Terrain Tuesday: 28mm Sarissa Manassas Stone House

It’s Tuesday again and time to show off another piece of scenery for the war-games table.   This is the Sarissa Manassas Stone House in 28mm which was a fairly easy build from the flat-pack, though I did manage to get the root cellar door on the wrong side wall and only discovered that when the glue had set.   One overestimates MDF kits at one’s peril!   It sits beside a stand of pre-made trees which I bought at a show and glued onto an old Windows CD with some ground texture and flocking, so perhaps this counts as two terrain pieces.  Hooray! 

 The house will work for my ACW and alt-ACW battles.  It has a big footprint on the table, so perhaps more suited for skirmish games.   I didn’t apply any texture to the walls.  Rather, I focused on the laborious task of picking out the stonework in every shade of grey at my disposal, to give the impression of an old field-stone farmhouse that one still sees in my part of SW Ontario.

Having the self-imposed deadline of a blog post on terrain gave me the incentive I needed to finish this piece and get it off the work desk.  Hopefully it will feature here soon, as an ACW battle is next in the gaming schedule.

Blessings to your projects!  

MP+

Meanwhile, In Rohan - 2

I am closing out September with these six figures (seven if you count the wee bairn clinging to Mum’s skirts) who will populate the little Rohan village I am slowing building.  These 28mm figures are by Wargames Foundry, Saxon civilians from their Dark Ages line.   I thought they worked fairly well as Rohirrim, to add a bit of atmosphere to games where Isengard’s sinister forces raid the Riddermark.   I see great possibilities for Foundry Saxon figures as second line troops to augment the Riders, the Rohirrim equivalent of a fyrd.   While Rohan could field a larger proportion of cavalry per capita than more urbanized societies such as Gondor, it stands to reason that there would be some lesser folk who could not afford a horse and war gear, but might still be liable for service as foot troops and/or would simply need to defend themselves.

“Ware thee, Brythnoth, lest thee roam too far into the holt, and thee should meet orcenfolke!”   Of course, young Brytie will be the kid gallantly running back to warn the village, like young Conan in the first movie.  Hopefully he has better luck than young Conan, and doesn’t end up pushing a giant thingie around for 20 years for no apparent reason.

 

“Does not thy pigge Bakkonraed know any farer jests?”   “Nay, but certes yon’s a happy pigge."

Ullric has carefully sharpened the village arsenal in readiness for fighting season.  I tried to give some of these characters green clothes as an echo of my Rider figures, to suggest a cultural or national colour, but didn’t want to paint them all the same way.

Poor Olaf:  “Bloody weeds, every I go I see bloody weeds."

And finally, some shots of the completed watch tower which hopefully will keep these fine folk safer.  The template for this structure was first published in GW’s White Dwarf back when they were pushing their LOTR hard as they surfed the tide of the PJ films.   I sadly lost my copy, but I was able to find it after some digging around on the inter webs.  It is rather big, shown here against the buildings and 28mm figures, but I guess that’s the whole point of a watch tower.

The roof is removable to place figures within, and the fighting compartment can hold six single-based figures easily.  The roof is made of a cheap coarse fibre wash cloth purchased at WalMart.  I dry-brushed it using my lessons learned from making the roof for the Sarissa Dark Ages house seen in the previous photo.

Thorstein, seen below, says that the villagers all feel much safer, even if the forced labour cut into his chicken plucking.

Thank you for looking and blessings to your brushes and craft knives!  Check back in sometime and see how the villagers fare.

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 68; Mounted Figures: 8; Buildings: 3; Terrain Features: 2

20mm:  Buildings: 1

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2

Two Weird War Scientists (Mad Or Otherwise)

These two 28mm figures are part of my slowly expanding but yet to be used Weird War Two collection.  The Nazi chap is a Pulp Figures mini from Bob Murch, and the carrot-top civvie is by Artizan.

The sinister fellow in the lab coat is Herr Dokktor Bruno Jaegermeister, head of research for the sinister, occult dominated portion of the SS that specializes in sinister, occult matters.   Perhaps he helps the SS Vampyrs to animate corpses, or he works with the Wulffentruppen on breeding better monsters - he'll be useful in either capacity.   Almost certainly he had a dodgy academic transcript but then denounced his supervisor as a cosmopolitan Jew, stole his research notes, and then made a name for himself promoting the superiority of Aryan genes.   In other words, a total cad.   He will be a high value target for S Commando.

