finding myself at a crossroads. - UPDATE: Things happened!

[Cat]

@Cat: Oh, I'm liking the Things from the Basement buildings! Not sure they're available this side of the Atlantic though...

4Ground had been carrying the line, but alas they are now gone.
 
If you contact TFTB, Joerg can get you a quote for shipping and see how painful it might be.  If you're super lucky, he might be planning a trip to Germany and can bring it over to post from there.

[OSHIROmodels]

The more I think about it, if I was in your position, first thing would be to ask James to quote for doing them....

(if he goes down this route, Jim, I expect a small finders fee  )

 

[Warboss Nick]

Another vote for „depends”, and I happily combine MDF, resin, plastic and DIY buildings in a setup. Not much resin though due to cost and weight. That being said, one huge pro for MDF is playability IMHO. In skirmish Settings like WW2 I really like buildings to be fully playable inside. But I do enjoy pimping MDF sets.

[Codsticker]

Another vote for „depends”, and I happily combine MDF, resin, plastic and DIY buildings in a setup. Not much resin though due to cost and weight. That being said, one huge pro for MDF is playability IMHO. In skirmish Settings like WW2 I really like buildings to be fully playable inside. But I do enjoy pimping MDF sets.

Same. I have resin, plastic, MDF and 3D printed terrain and enjoy the positive aspects of all of them and can tolerate the downsides. I also enjoy pimping MDF buildings. If i had my druthers I would tart up MDF structures with 3d printed and resin details.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Pan Marek: Thanks. They were suggested earlier, and they do look very nice. Not sure if the hassle of ordering from the US is much better than ordering from the UK...

@Cat: Aye, so there was something bad about 4Ground going away! (just kidding). Good call on contacting Mr.Basement, cheers.

@Warboss Nick: I think you're right. As long as it's all on the table and painted in a similar way it'll probably all fit anyway.

@Codsticker: Yeah, I also find some joy in making MDF buildings look tolerable. It's always the same with those, isn't it:  I get them in the pack, "oh, that'll be a breeze and I'll have terrain piece YX", buildbuildbuild, oh that's a bit more time intensive than I thought. Then the thing's built (unless it's gotta be left apart for painting), oh that looks hideous, and then the real work begins.


Well, a friend of mine (who builds tremendously pretty little 15mm buildings) made me consider scratchbuilding. I was also egged on by kingsmt. I ordered a bunch of wooden sticks and will see if I get some sort of Finnish carboard or what it's called in English or cork sheets or foamboard or somthing like that. Let's see how that turns out. If anything comes of it due to lack of time.

[kingsmt]

Good luck!!

If you need any help with something, feel free to shoot me a message.
I know lots of little tips that may make your life easier!!

[Blackwolf]

Hmmm. Late to the show,however I must say the amount of work one puts into mdf has lead me to scratch build entirely,the roofing is a particular bugbear; so resin , or build my own…
You’re a talented chap Sigur, I know that it is time consuming 

[Codsticker]

@Codsticker: Yeah, I also find some joy in making MDF buildings look tolerable. It's always the same with those, isn't it:  I get them in the pack, "oh, that'll be a breeze and I'll have terrain piece YX", buildbuildbuild, oh that's a bit more time intensive than I thought. Then the thing's built (unless it's gotta be left apart for painting), oh that looks hideous, and then the real work begins.

I always find the basic structure that MF produces to be satisfactory; where it really fails is in the details IMO. If I were to sit down design and construct a building to the same tolerances as MDF it would take quite a time and still would not fit together as well. I can assemble and glue an MDF structure together in an evening and then spend a couple of weekends cladding it how I want, adding trim and other details and I get a lot of satisfaction out of that part of it.

[eilif]

One other point I'll make. 

While High-end MDF kits can give you a result that is as visually good as any other methods (sometimes better than most), sometimes this results in structures where the detailing is somewhat fragile and you lose the durability aspect that many folks expect of MDF.   

I've noticed that some of the 4Ground and Black Site Studios terrain I acquired from a friend of mine have some pretty fiddly/fragile details.  It's not all those brand's kits and it's nothing that can't be taken care of with careful storage, but many high-end MDF kits (especially those with card details) approach model railroad levels of detail and correspondingly similar levels of fragility of the finer details.  They do look fantastic though.

[bluewillow]

Personally I am going the 3d printed route, I have a lot of resin buildings already, but as I play with 20mm and 28mm I felt I could produce some nice pieces on the printer. I buy the files set the printer and come back 24 hours later. About half hour clean up then undercoat, ready for terrain Tuesday at my house.

MDF take time to prep, glue and then improve and never been a fan really.

Cheers
Matt

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@kingsmt: Thanks very much for the offer!

@Blackwolf: Cheers. Yes, the roofs usually have to be replaced. I'll put some further thoughts about MDF vs. scratchbuilt below.

