Tuesday 2 October 2012

More MDF Buildings

While I was at Skirmish on last week I picked up three more MDF buildings from the 4Ground Range. These are so easy to put together - requiring just a modelling knife for cleaning, some PVA glue and some rubber bands to hold the bits together - I have been bringing them into work and putting them together during my lunch break. This is amazing for two reasons. 1) These are very fast to build and look excellent when completed, and 2) Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so (*).

I bought just the pre-painted versions of these models with a view to 'weathering' them a little at a later stage to make them all look similar. The painted versions are only a few pounds dearer than the unpainted ones so its a bit of a no brainer in terms of cost vs benefit IMHO. I now have enough buildings for a small town although I need a few more such as the Shop and Church which I will try to get at SELWG in a couple of weeks time. 

One things that is missing from the range though are any buildings with battle damage. They do these for their 28mm WWII range and I hope that eventually we will see some for their 15mm range as well. In the meantime I may - if I'm feeling brave enough - have a go at adding battle damage to some of my existing buildings. I also have plenty of MDF 'sprue' lying around and I'll test how easy it is to cut and 'distress'. If my experiments work well I may buy a couple of buildings expressly for the purpose of turning into battle damaged ruins.

13 comments:

  1. Nicely done lee. As for shops Where I was living in Germany some of the shops had a ground floor looking like theses (ther did have 3-4 floors above them though). But just the ground floor was shop space. SO Maybe not such a reason for dedicated shop models, especially pre 1950. (Just a thought)

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  2. I need to take a picture of all the buildings I have (these are just a couple of examples and I have six now).

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    1. They are nice. They are stronger and more damage resistant than resin and you can take the roofs off and get figures inside. When I compare the price against the equivalent painted resin building these look even better! Both these models were £13 painted or £8 unpainted.

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    2. You have to love wargamer maths. A couple of pounds more for thempainted, ends up being £5 more ;-)

      Ian

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    3. Lol, yes £5 more...but I was never good with numbers...or measuring movement distances and range...

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  4. Don't forget the dustmask if you're cutting/sanding/drilling MDF. I'd go with a jig- or fret-saw for trying to simulate larger damage (collapsed walls etc), bullet/shell holes easily done with drills.

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  5. They look great. I plan on getting some the 28mm ones at the moment I just have a shed like building but they where really easy to build and instructions easy to follow.

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  6. Nice work, and looking forward to seeing the full collection together.
    Cheers

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  7. Nicely done. No buying all the ones at SELWG - I was intending to get some too!

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  8. You mention that the roofs come off, what about the second floor? Is it practical to get figures in on the ground floor?

    Also, how do you plan to weather the buildings? I'd normally use a wash, but I'd be leery about getting MDF wet as liquid could cause unsightly disfigurement.

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    1. Yes each floor comes apart so you can get figures inside all levels. I have been working on one model to make it look damaged and burned out. I used a dark wash (GW Devlan Mud) to the outside. The mdf does absorb a lot of liquid but I didn't encounter any warping. These buildings are well constructed and once glued they lock together very strongly.

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  9. They look like a great product. I have some larger ones on there way to me for Saga games.
    Cheers

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