Monthly Archives: June 2011

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Pulp, Terrain

Half-Timber Barn WiP Part II: Thatched Roof

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Picked up a cheap towel to use as thatching. Here it is in a quickie late-night photograph, glue still wet on the roof of the half-timber barn.

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Towel strips as thatch on the half-timber barn. As usual, click for full size.


The roof has a base of sheet styrene. I used white glue to stick the towel strips down, then more thinned white glue to soak the towel, which (when it eventually dries!) should solidify it nicely.

The barn has also been given a base of mattboard and mostly primed. My usual scenery primer is a 1:1 mix of white glue and black paint, mixed right on the model. It seals and protects the scenery surface nicely, even fairly fragile stuff like styrofoam toughens up a bit!

The main arched doors are also in progress, but I forgot to get a photo of them.

Still to-do for the roof, trim the edges and glue them under the eves for a more finished look, then paint and more paint. I also need to do basswood rafters under the roof, both for looks and for actual structural support, as the roof will still be removable when this building is finished.

The roof still looks a bit too towel-like right now, hopefully finishing the edges and painting will sort that!

English Civil War/Thirty Years War, Historicals, Pulp, Terrain

Half-Timber Barn WiP

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Something for the English Civil War/Thirty Years War table, as well as for pulp games set in the quainter parts of the UK or Europe! All those crops gathered from my fields have to be stored somewhere, after all.

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A stone-and-halftimber barn, work in progress. Click, as usual, for larger.

The whole thing is highly inspired by Warlord Game’s rather nice 16th Century Barn. Actually, scrub “highly inspired”, I’m outright copying the building, as a learning piece! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, isn’t it?

The basic structure is foamcore. The stonework is soft foam salvaged from a takeout food container; I’m going to have to swing by our local (awesome) plastic supplier to see if they have something similar in sheets, as one takeout container at a time is a rather slow way to accumulate building materials! I scribed/carved the stones with a sharp pencil, and quite like how they’ve turned out.

The timbering is 1/8th x 1/16th inch balsa strip from the Stockpile’o’Doom. I have about six lengths of it, and it is entirely possible it’s leftovers from our family model railroading setup in the early/mid-1990s when I was in junior high. I think I’ve carried that balsa around long enough — time to put it to use, right?

Doors, additional timbering at the corners of the building, and a base are still to do. The inside will get a bit of plastering just for texture, and probably a lot of straw strewn around and such — details to add interest without getting much in the way, ideally.

The roof will be towel thatching over a styrene base.

I’ve heard the suggestion that you try one new-to-you technique per project; I’m afraid this simple-looking building breaks that “rule” good and proper! Foam stonework is new to me; likewise half-timbered building construction, and I’ve never actually used the towel-as-thatch technique before either! Wish me luck!

Asides, Dirtside, Full Thrust, Links, Science Fiction, Stargrunt

GZG Links Edited

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Just updated the Ground Zero Games/Dirtside II/Stargrunt II/Full Thrust Links page, which has, like some of the other resources on this site, needed updating since the early 2000s. I’ve killled off a bunch of dead links, replaced other URLs, left a few favourites with plantive notes for assistance in finding up-to-date URLs, and finally added a note to contact us if you have suggestions for new or replacement links!

Terrain, Tutorials

Scenery: Plowed Fields

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First scenery project in quite a while, I’ve done lots of figure painting over the winter and spring but no scenery.

I pulled the top layer of paper off a sheet of corrugated cardboard and cut that up for the plowed parts, then used cardboard from an old shoebox for the base layers. There’s 4 6″x4″ fields and 1 larger 8″x6″ field.

The basecoat was a 1:1 mix of white glue and paint; the paint was a mix of two shades of brown, a shot of black and a bit of grey, just for variety. I squirt the glue and paint directly onto each field and mix with a 1.5″ housepainting brush, and transfer some of each field’s rough mix of paint to the other fields, so they’re all mostly the same colour without having to mix paint seperately in a container. The 1:1 paint and glue mix toughens and seals scenery nicely; it’s my usual primer coat for almost all scenery projects.

Paint still wet on two of the 4×6 fields.



After the basecoat was dry (and I’d patched a few bits I missed) I drybrushed with a lighter tan/brown shade, then flocked around the edges and onto some of the fields. The flocking was mostly Woodland Scenics ground foam, the dark green “Weeds” colour, and GW’s brighter green flock, with two other shades of green ground foam thrown in for variety.

Continue reading Scenery: Plowed Fields →
Misc, Science Fiction, Stargrunt

The Dropship Drops Out?

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Over on the excellent 15mm science-fiction focused Dropship Horizon blog, a rather startling notice that Mark, the blogowner, is planning to “bring the tyres to a halt and turn off the engines for the final time“.

The pace of posting had slowed slightly over on Dropship recently, but with interesting developments still going on in 15mm SF, it’s unfortunate to see Dropship Horizon shutting down so abruptly.

Hopefully Mark leaves Dropship up and running even if he isn’t actively posting, as his links and articles are an invaluable resource for 15mm SF gamers. Having done basically nothing with this website for quite a number of years before reviving it late in 2010, I certainly understand that people’s gaming interests wax and wane and sometimes it’s time to move on, but even a somewhat dusty resource is better than nothing — Dropship’s collected information can still help 15mm SF gamers for years, as this site was doing even during the years I was neglecting it.

Best of luck to Mark in his other gaming interests, and here’s hoping that some day in the future he relights Dropship’s engines, brings up her running lights and starts posting cool 15mm SF things again!

(I guess this means I should update, refurbish and republish my mothballed list of 15mm SF miniatures companies, just in case Dropship does go entirely offline!)