Thursday 13 December 2018

Normandy Buildings.3.

Every Normandy village needs a church and Tiger Terrain make an excellent one. The package I bought came with an intact tower and optional ruined parts for extra flexibility. I see on the website the model has been updated and now comes with removable roofs and a detailed tiled floor though mine is the original version, open at the base and with integral roofs.


I used the same basic painting method as for the other buildings but also picked out a few individual stones with the splodge colours to break things up and make it look more interesting.

Finally, here are all these new buildings, plus a couple of older Hovels buildings that I had painted in brick colours. I don't like to see buildings just dropped down onto the plain playing surface so scenic bases for those buildings lacking them are certainly on my to do list but it might take a while for them to get to the top of it.



The Cromwells are from Skytrex with commander figures and the Humber Scout Car from Peter Pig, all painted as 2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry from 11th Armoured Division.

I still have one more Tiger Terrain building to paint and I'm very tempted by their Town Hall but I really need to make some progress with the lead pile and complete my other scenery projects before buying anything else. 

Wednesday 12 December 2018

Normandy Buildings.2.

I clearly needed more buildings for 1944 Normandy. Unlike for the Italian Wars, for this period the Wargamer is almost spoilt for choice with many manufacturers offering models in 15mm. However, many of these didn't really match what I was looking for. I'm not a fan generally of MDF buildings as they just look too sharp and unconvincing (without a lot of extra work) and many of the resin models seemed too small, badly moulded, lacking in detail or just too generic.

Online image searches led me to the excellent models from Tiger Terrain. I can't speak highly enough of these - they actually look Norman and the attention to detail, modelling and production quality are absolutely first class. The prices and service are good too and there is a wide range of models covering town and rural buildings.

The first ones I painted were these two bomb or shell damaged village houses. They came complete with a cratered garden to create a small diorama but I left them as three separate pieces to give extra flexibility in arranging the village layout for different games.


One thing I really need to do is find some suitable lettering for a name above the shop - every French village needs a boulangerie and a café!


Next came a farm. One of the good things about the Tiger Terrain website is a gallery of painted buildings, several set on scenic bases and this inspired me to do something similar. As well as the buildings, the walls are Tiger Terrain but the base is just a piece of MDF cut to size and textured with filler and sand, using the same methods, paints, static grass and clumps that I use for basing. The trough and pump were scratch built from card, plastic rod and wire with the water in the trough represented with epoxy glue.



One thing I really struggled with was getting the stone colours right. I tried to follow the recommendations on the Tiger Terrain website or to replicate the typically subtle colours that Simon Chick achieved with his Tiger Terrain models but my colours came out too yellow or too grey. In the end I found a balance that I thought looked nice, albeit more Cotswold than Calvados. 

I mostly used (relatively) cheap Deco Art craft paint from my local Hobbycraft. The base coat is Country Maple then a heavy dry brushing of Antique Gold - essentially yellow ochre. To break things up I dry brushed patches of Storm Cloud Grey and Sandstone then gave the whole a light dry brushing of a mix of Sandstone and Antique Gold to blend it in, finally adding some white for hi-lights.