again, cardboard). Instead of choosing classic medieval heraldry, I went for a heraldic sun motif. Looks more fun, and somewhat mysterious. I did add an heraldic blue lion though.

I dug out some of my old fantasy miniatures (80 skaven and an old Ral Partha wizard) to show off the relative size of this tower - rather huge!

Perhaps with the Keep, I can setup a game in which 2 wizards are duelling each other from their respective towers ... not only hurling fireballs at each others, but summoning minions, creating chasms and fog, etc ... could be an idea for a future convention game!

Gedemco "Versterkte Toren" (3)

Work in progress ...

Gedemco "Versterkte Toren"

My next Gedemco kit is the "Versterkte Toren", which translates as "Reinforced Tower" or "Strong Tower".

Box cover of the "Versterkte Toren"

As I mentioned before, putting together a resin kit from the 80s is quite a challenge compared to modern MDF kits. Pieces don't fit very well, some sanding is necessary, and cracks and holes need to be filled up with Pollyfilla or something similar. Nevertheless, I love such old kits, since they have a character of their own and feel more unique compared to the modern mass-produced wargaming items.

But anyway, after the use of roughly 5 liters of glue, adding internal struts, as well as using rubber bands to keep pieces together during the glue-drying process, I finally managed to put together the structure as you can see on the images below. There is also a small building that is meant to go on the tower platform, but then no figures can be placed on the tower, so I'll not use it.

Next thing to do is to paint the tower, and add some sort of access to the doorway. The doorway is visible in the last image, above the stag warrior. My idea is to add an intermediate platform (more glue!), and use 2 ladders to reach the door. An alternative could be to build up a rock or hill around the tower, and make some sort of winding path or stairway, but I always try to keep the footprint of scenery items as close to the building as possible. The larger the base, the more difficult it becomes to place the building on the wargaming table, especially when using hills.

The box cover shows the tower using a ladder, but an image on Rudi Geudens' site (the original owner of Gedemco, and a nice site to visit if you're interested in some Belgian wargaming history), shows a different setup, using a hill with a stairway.

Image on Rudi Geudens' site. Note the small structure on the tower plaform.

When I was putting together the tower, I was constantly thinking I had seen this building somewhere before. And suddenly I remembered, on the cover of "Fantasy Wargaming", by Martin Hackett. I have fond memories of this book, since it was the fist wargaming book I read many many years ago outside of the Games Workshop bubble. I even took part in a tournament run by Martin Hackett using these rules, at European Gencon in 1993, held in Camber Sands.

However, on closer inspection, the tower in the back seems to be a different building compared to the Gedemco kit, but the two are very, very similar. Which triggers the questions who is the manufacturer of the tower on the cover of Fantasy Wargaming (no credits in the book), and whether the Gedemco kit was inspired by this original model, or the other way around?

Gedemco "The Keep" (2)

As reported previously, I put together an old modeling kit from Gedemco. I painted it during the past couple of days. Spray-paint a black undercout, drybrush in stone grey, paint in some details, and attach a cardboard door and trapdoor. Then apply a coat of matt varnish.

The finished model is shown below, along with some 80s Citadel miniatures.

I painted something!

Due to various reasons - some personal, some professional - hobby time as been very low during the past couple of months. Nevertheless, I managed to paint something, 2 gun towers from the old Scotia Grendel/Kryomek/FantasyForge range, which I first reported on in a blogpost dating back to December 2017 ...

Anyway, here's the picture, with a classic 80s space marine shown for size comparison.

I painted something!

It has been a while since I painted some figures, but painting a building is always an easy way to get the painting juices flowing again.

This plastic tower has been on my unpainted pile for too long ... 26 years. It's the plastic tower from the iconic game Battle Masters, which I did buy when it was published in 1992.

It's not a very sophisticated model (nor a very sophisticated paint job :-)), but it is a nice "generic" model that can be used in many medieval/fantasy games - if not as an objective in the game - simply as a quick scenery backdrop to embellish the table. The tower was simply spray-painted black, then grey drybrush was applied, and subsequently some details painted in. The 2 decals finish the job. Total painting time (excluding drying time after the initial black basecoat - probably less than 20 minutes).

The two knights are plastic Bretonnian figures, Warhammer 5th edition.

"Piggy Bank" scenery

A nice find in the local 2nd hand shop ("Kringwinkel"), 3 buildings that are really piggy banks, for 1 euro each. When I find the time, I might repaint them and give them a somewhat less brown/gray/dark appearance.

28mm figures, and 54mm figures are shown for size comparisons.

An old toy castle

Somewhere in the mid-nineties, I bought a vacuum-formed plastic castle from a toy shop that was closing its doors. It looks a bit like the old Elastolin castles, but I guess it is one of the later replicas.

Anyway, I kept the castle for many years, and never really used it in a game, apart from the now infamous Lowenheim game I ran in the attic of my previous house in 2006.

Then, I gave the castle to my younger nephews, along with a lot of plastic soldiers, in the hope of planting the wargaming bug. We still have to see about that, but I think the force is strong in one of them - he is addicted to a D&D dungeon-exploration boardgame (also one of my gifts), a promising sign.

Anyway, since those nephews all have reached the double-digit age at which they consider castles and toy soldiers beneath their dignity, the castle has come back to me, still in excellent condition.

Time to set up another game ... ! A siege perhaps?

Scifi buildings from Fantasy Forge

In 1992, on a trip to European Gencon in Camber Sands, England, I bought a new ruleset for Scifi skirmish games called Kryomek. It seemed like the next big thing to me, and so I eagerly bought a number of figures, and from the same company (Fantasy Forge) also a resin sci building - a dome with a heavy cannon.

Needless to say, we never played Kryomek, but the dome-shaped building featured frequently in many scifi games we played during the past 25 years. It was always my intention to buy more of these buildingsdue to their nice modular design, but that plan never materialized.

A few months ago, at the Bring&Buy at  CRISIS, there was a fellow wargamer selling a few more of these building modules. Of course, I needed to have them.

So, here they are. I tried to paint them in the same shade of green as I did the original 25 years ago, but that was more difficult than I thought. Probably also because the original colours have faded over the years.

A few scenery items

I finished 2 scenery items today. Small, but useful to decorate the battlefield. The Oldhammer figure is only shown for size comparisons.

6mm Science Fiction Buildings

The coming months I plan to stage a few 6mm scifi battles as part of the developing Antares campaign setting. Hence, I brought out my 6mm stuff, mostly dating to the GW Space Marine days.

However, I also unearthed the buildings below, of which I do not remember the origin. I think I bought them around 2003-2004, but they might be much older than that.

If anyone can help me with identifying the manufacturer, I would be very thankful!

Update May 25, 2015: It appears these buildings are still available from Second City Games, or  SHQ Miniatures (although it is hard to confirm the latter, since there are no pictures on their website for 6mm scenery).

Funny detail: I named the city blocks in the picture above in true Judge Dredd style: James T. Kirk block, Harrison Ford block, and John Carter block.

Sci Fi Greenhouses

A quick (15 minutes) and easy scenery project for a science fiction setting: greenhouses.

I used the lid from a pack of cherry tomatoes, put an enclosure on top to cover the hole in the lid, and added a circular ring-shaped base with an opening in the middle. Thus, the greenhouses can be placed over some model plants.

Two Citadel miniatures (Eldar Trader and Halfling Cook, Space Pirates range from the 80s) are shown for scale comparisons. The cook wants to buy some spices for his meal tonight, but the trader refuses to sell at below market value!

The greenhouses were used as a mission objective in our latest Antares 2401 game.