Source of 28mm Buildings?

[leonmallett]

Hers some plasticville stuff, seems reasonable for what you get but haven't used it myself.
http://www.darkhousegames.co.uk/page2.htm

The guy behind Dark House is a nice friendly trader, and well worth buying from.

As Rob mentions in the previous post the Cathedral works well as a church, and the aircraft hangar we use as a warehouse.

[Laughing Penguin]

Hers some plasticville stuff, seems reasonable for what you get but haven't used it myself.
http://www.darkhousegames.co.uk/page2.htm

I have to say, most of the Plasticville and K-Line stuff I've gotten my hands on I've been pretty unhappy with. There are a few buildings that work OK, but for the most part they seem very small compared to the actual figures. It might be a result of scale creep, but in many cases it looks like the figures I have wouldn't fit through most of the doors! Garages on most buildings are barely big enough for Matchbox cars, let alone the 1:43 vehicles I've been using, and buildings like the Town Hall can barely fit two figures front to back. I loved how the K-Line firehouse looked until I saw it in a shop, it looks better suited to 15mm than 28mm.

That said, I can see uses for things like the airplane hangar as a warehouse (certainly not as a 28mm-scale airplane hangar), and there are a couple I've seen that are 'close enough' such as the hospital (which still feels very small to me for it's purpose) but my dissatisfaction with the O-scale train scenery is part of what prompted me to start this thread. YMMV, of course...

[Rob_bresnen]

I disagree. I think buildings and vehicals should be slightly underscale so they don't dominate the table. A real scale aircraft hanger would probably cover most of my table. It would be too big to be practical. I like the scale of Plasticville.

[Laughing Penguin]

I disagree. I think buildings and vehicals should be slightly underscale so they don't dominate the table. A real scale aircraft hanger would probably cover most of my table. It would be too big to be practical. I like the scale of Plasticville.

They don't feel slightly underscale though, many feel comically tiny by comparison. Placed on bases, some figures can almost see into second-story windows of some of the buildings. Then again, for me, the buildings shouldn't just be scenery to decorate the table and block LOS, they should be playable peices.

I prefer the minis to be able to fit inside and interact with the buildings in semi-plausible ways, so when I see a K-Line firehouse it should be able to hold a firetruck of roughly the correct scale (I have one I bought from TRU that is a bit small but close enough), but the one I saw isn't even close... it holds 2-3 figures from front to back and most minis look like they'd need to duck to fit through the garage doors. Aesthetically speaking it's far better than anything I could build, but it looks so *wrong* compared to the figures I'm putting on the table, and it's certainly not a playable piece of terrain.

IMO, if the game is going to put the players into an aircraft hangar, it SHOULD cover most of the table, those things are BIG! Unless they're for very small planes, of course, like 2-seater prop planes. If the game brings the setting to such a hangar, I'd want it to feel like a hangar. If there was no reason to enter the hangar, I might make it just a front to give the idea or just have them near the terminal instead, but the hangar from Plasticville really doesn't work for that purpose in 28mm gaming. It does seem to work well if re-purposed for a small warehouse however, and in that context it's one of the few Plasticville buildings I might use going forward.

[anevilgiraffe]

I think K-Line is underscale... I have the K-Line factory and the doors are way undersized for 28mm... nothing a sharp knife hasn't fixed... not that I've finished

had no problems with Plasticville so far...

[Hawkeye]

You're right about the K-Line factory, anevilgiraffe - as is, it just doesn't work with 28mm models. I haven't plucked up the courage to fix mine for 28mm gaming, though.
On the Plasticville discussion, though, I've found that a lot of the O/S scale stuff seems to work. Is the supermarket, say, smaller than a "real world" supermarket? Absolutely. But you just use it as a convenience store instead. "Repurposing" the plasticville buildings this way works well, I think, since I've found that usually models will move around buildings, more than moving inside them. When they are inside, it's usually for cover when they're shooting at models outside, so it works pretty well, although it is, of course, always subjective.

[Doomsdave]

My superhero threads showcase a lot of plasticville and K-line buildings which scale pretty well with Heroclix figs (door and window wise).  And HC are on the largish side when compared to other mini makes.  I think it's more of selecting the right buildings.  Som of the older Plasticville, like the hangar, are smallish.  The newer ones seem to be better for the most part.  YMMV one of my threads with pics below.


http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=20015.0

[Laughing Penguin]

Who made the apartment buildings in that thread? I'd be interesting in getting a better look at them...

[Neotacha]

Did I totally miss someone suggesting Miniature Building Authority?  Maybe rather pricier than you want, but they do have some modern buildings ready to play with.

[pierrebi]

paper and free avalaible in this forum http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226343&page=7

[bigmanfran]

Very nice got a little set up on my non profit blog if you scroll down a little..

 http://theangrylurker.blogspot.com/

Mostly 0 scale plastic train buildings.

[The Great Mahoo]

I recently picked up a few Armorcast buildings, hoping to add some buildings to my terrain collection even with my lack of time to do more projects. 

The top-down feel to them, where they are designed to lift the building rather than just a roof is a bit odd, but not too hard to work around.  I just mounted them on plastic-card cut to make a floor for them.  Works great for 1-storey buildings, but the upper-floor module is floors 2+3 together, so to access floor 2 you remove the walls and everything still.  I only have 1 of these so far, and just made the second floor open storage area to minimize things inside to worry about for placement.

I just got the buildings primed last night, but will try to get a few picks up soon.  I'm not sure how long it will take me to get around to finishing them given my hectic schedule these days, but I am going to try to get them done soon so I can use them!


One note, though.  For the work in cleaning, sanding and assembling the wall structures well (some walls were in pretty poor shape, not very straight and what not) I feel I could have spent the same amount of time and make foam-board buildings from scratch.  These ought to prove more durable, though, so I won't completely rule them out of future purchases just yet.  I do really want to add another dozen or so buildings to make some city games more interesting.

[apeekaboo]

@The Great Mahoo:
Interesting to hear your thoughts on the Armorcast buildings. Looking forward to seeing some pics.
Do you have any pics showing how the buildings open up, before you customized them?

My own limited experience of buying resin terrain pieces, shows that the quality differs a lot between different manufacturers.
I guess much comes down to what kind of plastics they use for molding?

@pierrebi:
Love the IKEA building!

[The Great Mahoo]

Here are some photos of the armorcast buildings I have.  I won't get around to working on them for a bit, so please excuse these WIP buildings.  They have been primed with spray-paints, and have had some interior walls added.  I still need to cut roof for them (since Armorcast sent wrong pieces, or the walls wouldn't square to the one correct one I did receive).  No biggie on that, though.  I also plan to paint them up and add some interior pieces.

The models shown are Foundry Outlaw Scum and Copplestone Future Wars.

[Rob_bresnen]

These are nice. Are they very expensive?