Thursday 31 July 2014

ACW-Fire and Fury, 20mm- Gettysburg buildings, part 3, Gettysburg college (or the building inside the Kinder surprise)



The Gettysburg college is the missing building for the day 1 in Gettysburg.

I Couldn't find anyone doing this particular building, so mine had to be quite improvised.

Most of this was copied from the back cover of Fire and Fury rule book were you can see Union XI corps being squeezed into town and later into cemetery hill. 



The building is mostly card but this time some new materials were necessary.

The base had to have enough room for some trees and lawn.


The roof dome is a Kinder Egg cut to the shape of the cruciform roof.


The columns are those plastic tubes that come along with brushes. In the beginning we all say "I solely swear to use these plastic tubes after every wash of it's fellow brush" but we generally discard them after some usage. So they can find some utility as architectural columns.


The stairs are some German made hard plastic ones I bought many years ago. They can be easily cut. The kind of expensive stuff that you never regret buying. 


The chimneys are Blueboard cut into shape. The chimneys top is better to be card or other hard material in order to protect the  fragile styrofoam. 


Painting is quite straight forward: Black as primer and white all over. Only the windows are troublesome as there are plenty of them.


The making of the roof is better to be made this: you built one of the full parts, ex: the longitudinal one and then you overlap the other one. Do it always with hot glue as it will help disguise the many wrong calculations.


Once again my father's train diorama saw it self without some trees... 


Now for Gettysburg second and third day buildings and structures.



Sunday 13 July 2014

ACW-Fire and Fury, 20mm- Gettysburg buildings, part 2


These are just finished and intend to represent some more buildings for the 1st day of the battle of Gettysburg (1st of July, 1863).

Thompson's house is one of the pieces of scenery necessary to play Buford's defence on the Chambersburg pike.



McPherson's barn was another place for Buford's defence soon lost to Heth's Division. 



McLean's farm was close to Oak hill and saw Ewell's attack.

The full latest lot. 

And how was this done? Pretty simple stuff as you can see from the unpainted Thompson's house:


You just need -
1- Some good images of the real thing.
2- Card, the stronger the better. 
3- Plywood or other wood you have for the base.
4- Windows and doors glued to the walls as a saving time measure. If you cut or carve the walls for windows or doors you get into serious trouble! I only do this when the building is intended to hold figures. 
5- Styrofoam chimneys with a hard card top part. 
6- Electric glue to put everything together.
Don't forget the golden rules of Wargaming buildings: make it smaller than the real thing ( otherwise you will not have anything else but built up areas in your table ) and only make windows and door with the real size. And, if necessary, save on the number of windows.

Of course painting is the secret for a good finish. You start with black acrylics all over and the usual darker to lighter colours follows. 

You can also see other buildings of the 1st day of Gettysburg in previous posts namely the Lutheran seminary and the Evergreen Cemitery gate house, along with generic houses for the city itself.