Industrial Wild West Part 2 - Prospector's Office

I thought the first building I'd make was the Prospectors Office. There are quite a few "mystery " components on the mdf sheets, so I will be starting with the more obvious builds and hope to figure out what the mystery pieces are for by a process of elimination. The sections for this come from Sheets 1 & 4 of the kit post.

I decided that base sections would be easier to paint un-assembled before any weathering was added.

For painting I will be following the tutorial instructions from Lead Adventures forum member "Michi". The results from shown in this thread will tell you why. I hope mine come out half as good.

For my own reference as much as yours, the technique is:

• No primer is necessary. 
• Choose a base colour and apply it with rough strokes of a flat brush. That will leave some wood (MDF) shining through. 
• Repeat that with increasingly lighter shades of that colour (three or four layers). 
• Wash the entire building with a very watery black wash. 
• Apply another wash of a dust colour of your choice. This wash should be rich with pigments. You can take away too thick areas with fresh water while the wash is still wet or with alcohol when it has already dried.
• Finally apply a rather light drybrush of sand or light grey colour.

As ever I got a bit carried away and painted them up without inbetween shots. You've not missed much though. Here I've done the base coat and 3 lighter layers. The sign was painted in after this process.

A big decision was whether to make the doors "open-able". As most the other scenic pieces in the set a obstructions it was decided that having a building to duck into would be good, so off they came. More on how they are re-attached later.

The Front roof segment sits tight tot the front signage so was glued in place. The rear roof section just slots over tabs on its own. The tabs were slightly thinned to make removing\replacing the roof section easier to get the figure in the building that bit easier.

The section in place.

The construction so far before any washes are added.

 Another missed photo didn't document the buidling after the 2 washes (One thin black and other a thin  burnt umber\sienna mix), but here I've applied the light dry brush of a mixed sandy brown colour.

To hinge the doors I though some fabric would be the best bet. I initially cut some thing lengths of denim, but they frayed and fell apart. Luckily I have small felt offcuts from another project which hadn't been thrown out yet, so they were pressed into service with white glue. (At time of writing the dried results have not been fully tested!) The hut interior was also given a quick layer of white.

And here is the finished structure.

Raft Making

The next "Song Of..." campaign battle takes part on a river, with the warbands on boats or rafts, so I thought it was a good incentive to make some simple, roughly hewn rafts.

 For the body I was going to need some "logs". I know that a walk in the woods can produce a bundle of sticks, but I rarely see any thin and straight enough for a raft (or 4 in this case). I also had a bag of sticks that I'd bought ages ago with view to making a wooden palasade (which never got past the whittling stage). These are from a Pet Store and are sold in a bundle for Rabbits,etc to gnaw on.

I decided that 6 stciks would make a raft of suitable width. 2 logs (nominally the thickest) were chosen to be the edge logs and had one length sanded to make a better gluing surface. The remain 4 logs had 2 sides sanded so that they would press up together and glue more effectively.

 Glue alone would still be a bit brittle, so holes were drilled through the logs (fore and aft) and wire threaded through (I used a straightened paper clip). The Edge logs were not drilled all the way through to hide the scratchy wire ends.

The raft was assembled with the wire and white glue between the logs.

To strengthen the bond I also squeezed white glue in the joins on the underside of the raft, using a finger to push the glue down into the gap and wipe off excess. It was all left to dry.

 The raft needs some sort of basic steering mechanism. To represent this a couple of pieces of matchstick were assembled on the back of the raft as a rudder handle (the back of the handle dipping to table\water level). The "oar" was then given a quick light brown wash and (once dry) the whole lot given a quick spray of matt varnish to cover any shine from any visible dry glue.

Here is the end result with prospective crew. Ideally some sort of string could be glued across the width as binding rope, but I couldn't find any thin enough that didn't look out of place. Once the models are on the effect is good enough to work anyway I feel.

Freddy vs Scooby

MacSver and I played our first ever game of Faith and Fear last week. I've had the rules (both Faith and Fear and the expansion Kooky Teenage Monster Hunters) for years but never turned the pages on the table before. So I dug out some carefully chosen figures for some spooky fun...Freddy Krueger vs Scooby Doo! (and friends)

Troll Trader Industrial Wild West Set - Part 1

My new Dead Man's Hand pickup has predictably had me looking at Terrain for my hobby shed table. My wallet doesn't stretch to the pre-painted 4Ground Wild West buildings (or at least I don't want to stretch it). Also, for economies sake (remember I used to contribute to the frugal gaming blog).

Troll Trader in the UK may well be familiar to sci-fi and fantasy ebay addicts (I know I've made several purchases in the past). They sell a line of basic mdf Wild West buildings that I am presuming is their own line (on the website they are listing under TT Combat Buildings). Their Industrial Wild West set (for around £30GBP) caught my eye, especially as elements could be played in other genres than Wild West.

So I took the plunge into my first mdf kit, which I plan to build and document over the next few weeks (my hobby time is sadly limited and split).

First up, this is what came through the post - 8 A4 sheets for laser cut mdf.

Sheet 1

Sheet 2

Sheet 3

Sheet 4

Sheet 5

Sheet 6

Sheet 7

Sheet 8

It all looks very nice. One main thing to note is that the above pictures are the complete contents - no instructions or final picture for guidance, so I'll be be referring to the ebay sale picture below once I get past the basic buildings in the build.