I love collecting, painting, converting and scratch building terrain. I even get to play a game once in a while. I'm a big fan of gamification as part of teaching - I'm an elementary school teacher.
This blog covers my hobby work and 'teaching through gaming'.
I've already build a bunch of small WW2 25mm houses from TTCombat. They were quick to build and very cheap. But I have also gotten myself a bunch of bigger row houses, in both two and three storey versions. These houses are a lot bigger and really give off that Baldur's Gate vibes that I'm going for.
The upgrads of these buildings are the same and I've done with the smaller houses. Stone wall ground floor, timber frame second floors, added plaster and lots of colors. The top of the roof is cobber, and would probably be all green from verdigris in real life, but that color clashed to much with the buildings. So I've only painteda bit of verdigris here and there.
For a tutorial style step-by-step check out this post here. And see all the collected fantasy city terrain on this page.
I've also made a YouTube video with these buildings:
When I bought all my city MDF kits, I also got a pack of TTCombat Streets of Venice balcony upgrades. It was pretty cool and allowed me to add a lot of balconies on these house. Some already came with balconies, but it's a seemless fit, so hard to make out which is which.
The awnings are originally from grey board, but I've tossed those out and found some striped fabric instead. These give a much more life like look to the entire building. I've also made some signs using an online coat of arms maker, those will be added one day when I get around to it.
All colors chosen for these buildings have been found with online research on real tudor or timberframed houses. And I've made sure to mix it up, so all buildings have different combinations.
It's pretty fast to paint these buildings, as most of the job is actually done while base coating with cheap rattle cans, then some drybrushing and was will make it all pop. Flock and posters add the last layer of life to them.
On my other houses I've made sure to add a 1cm flat area on the top of the roof, for miniatures to keep their balance there, but that's not needed on any rowhouses. It'll look great when I get around to painting the last 4 of these.
Check out the game Guilders: A Life In Shaows. A 28mm skirmish miniatures game, with lots of RPG elemenets. Inspired by my love of Frostgrave, Mordheim and the Warhammer Quest RPG book. All Guilders is collected here.
For the viking mega game, the base warrior was the bondi. Comes from the word bonde - that means farmer. The simplest guy just taking on a bit of a raid. they also have smple weapons and no armor.
To make variery (Victrix have the absolut best heads) I've mixed Wargames Foundry, Gripping Beast and Victrix. The bondi also have hats or bare heads on half the miniatures, to show the low quality.
A lot of the archers are made from gripping beast dark age archers - a really old and boring kit with a few monopose sculpts in it. After I had bought miniatures for the project, Victrix brought out their excellent dark age archers (also comes with slings and a few melee options) - for the same price. Oh well.
I made sure to incorporate as many victrix bits into the mix as possible, because they have way better details and size.
In the game, the teams could buy the bondi from the beginning. They required simple weapons (a ressource made from wood and iron) and wool. They also required only simple food ressources for upkeep.
The combat system is a simple which 3 lines system. Axemen have best first line attack, and decent defence. The spear guy has worse attack in front line, but can also attack from line two. The bowman can't defend himself, but can add attacks from the third line. The bowman can also hunt ressources on the main board, gaining furs for the team.
The ressource exchange. Fur is made from cow, deer or reindeer. Used for ships and warriors.
Simple weapons are used for Bondi and Berserkers. Made from Iron and Craftsmen.
And here's photos of the painted bondi. There was six teams. So there's yellow, green, red, orange, purple and blue. All have various shield designs and nuances. An easy way to add some detail, while remaining easy to spot teams in the game.
And here's some photos of the Yellow hird, 36 pieces strong.
