I took a break from fort construction this evening to paint the above outhouse from Battlescale. The model was very easy to paint, although I keep struggling to get the wood structure right. Regardless, I am happy to add it to my small collection of farmhouses.
Tomorrow a big thing is going to happen, from my personal hobby-perspective: a downsized 10mm scale battlemat will arrive. I really hope it will work out – it cost me a lot of money, far more than any other individual items bought for this project.
Hooray, I just received my order from Battlescale Wargame Buildings! I bought a bridge, an outhouse (!), and a small thatched house. The buildings will complement my house and barn from Spellcrow.
I have only cleaned the models so far, but so far it all looks perfect. The details of the sculpts are fantastic, the scale looks right, and the casting and finish appear great as well. I was impressed by the buildings from Spellcrow, but these seem to be a step up in quality. In particular, the bases are completely flat, which I appreciate. I look forward to painting them!
I must say that it is a pain ordering from the UK today – not that this is Battlescale’s fault. The Swedish customs hold up the packages for a fairly long time (unless the VAT is collected beforehand, as some larger stores do). Also, the fixed fee is inconvenient for small packages – 7 euros for this one.
Anyway, in other hobby news, I have continued working on the fort:
The walls are all done – except for the gate – and I have now started on the walkway. I have learned a lot from this small project. If I ever do another palisade, things will progress a lot smoother!
I kept working on my small fort today, with my three-year old beside me. First, he wanted to watch television, but then he decided to do a project on his own. I also handed him some interesting parts from the general bits box to help him along.
As I am tired at uploading pictures of my ever-incomplete fort, here you see my son’s creation. I do not know exactly what it is, but it looks super cool with a small flag, a tree, and what could either be a space ship or a tower!
As a parent I feel very proud!
Below is our workspace for the afternoon. As you can see, the left-side fort construction was proceeding boringly well. The right-side of the workshop was definitely the more creatively imbued this time around.
That’s two walls done out of four! I feel like some kind of miniature carpenter here, cutting and gluing all those small logs into place. Pretty relaxing, but I am happy I did not go for a larger palisade.
I just started to build a small fortified watchtower for my Golden City faction. It will be useful when defending in Hordes of the Things. As you can see, it’s very much a work-in-progress so far:
The tower is from Spellcrow, and I’m also building a palisade around the whole structure using the shafts from long cotton buds. Then I’ll add dirt just about everywhere – perhaps even some platforms for archers to stand upon.
Not sure how fast this will go – I didn’t realize just how many wooden stakes are needed for this kind of structure! Well, at least there will be plenty of craftmanship involved. 😉 I’m a real hobbyist now!
The barn above is from Spellcrow and as with their house, it was a blast to paint. I have magnetized both buildings and will place them together, thus creating a small farm.
Something I love with the 10mm scale is that you really feel having accomplished something in an hours or two of hobbying, in contrast to the 28mm scale where everything just goes superslow. I definitely will do more buildings in the future!
Now, back to the plan. According to the Hordes of the Things (HoT) rules, I will need four pieces of terrain for my first game. The farm is the first. Next, I will get a few trees, a river stretching across the board, and finally a hill. The river and forest will count as “bad going” per HoT rules. I also ordered a cheap 60x60cm felt mat, which should be good for my first few games (I read about the advantages of polar fleece materials only after I had ordered). With all that in place, I should have a HoT compliant board!
My long-term goal is to play a game (probably against myself, although it would be great to find an opponent) in 10mm scale on a real wargaming table. I first thought it would be cool to try Oathmark in 10mm scale, but that was before I learned about all the other nice rulesets out there. For now, I aim at playing the game using the Hordes of the Things rules, which strike me as both simple and well thought-out.
In any case, as progress on my first army is going well, I have begun to think more about acquiring a table and some terrain. So to start somewhere, I bought and painted this wonderfully detailed 10mm house from Spellcrow. I was pleasantly surprised by both the price and quality. It was also really fun to paint!
The best thing about 10mm scale is how you can give your table a more realistic scale. Where buildings in 28mm are often unrealistically small, this house strikes me as pretty realistically scaled – as can be seen here:
I have one more of these buildings to finish before moving on. Already looking forward to it!
