David Bickley's Wargames Blog

The occasional ramblings of an average gamer, journeyman painter, indifferent modeller, games designer, sometime writer for Wargames Illustrated and host of games in GHQ.



Wednesday 28 March 2018

My Italian Wars Real Estate...

I have now assembled and textured with rough filler the four buildings I bought to populate the table top battlefield here in GHQ for forthcoming Italian Wars games. As you may have read in earlier Blog posts, I feel these will be enough for our needs, but like most wargamers I wouldn’t be surprised if more appeared at some stage, as if by magic!
I bought four of the five Warbases Modular Buildings, together with a small Roman Tower and several sets of extras: balconys, doors, windows, shutters and the like. I used these to make two buildings, a small walled farm with a defensive tower and a more imposing house of two stories with a portico. I used Wills plastic pantile roofing sheets to cover the MDF roofs on these buildings. At the recent snowy WMMS I bought two buildings from Charlie Foxtrot‘s range of Pantile Buildings, the Small Store and the Hermitag ~


Phil has several of their kits in his Spanish terrain collection, so I know they look nice but had no idea if they would prove as ‘idiot friendly’ as the Warbases’ kits when it was time to assemble them! I needn’t have worried, they went together with little fuss, beyond trimming the resin inserts to the walls and the roof pieces to fit. No sanding required there, just a trim with a sharp modelling knife! The combination of MDF walling and a cast resin pantile roof is a clever solution to the problem of MDF and the 3D effect of the roof. Pity though the resin is not stained Terracotta, it would simplify painting! And here are the four buildings together ~

I’ll not be doing any more to them until later in the Spring or early Summer, as I want to press on with the figures while I can safely sit at my painting desk. Besides the crossbowmen I'm working on at present I have a base of Italian handgunners; a base of Italian halberdiers, both from TAG;two bases of Gendarmes from Foundry; a Landsknecht pike block from Warlord Games/ProGloria; and a furthe Landsknecht Command base from the same source. About 60 figures in all. Let’s see how far I get then...

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