@Cacique Caribe: Thanks! That was the idea. I'm way too much of a butterfly (and have too little space) to do a set of buildings for every single period I play.
I also really like rural, wooden buildings, no matter where in the world. So this should do nicely and kinda force me to finally get into playing the 1809 campaign in Poland (as short as it was). WW2 Eastern Front is something I can always get back into, but it's a grim business (as much as I love my collection for it); i got pretty much everything for that by now. But the Polish Napoleonic dudes I have to finish.
@has.been: It's all in the text.
It's also good to have a little thing to draw people's attention and wake them up in between such a long article. If I was in a line of work in which I'd have to do presentations I'd try to work in a slide showing a duck halfway through, just because. Btw, the duck picture is also an interesting one: When I saw this duck, I'd say it's a female, but in fact it's a male who shed his "fancy mating feathers". You can tell a de-fencified male from a female by the bill. Because males don't shed their bills (
), so it's yellow. Females always got the grey-ish ones. This is learned from writing the article.
@marianas_gamer: Thanks very much!
@Daeothar: Cheers!
@Spinal Tap: Thanks! Yeah, it was also nice to work towards a project. Somehow since the pandemic the thing of multiple people working on their collections, terrain and so on together we can play battle XY kinda vanished for me. I raised that point on twitter and was surprised to hear from many that this never really was a thing in their circles anyway, which is a bit sad. But maybe that's just how things are. Anyway, it was cool working toward this scenario. Adding to my German and Soviet collections, doing the terrain and so on. Then I played the game and throughout it was lovely and exciting. Which also was kind of lucky, because I played it a second time shortly thereafter and with a few tiny things changed and now knowing the scenario a bit better it ended up being extremely one-sided.
To clarify - the scenario's originally written for Bolt Action, I converted it to Big Chain of Command, so that's probably on me.
@Ruire: Thank you! I'm always glad to hear people actually reading these. I mean I'm happy when they enjoy the pictures, but with video being such a popular medium for presenting wargaming, tutorials and so on (and I have not the slightest idea why, but I won't get into that now), I'm always glad to hear when people say that they also enjoy the words in between the pictures.
@FreakyFenton: Thanks! Yes, I can get quite dedicated if it's concerning anything other than the things I SHOULD be doing.
Really got to be a fan of the towel method. I looked at a LOT of thatched roofs researching this, read how they're built and so on, especially between 18th and 20th century, and the results the towels give look more believable for the time. I think that on the early medieval buildings I made in 2015 the teddy fur looks OK. More archaic and stuff. But towels are cheaper, "easier to control" and give a very good look.
Oh right, I'm kinda obligated to add - if anybody's interested in having such (or any other) pieces of terrain made for them, please let me know.
As for things which I could/should add in the future - definately more vegetable patches and such, and at least one well. I looked into those, and the most fitting type probably is the most complicated one - the one with the long wooden stick used as a sort of lever to get the bucket down into the water and up again. Which sounds hard to store in general, but it should look nice. Maybe I also should add some sort of garden sheds. Oh, and a shed to park hand carts in. And wood sheds! The cool thing is that throughout history in 90% of cases when we talk about human dwellings and aren't sure what to add we instantly should ask ourselves these things: Where do they get their firewood from? Where do they get their water from? Such simple questions will give us ideas for several little pieces of "scatter terrain" to add. I love a good stack of wood by the houses (also enjoy splitting little model logs. Makes me feel like a lumberjack, and that's okay), but then we have to ask ourselves about a.) where the wood is chopped and b.) where do they put the BIG wood stack for the winter? And how do they keep it dry? All of that sort of stuff.
Btw, these hay wagons, handcarts and such which came with the few MDF buildings I added are rather fragile since they're made of MDf, which as we know, is prone to snapping and hard to fix. That's not a big problem. I'll keep them separate and just put them somewhere on the table as seen fit until one of the axles breaks (which inevitably will happen). Then I can just put it on a base and turn it into a "broken down hand cart" terrain piece. Which is almost more useful than the intact ones anyway.
Someone on a german forum also gave me a nice idea about a custom of putting plant pots upside down onto fences. Either for storage, for drying (often farmhands would also get their food in these clay pots which then would be washed and hung up to dry) or for various mystical reasons, which may vary from region to region. That would add a nice little flavour I think.
Oh, and then there's also the big other option: Since I kept the roofs removable I can switch them quite easily to either turn some of the thatched ones into the sheet metal or even corrugated iron roofs you see on more important village buildings in the 20th century or indeed do snowed-in roofs. So you see, there's still loads of stuff to be made.
...or I proceed to making sci-fi terrain, because a few years ago I bought a bunch of silly MDF sci-fi terrain, and I have no idea how ot make that look a bit nicer. Oh well. Let's see where the tides of fate take me.
edit: wow, that got a bit long. I'm considering putting a picture of a duck in there somewhere.
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