Painting and Assembling the Warbases Prussian Merchant's House

Hi friends:

This series of photos is mostly intended as a visual diary of a recent build of a Warbases MDF house, but might be of interest to some readers looking to make their models a little more interesting than the plain MDF.

This building is from the Warbases Napoleonic Prussia range of 28mm MDF kits, I've built several and they are nice buildings, a little large for big battles but they work well for skirmish games.  This one is the Prussian Merchant's house.  It's a two story building with a stone first floor, a timberframe second floor, and a peaked roof with gabled windows.

My first step was to paint the stones on the first floor.  I know they aren't really bricks, but I thought uniform brick red colour with offwhite mortar would work well enough, and while I've painted stone different colours of gray in their other kits, I couldn't really be bothered this time.  I guess the brick effect works well enough, even if they are oddly shaped bricks.

 The kit comes with a base that is scribed to represent paving stones, so I painted them two different shades of gray.  The outer walls are glued on and went together fairly well, with some rubber bands until the glue (I use white carpenter's glue) dries.

Inner walls in place and while it's unlikely they'll ever be seen on the table, doing them properly was quite satisfying, rather like painting the inside of the cockpit of a plastic model aircraft.   I at least know it's done.  :)   

The wooden ground floor door came out well, I used an AK wood tones paint set with some FolkArt Wrought Iron craft paint for the bars and handle.

The next step is to make the second story walls look interesting.  I wanted a stucco or plaster effect so I watered down some Wood Putty and used an old brush to layer it into the sections that are conveniently outlined on the MDF as being between the lines where the timberframe part will go.    I was careful not to get too much on the latter parts so the timberframe bits will fit neatly.   Once the wood putty was dry I painted it with a craft paint Buff colour and then a bit of a sepia wash.

Once that work is done and the doors and window frames are painted, the timberframes are glued on and clamped until dry.   While drying, the second story floor is painted using AK wood paints.  Again, I'm happy with the result, even though it won't be seen much.

The kit includes a nice little staircase up to the second floor.   The individual stairs fit into recesses in the wall and attach on the other side to the single piece staircase frame.   The railings were simple and I gave the landing some attention with the AK wood paint.   The roof was a challenge, it was just four pieces of plain MDF with the tiles etched into it.  I wanted a more three dimensional effect so found some plastic model railroad sheets in my stash, cut them to fit the roof sections, glued them on and them attached the roof.

The two dormer windows were a bit of challenge, I don't have any WIP photos of them.   Once the roof was on, there were some gaps between the sections that I filled with bits of MDF sprues.  The whole thing was then painted with craft Burnt Sienna, washed with an umber wash, and drybrushed with red paint.

The finished piece scales well with 28mm figures but does make them look almost small.   It's not a wee building!   In a large battle with many units on the table, you wouldn't want many of these structures on the table, but as I said above, they look great for skirmish actions.

I hope this post gave you some ideas on assembling and painting MDF buildings, or at least sold you on the Warbases product.  One minor complaint is that the buildings don't ship with instructions. but you can find them readily enough on the website.  

Even though working on a building like this takes time away from painting troops, the end result is worth it and it enhances the overall look of the table.  I'm happy with the final result and would certainly recommend the Warbases kits.    I might look at an STL file for another building but the painting work would be about the same.

Blessings to your brushes and craft knives.

MP+

Some 28mm Horse and Musket Civilians

Not all the figures in this post are freshly painted except for the gent in the brown coat and hat, but the rest were done later in 2024 and I don't think I've blogged them here, so I guess they count (count for what?  points?  prizes? 🤪).

Groom leads a horse out of the barn for a gentleman.   The groom and horse are from Foundry's 18th century civilian range, the gent in the hat is a Front Rank figure from their Napoleonic civilian range.  The barn is I think from Warbases.

It's funny what you see in photos that you don't see otherwise.   The poor groom looks like he has a bandage on his nose, when in fact I think it was just some pale flesh highlight that looked ok at the time.  I'll have to have a hard look at him and see if he needs fixing.   The gentleman is sold by Front Rank along with a packhorse, and I think he's meant to be a pedlar, but I decided to make him look a bit posh.   His clothing is probably too early 1800s for a Lace Wars game, but tant pis as they say. 

 MDF cart and cast metal horses from Warbases.  The kit includes a resin casting of straw as a load for the cart if one wishes.   The farm labourer is from Front Rank's Napoleonic civilians range, enjoying a tankard while stopping at a pub.

These figures could be used just as table dressing or as characters and plot points in a skirmish game like Sharp Practice.  That gentleman going for a ride could actually be a spy with valuable intelligence.   The straw in that cart could be hiding contraband or a deserter.   The farmer with the pitchfork could be a dashing intelligence officer in disguise or maybe he's just Theo from Plotzen. 

  

Thanks for looking.  Later this week, some ancients figures, and maybe a test drive of the Hail Caesar rules.  

Blessings to your brushes,  MP+

#Terrain Tuesday: Warbases MDF Fields and Ponds

Hello friends:  

I’ve been quiet here last week, which, as you might expect, was a busy one for my day job as a wargaming vicar, but time to catch up now that Holy Week is concluded.

