Ain’t Gonna Work on Maggie’s Farm No More

Long time, no post. Believe it, or not, I have been busy!

It’s far from perfect, but my Normandy farmhouse is coming along fairly nicely. It needs further weathering, and the stone lintel isn’t working so well, but I’ve learned a lot, and it will definitely work for my gaming table. Finishing up those couple of details and creating a ‘yard’ and a couple of small outbuildings to go with it is next on the agenda. Anywho, here’s a before and after shot.

You might remember this early progress shot

 

I’ve also been working on a terrain mat for some wild west game (and it’s largely done) and a few cacti for said game. That’s all nearing fruition, and there will be a post about it soonish.

In the category of REALLY BIG FREAKING NEWS I’ve found another historical wargamer in Northwest Arkansas. Oh happy day! He’s totally into doing 20mm WWII skirmish and likes the Lardies’ rules. His favorite subject is the American Civil War, and that’s also totally cool. I’ve bought figures for it. And Rules. I have a lot of catching up to do on the ACW front. Expect to see an acceleration in completion of projects here at Arkiegamer, now that I have an actual opponent on the line. One that’s willing to paint his own stuff, even!

I’m a bit excited.

On the Workbench

So, I’ve been ‘working’ fairly hard on my WW2 skirmish stuff. I have a baker’s dozen of Panzergrenadiers completed, and have been scratchbuilding a 2 story farmhouse.

Two Story Farmhouse and Silvered Decals

Construction of the house is foamcore (1/4″), basswood (for the floors), embossed plasticard for the stone wainscot, tile adhesive for the stucco, and scribed plasticard for the shutters and other details.

It’s impossible to tell, but the basswood floor was scribed and stained. Not particularly effective.

I spent some time scribing the basswood floor with an X-acto knife and then did an ink wash, hoping it would pick up the detail. It looked great when wet, but there’s hardly a hint of the planks after everything dried.

Watch out for that MG-42…

I lament my inability to get my germans to look anything other than dull dull dull.

The little farmhouse design is from a building I found in Trimble Sketchup’s 3d warehouse, which is a repository of 3d models. I exported elevation views of the computer model, scaled them, printed them out, and used them as templates for cutting the foamcore. I’ve built it up from there.

I know a typical Normandy farmhouse would most likely be 100% native stone, but I was really in no mood for scribing that much foamcore, and the model railroad stonework I was able to find locally was not of the right scale. In fact, the stone wainscot that IS there is HO scale brick that I’ve scuffed up in hopes that it will look like stone when painted.

The building still needs another coat of stucco to conceal the foamcore edge lines, a couple of interior partition walls to help hold up the roof. And a roof. Which will be the most labor intensive part.

We’ll see how she paints up in a few days. Well, maybe weeks.