@Codsticker: Yup, that's the thing. You get the MDF kit out, appreciate the smell and the engineering (usually.), and think that'll be a breeze. It usually is, then the thing is there, usually about 70% built, because with MDF it can be smarter to leave some bits off for separate painting. Then it stands there, looking dissatisfactory, and that's when the actual work starts.

@eilif: Good points there. The concept of "high-end MDF kits" always struck me as a little odd (not to mention 'pre-coloured' MDF kits), because MDF just doesn't look that good by itself. It matters little, if they put an outer layer with a perfect crack in it around the wall or add tiny little details made from - as you correctly point out - rather brittle and very hard to repair material. I will admit that I get a little kick out of the way 4Ground kits are engineered, because there are some nice ideas there to be found, but in the end it's just MDF, which to me is "the cheap option to build upon".

@blutwillow: Yeah, those machines are able to deliver some impressive results by now.



Hello. :-)



Well, I went and made this. There are some more smaller bits, but overall this is the first batch of buildings for my "Eastern European" village/hamlet/what ever. Two barns (from Kromlech's well-made Poland 1939 range). I also got the cottage from that range which I actually built two houses from. Then I made four more buildings from scratch as well as a tiny little hut (which ended up pretty tall for some reason. Maybe they use it to store fishing rods, but all it makes me think of is groundskeeper Willy's little shack.

For the windows and door frames I made an order with Warbases, same with the little adornments along the roof edges and such. Some of the buildings I did the outer walls with coffee stirrers as boards, on most though I went with something I'd seen on the What a Cowboy Facebook group - somebody used rather thick coffee stirrers made from bamboo, measuring 8x2mm. I cut those to a more half-round shape to look a bit more like wooden logs and covered the walls in those.

Given that these are (mostly) scratch-built, I made sure to make look each one look a bit different. Maybe it'll end up more like one of those model villages in which a building company displays all the different models.

Roofs as you can see are part tiled, part thatch. I actually had tiles most of the roofs already when I was struck witht he idea that thatch would look better and make more sense for most buildings. My initial hesitance from using thatch was because I already got rather rural-looking buildings with tatched roofs which I made in 2013 ( https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/06/tutorial-my-kind-of-town-make-of-dark.html) . Back then with teddy fur, this time from towels.

Originally this project should make me help get over my dislike for 3d printing. Somehow I didn't manage to get a single bit of this printed though, either because of lack of planning or not wanting to bother 3d printing friends. Or because there are no files for what I've been looking for, ie traditional, richly adorned windowframes. Oh well. I'll have to see what I do about those in general. I got MDF ones from Warbases now. Technically I shouldn't have glued them on for ease of painting, but knowing myself and knowing that I have no idea when exactly I get to paint these, I realized that I surely would misplace or at least mismatch window frames if I didn't glue them on right away.

So the build of the houses is almost done I'd say. MAYBE I'll try to give the roof tiles a bit more texture. MAYBE I'll do something about some of the window frames to give them a third dimension. First and foremost though the buildings need doors and some still need a chimney. Then I'll see about building bases with gardens and whatnot.

Well, so much for this update, hope you like the things so far, even though there isn't that much to see yet. See you in another 8 months.

[bluewillow]

Personally Resin and plastic kits first, then 3D prints if you have a printer. Mdf just looks fake to me without a lot of work.

Look at the Pegasus range of plastic buildings for the east, then some Resin pieces.

My tw cents

[ced1106]

Those buildings look great!

I'm almost done putting together a pre-printed Plast Craft Japanese warship thing, and I can finish it up in two days. Much faster than an unpainted plastic model kit. A bit late, but the Plast Craft *wooden* buildings look good, but I don't like the "fake" printed look of the stone houses. For the warship, the printed sides look great, but the nonprinted wooden parts are pretty obvious.

I also use Battle Systems on the table. Still looks like cardstock (especially the glossy sides) and I wouldn't use it for round things (eg. barrels), but has some incredible artwork you can't paint. You can paint the edges of the cardstock for good effect, still faster than a complete paintjob. If you buy from Miniature Market (customer holds), you can at least get the 4' fences for $7 and save yourself a *lot* of time.

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/19/19123.phtml
https://www.miniaturemarket.com/bstfwa001.html

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@bluewillow: Cheers. Yeah, just the other week or so somebody posted really nice results he got from the Pegasus buildings. At some point one of these hell machines (3d printers) probably is inevitable, yeah.

@ced1106: Thank you very much. That article on rpg.net is pretty cool. Impressive, what people can get out of these Battle Systems stuff. In the past I didn't hear the best things about the Plast Craft kits, so I never tried them.

Yeah, I guess I'm committed to scratch-building now, suplemented by the odd MDF kit by Kromlech (which are surprisingly good for the price).

Here's the latest (sorry for the horrible photo):


full size image:

..and better picture of stuff that counts:

[Grumpy Gnome]

Great work, those look excellent!