Recently I needed some custom-made MDF bases and ordered them from Warbases in the UK, as my Canadian supplier didn’t seem to need the business.   While I was on the Warbases webstore, I saw that they offered fields and ponds, in a part of the store called Terrain Bases   It wasn’t clear to me that these were 2D images printed onto MDF, I had formed the mistaken idea that they were somehow 3D, which was my own misperception.

There wasn’t a full range in stock, but I ordered two field sets, one in spring (left) and one in autumn (right).  Here are the large pieces from each set, each with a stone wall and gate around the edges.  They blend nicely against my Geek Villain game cloth.  

And two small fields in each set, again, spring (left) and autumn (right).

And I bought a set of ponds, which includes a generous five separate ponds.

28mm figure stand for scale.

And a 6mm stand for scale.  In 6mm, depending on the game scale (eg, Blucher where this one stand would represent a brigade), these would be decent sized lakes!

In 28mm, the large stand would accommodate a four or five based unit quite nicely to represent a terrain objective or a defensible terrain feature, such as a walled field.  Useful if one didn’t have enough actual wall section models.

Some folks might balk at the idea of putting 2D terrain representations on the table, which is fine, but for a fast game or if one is travelling light to a club or convention, these models might well be fit for purpose.   The quality of the printed images of the field and pond sections is pleasing, so they are a definite step up from fields and ponds of cut felt.

Cheers and blessings to your tabletops.

MP+

 

 

 

 

#Terrain Tuesday: Warbases Prussian Barn WIP

Hello friends:

I’m reviving a feature here which I’ve called Terrain Tuesday.   Here’s a bit of progress on a project carried over from last year, this 28mm Warbases T-Shaped Barn from their Napoleonic Prussia series.   I can use these in a variety of horse and musket settings, and this particular model could possibly be used in a North American setting, assuming the barn was built by settlers of German origin.

I wasn’t happy with the MDF roof, so I ordered some of the Warbases cardboard roof tiles sets and laboriously glued them on.

Now I have to decide how to paint the roof.   I was thinking a brown base coat, and then a dry brush of red, as most German roofs I’ve seen in paintings of the period seem to have red roofs.   Any advice?

Blessings to your modelling.  MP+

Terrain Tuesday: Adventures in Basing and Building

Recently I mentioned that our guest on Canadian Wargamer Podcast #11 was Joe Saunders, who runs a small but mighty enterprise called Miniature Landscape Hobbies.  I was so impressed with his method for large scenic bases that I tried it, and here’s the result.

To back up a bit, my previous method was to cut a piece of MDF purchased from a DIY store.  This was never very pleasant or satisfactory because I used a craft knife and could never get the lines straight enough, and it was also very taxing on my hands and wrists.  There was also the very real worry that I might inadvertantly cut myself.  Once the MDF was cut, I would texture it with plastic wood (usually from Lepage), use diluted white carpenter’s glue to apply texture (usually model railroad ballast) and then once dry paint brown, two successive drybrushes (yellow ochre first, then maple tan) and then apply flock and seal with a matte spray.

Joe’s technique is explained in this video.  Not to describe the whole method, but in brief I used two sheets of cut boxboard with the corrugations going in opposite directions.   I them coated it with diluted matte Mod Podge mixed with brown umber craft paint, and while it was wet I applied the grit (ballast mixed with some clean cat litter).   The next step according to Joe is to mix rubbing alcohol with brown acrylic ink and then use a pipette and apply the ink mixture while holding the base at an incline to allow the mixture to run freely. 

I didn’t have brown ink but I had some green ink, so I thought I’d experiment.  What I got was a pleasant greenish hue and in a few places the green ink turned the grit a bright green, suggesting clumps of foliage.  I showed this image below to Joe and he thought it was a “happy accident” and suggested a tan dry brush before adding flock. 

 

Here’s the finished base on the left, with the Warbases cottage from their Prussian Napoleonics range of buildings.   I spent much of the winter cutting up cereal boxes to make the tiles on the roof of the cottage, until some bright chap told me to by the pre-cut roof tiles from Sarissa.  I did that for the Warbases Prussian barn on the right, but couldn’t resist the allure of the cereal box and also cut out the stones for the first floor of the barn walls.  The base of the barnyard was also made according to Joe’s recipe.

I wanted some texture on the walls of the cottage, which were plain MDF sheets, so smeared them with carpenter’s plastic wood filler to give the impression of stucco.    I did the same with the wall section on the barn beneath the wood timbers.  Thankfully the wood timbers were all one laser cut piece so quite simple to apply onto the plastic wood before it dried.

Some 28mm figures shown for scale.  The barn is a beast!  It won’t be hogging a standard sized table for a big battle, but it will wok for a skirmish game such as Sharp Practice, with Prussian jaegers defending against marauding cossacks, I think.

Another view of the stone wall on the ground floor of the barn.  Not sure what door halfway up is all about.  In my part of Ontario you sometimes see barns with an earthen ramp leading up to a doorway which I am guessing is for transporting hay bales and fodder.   I should consider constructing something similar out of styrofoam.