Advice on buildings for a wee Scottish fishing village?

[Profane Creation]

I'm building up a small force of Deep Ones for some Call of Cthulhu-esque battling, and I'm looking to perhaps acquire some buildings to make what would be the start of a wee north-east coast fishing village filled with little terraced cottages and the occasional "paper shop", fishmonger, chippy, pub etc; all prefferable on a fairly tight budget. Loosely basing the look on places like West Wemyss in Fife and Johnshaven in Grampian. Other influences are Anstruther, Inverbervie etc. This is also inspired by a "city crawl" article in Miniature Wargames Magazine a puckle months ago.

So my options I guess are building them myself or looking for fairly cheap hooses (preferably from a UK source).

In terms of buying, I've found pmc.games auction on evilbay who do some rather splendid buildings (the Corner Building Set B is perfect!) for a decent price.
Also there is Warbases' 28mm Very British Civil War range which are a nice start but actually quite expensive for an unfinished product. But you do get quite a lot in each pack, and I can pebbledash them with PVA and sand anyway, with a quick spray and drybrushing, shouldn't take much.
I've got a couple Hovels buildings, and while they're very nice they're perhaps just a wee bit small for 28mm gaming; I know they're 25mm but I'd actually use them for 20mm.

Or I could build my own from scratch. In which case I need to think about which materials are best.

Then there's paper buildings, but they're not as sturdy, and can cost a lot in ink cartridges!

I do realise there's a fair chance I can't have my cake and eat it, but I'm sure I can at least get a nibble of it , so I'm begging of all you fine people's experience in the hobby to offer any advice, or point me in the direction of a manufacturer, or even have any of you done such a project before?. Any help is greatly appreciated folks!

Ohh, also if anyone knows of any 1/56 Ford Transit vans that would be suitable for possible "eco-terrorist" promotion-of-sustainable-fishing types (possibly to go with Black Cat fishermen and EM4 gangers once I get round to buying them) then that would also be greatly appreciated. I'm having difficulty with this one in particular!

[Red Orc]

Look at Thunderchicken's Victorian buildings. They may be in VSF or they may be in Workbench, but by god they're gorgeous. Also, Gamer Mac's pizza-tray house might give you some ideas. Papa Midnight has also done some splendid work building... buildings. Finally, there's a version of Burnmouth in Berwickshire around somewhere, I'm sure.

[Reuben]

Now this does sound like an interesting project!
For the Ford Transit van Cararama make one in 1/43
http://www.anticsonline.co.uk/1942_1_105768048.html
Sloppy Jalopy have a vehicle that's probably more in scale, but there's no pictures so I'm not sure how it looks.
http://www.sloppyjalopy.com/ (it's on the bottom of the UK order page marked 'civilian van')
This thread should be able to provide inspiration for a seaside town: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=4642.30 Around halfway down the page there are some lovely shops.

[Hammers]

This Innsmouth table may be inspirational to you:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=9254.0

[gamer Mac]

I have had a similar idea at the end of my project list for a while. Collected a load of photos for inspiration. I was thinking of doing Stonehaven. I was intending to make the buildings myself. I use black foam Pizza trays from tesco to scribe bricks.
Lke this


On this thread

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=18553.msg223450#msg223450

Have you tried Ebay for Models of Yesteryear or Lledo toy cars. You can usually get them very cheap and they scale up well with 28 mm.

Where are you based?

[D@rth J@ymZ]

Grimm's "Innsmouth Look" board (for Tactica if I remember correctly) was full of good stuff.  Scenery, buildings (exterior AND interior), vehicles, figs...truely inspirational:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=7251.45

[Profane Creation]

This is great stuff!! I'm looking through the links you've all posted and it's truly inspirational. I've bookmarked several of these links, and made a mental note of the others for when I get around to this project (I'm still in them iddle of stickign together small paper skyscrapers for Godzilla/Kaiju games!). Gamer Mac- great idea for those polystyrene trays!


And that Sloppy Jallopy now has a piccy, and it looks like it might well do nicely, and even the oldies might work too!

But please feel free to keep supplying me with more info. I'am also thinking if I can get a hold of either cork tiles or foamboard I'm going to try and build some terraced cottages with dormers too!

[Hammers]

Grimm's "Innsmouth Look" board (for Tactica if I remember correctly) was full of good stuff.  Scenery, buildings (exterior AND interior), vehicles, figs...truely inspirational:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=7251.45

I've had the honour to play on a couple of Grimm's Innsmouth boards. They are truly fantastic.