The fellow in the nice cardigan is Dr. Hamish Montfort McGonnigle, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Science and Professor of Science at the University of Edinburgh, who is now the head of research for Project Alice, Britain's secret line of defence against the darkest forces stirring in the Reich.   He's smart, cantankerous, and a hardheaded believer in good science, empiricism and skepticism.   He may find himself forced to accept the existence of some strange things before it's all over.

 
Dr. Jagermeister has a bit of a secret base starting to come together.   I've assembled one of the two MDF quonset huts I got from Sarissa.  I am thinking of painting it in Germany yellow (dunkelgelb) with a camo pattern, as presumably a secret base needs to be hidden from the air.  To the right is a Sarissa MDF searchlight and generator, which could also be used as a death ray projector, I suppose.   Behind that are some resin crates from 6 Squared, since a secret base needs some sinister shipments to secretly stockpile (see what I did there?).

I have some 1/48 scale vehicles for the Nazi secret base thanks to my chum James, and some more Sarissa scenery to add to it.  A backkburner project, but it's slowly coming together.

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 56; Mounted Figures: 5; Buildings: 2; Terrain Features: 4

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2

Thatch Patch and Rohan Defenders

Thanks to all the folks who responded to my crowd-sourced request for advice on some Dark Ages thatch roofing for my Sarissa model.  The consensus of the hive-mind was that my roof, made of chopped up bits of washcloth, looked too white.  I had saved some bits so used your advice and test-painted a strip, using a base coat of dlluted Brown Umber craft paint, and then, once dried, a heavy dry brush of yellow ochre.  It looked pretty good, so I went for it.

 My faithful reader Dai Dead sent me a photo of his mum’s thatched cottage in the UK, which made me think I was on the right path.   The photo reminded me of Madame Padre’s favourite mystery series, Midsomer Murders, a Netflix staple chez nous, where half of England seems to live in quaint thatched cottages, when they’re not murdering one another.   I would never venture into the English countryside, as judging by that show, the murder rate must be catastrophic. Mind you, it’s all nasty toffs killing toffs, so I guess Canadian tourists are safe.

 I now have a cottage to form the nucleus of a village to defend in my Dux Rohirrim project.   Here are two finished Rohan defenders to protect it.  These are two of the three figures I gratefully received from my 2015 Secret Santa, from the Foundry Casting Room Miniatures Dark Ages Saxon line.  I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t be Rohan Royal Guardsman or part of the retinue of a Lord of the Riddermark.

 The chap on the right, with his more ornate cloak and helmet, seems a likely captain of an elite eored (a company of 120 men) and the lancer one of the captain’s hearth guards.  They are a little more armoured than the GW Riders of Rohan models I’ve seen, but none the worse for it.  The horses are big, substantial brutes, with long bases, too long to fit on the GW plastic bases that ship with their cavalry models, so they will stand out in base width from my GW Rohirrim, but I’m not too worried about that.  Likewise their shields are bigger than ones the GW sculpts carry, and they are missing the quivers and bows that the GW Riders carry, but since these are elite shock cavalry, I can live without those features.

 I’ve tried to follow the greens and browns that distinguish my other Rohirrim, which I admit is the same palette that characterizes the Rohirrim in the SirPJ films.

 Nice embroidery on the captain’s cloak.    Makes him look suitably important.

Blessings to your brushes!

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 29; Mounted Figures: 3; Buildings: 1

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2

Dark Ages Thatch Match?

 As part of my Dux Rohirrim project, this is a Sarissa model, Timber A Frame, from their 28mm Dark Ages range.  I wanted a few buildings to be tempting targets for orc raiders and this has a useful generic feel without taking up too large a footprint on the table.   

I am crowdsourcing some advice on the thatch whether to paint it or leave it alone.

The Sarissa kit comes with a plain wood roof, scored to suggest planking, but gives some suggestions for thatch.  I stole an idea from a wargaming blogger (I wish I could remember who) on using terrycloth bath towels as thatch. I found a beige wash cloth at Walmart, chopped it into sections and glued them onto the roof.   

 

This reconstruction of a Dark Ages hut from a dig in the Cheviots in the UK looks a little more brown to my eye, but truth be told, a google search of dark ages thatched roofs shows a variety of colours and textures.

Any thoughts?

Blessings to your buildings!

MP+