[Malebolgia]

I've bought a lot of houses from PMC Games (an eBay shop). They are excellent for Cthulhu gaming. They have a good size, are sold prepainted (and not too shabby either!) and at good prices. 20 euros for a painted resin house, including shipping is quite nice IMO.

[Profane Creation]

Malebolgia: Funny you should mention that, I'm looking closely at one oftheir auctions I'm really hoping to get tonight! it's the Corner Building Set B. I just wish they had their own actual shop, or had BIN options on Evibay


Hammers, I don't think I've even recovered yet after seeing Grimm's board! It's very much an inspiration.

[Burgundavia]

Ohh, also if anyone knows of any 1/56 Ford Transit vans that would be suitable for possible "eco-terrorist" promotion-of-sustainable-fishing types (possibly to go with Black Cat fishermen and EM4 gangers once I get round to buying them) then that would also be greatly appreciated. I'm having difficulty with this one in particular!

Matchbox does a 1:63ish scale one.

[Profane Creation]

Nice! Much appreciated.

[dreamingleopard]

Go to Google images and type in "1920's +Scotish +pub" or whatwouldyou.  Print off any appropriate photo or postcard(s) you desire and use them as building fronts,  if you absolutely must have it 3D.  The postcards have the advantage of colour for the pre-colour photography era.  (evilBay also is a great source for period postcards and vintage cigarette cards and so on).  It's rather difficult to find head-on shots of building fronts, though.  I use PhotoShop to warp the image of the building face to a rectangle and then tidy up any focus trouble with a sharpen tool.  Sometimes you can cheat if the building is symmetrical - just mirror image the near side of the building (after warping) to create the unfocussed distant side and then paste on any wording.  Keep in mind that what you take from the internet cannot be used for profit unless you do most of the work on the image to "make it your own."

One big advantage for 3D is the ability to hide adversary miniatures underneath the buildings, which can be designed to come off to show either intact innerds or a blasted shell of rubble.

But... there's a better solution if you're short on storage space:

Attach those pics with a hinge on a popup card.  Weight the bottom sides of the card with coins to keep the card flat when you play.  Forget the tape: cut two arcs, concave-style, per coin on each card side. You can even add pages to such a construction to allow for inside views of the buildings, including any "treasures" or "inhabitants" one finds there.  You can even put an encounter page there... write it like one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and put time durations for each clue.  It folds flat for storage, too, including the popup paper miniature of the deep one you so thoughtfully included there to surprise them!  LOL  Play it out on a battlemap with miniatures, though - even if you use homemade paper standups.

I find that the younger the mindset of my players, the more they need the concreteness of 3D.  The popup card makes a good transition for them to no scenery.

If I had the stamina to keep doggedly to a daunting task of creation long after I get bored, I'd try designing some popup 3D scenery.  Kudos to any of you who succeed at creating enough of it to sell.  It'd be more difficult to make than most card buildings though, and that could turn the customers off.

Yet, even as adults, we sometimes have trouble envisioning cultures in different eras.  Where my generation has had more exposure to the history of the twenties (even though we didn't live it!), we can imagine it well enough.  My adult children's generation can't do this so easily, so I save those pics to a computer filing system on a laptop and present them as needed while we play.  Saves time and paper and glue.  Still, for those times when I'll need an exploratory cave or a battlemat, I'll have my 2D Skeleton Key or 3D Fat Dragon Games pieces at hand.

If you're still hankering for paper constructions, check out Drive Thru RPG for the freebies (search for paper terrain).  There are also several sites that host free pdf's for such things.  Google comes to your rescue again.

Since a great many CoC scenarios take place in Lovecraft Country (Providence, Innsmouth, Salem, etc.), I am collecting pics for each locale as I run scenarios.  I could probably recreate a fair mockup of 1920 Providence in Google Sketchup now.  Maybe one day I'll see about doing just that.  Imagine your players virtually walking through Providence, by the post office, the police station, the firehall... and when they click to enter a building, the interior, and possibly their gleanings, pops up before their eyes...  One could program them to expend x minutes there, too... dispensing with the trouble of keeping up with that blasted timekeeping.

However you manage it, always keep in mind your storage space, your time to create, your setup time, and your wastage.  Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.

[Profane Creation]

Some interesting pieces of advice there dreamingleopard! I'd never thought about using images from postcards; it's definitely a very cost-effective (not to mention, as you'd said, SPACE-effective!) way to go. I might have a serious think about going down this avenue (to throw a pun in)!

[dreamingleopard]

Post script:  http://waybe.weebly.com/