WWII and Adventure Table - the beginning.

[Galland]

So, it has started. Our gaming group, who playes a variety of games, started out on a jorney to create a few tables, suitable for Normandy WWII settings, and along with this a generic and small french coastal village. We will do these larger projects together as a common effort.

At first we started to look for commersially available houses for a normandy setting, something that we had decided to do for the Old West table, but we havent really found anything in 28mm scale that we like, besides a few bunkers, that have been purchased, primarely to get a feel for the scale, and to be able to copy the generell design in foam if we need more. Experience tell us that scratchbuilt and commersially available buildings seldom go well together, mainly due to the building style, no matter the quality of the former or the latter.

First out is a farmhouse building, something that FKNS is working on at the moment, he lives in Gävle here in Sweden, along with a few of the compadres in our group, the rest of us lives in Stockholm and on the island of Gotland. However, with modern communications, this is not a great hinder for any of us. It takes just a few hours to visit each others, something that we do on a regular basis. I will join them in Gävle for the weekend, with the purpose of helping out with painting and other smaller creations involved in the project. Naturally I hope for some great movies for inspiration and some good hangout with lots of coffee and BSing.
The last joint project was a pirate table that we used for SLAM (there are threads with great pictures in the Swashbuckler area and in the events area of the forum), and now we have Mordheim, Old West, Zombie Outbreak and a WWII / Pulp Adventure table in the pipe.

A lot of other stuff had to be bought and naturally assembled and painted for this to look good and to be of the standard that we want to have it. Civilian miniatures along with vehicles, and not to mention larger calibler artillery, primarely 105mm field guns and nebelwerfers along with Flak guns, wich all will serv more as objectives and game controled weaponry than actually be part of anyones force in the games.

I belive that we will do generic country side tables first, then add a beach sector, so that some of us can dig in to that part of the D-Day related combat. Boccage and farm areas, along with the generic little french village, will yield a lot of gaming potential in the end.

The first pictures, and the first small baby steps...



And the progress...

[joroas]

Sarissa have released a nice set of MDF houses suitable for Normandy.

[Galland]

Heya

I am not really fond of the MDF buildings, for any period, I much prefer resin or scratchbuilt, but thanks for the suggestion, and I will check them out.

[Bloodsbane]

Hah! Those are my pictures

I was gonna wait with posting anything here until it's a little more finished, but I'll roll with this.

To add some furhter detail on this project in particular, the screenshot in the background of the first pic is from Day of Defeat: Source. I used to play DoD pretty intensely back in the day, so it felt fitting to make my first WWII project something of a tribute.

I'm making this building out of a super-dense foamcore. It's crazy how good it is at picking up detail from carving and pressing stuff into it. I'll snap some proper closeups once it's painted.

The biggest WTF moment so far is Why haven't I been reinforcing all my foamcore constructions with sewing pins before now? Such a simple step that gives so much strength to the construction. Highly recommended!

I actually ordered 2 Sarissa houses the other day. I'm not a "path of least resistance" kind of guy though - I want my terrain boards a little bit unique and a little more detailed than the next guy's. So expect a "How I detailed my Sarissa MDF houses" article coming up eventually 

[Marine0846]

You all are off to a good start.
Having made a few buildings for Normandy battles,
 turned out to be lots of fun.
Look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[Kane]

FKSN, can we be expecting a how-to step-by-step guide? I'm currently working on terrain as well and I'm always looking for some good tutorials... (I'm currently trying some bocage stuff.)

[Trooper]

You could consider looking, if you have not already done so, at the Grand Manner 28mm resin range, they do a lot of the Carentan buildings. Prices are not cheap, and to be honest that scratchbuild is looking pretty good. Its worth looking at their website for some ideas though. I found Call of Duty maps a real inspiration when constructing my 54mm buildings.

[Galland]

As far as I am concerned we will probably stick to scratchbuilding houses, but if we do find houses that are good maybe we do some purchases. I am not sure, are there any 28mm houses in the WWII range that are of table-top worlds standard? Besides, using the lasercut stuff seems to be as much work as scratchbuilding in the end, to get all details and such (thats what have put me off so far, along with the usually very thin detailing).

I am sure we will get some good pictures out of this weekend of building, and I will post them as we get some progress to show hehe.

[Bloodsbane]

The Sarissa houses arrived, crazy fast!
Galland can speak for himself, I'm loving these things ^^ I foresee using these for most of my town houses, and focus my scratchbuilding efforts on the more esoterical stuff.

There's been some progress on the barn as well.
Here's where we're at:

[Furt]

Beautiful! I like the prefab houses a lot.

Your farm house is a real triumph though! Closeups please - the stonework looks amazing.

Also, what is super-dense foamcore exactly?

[Kane]

By the way, these guys have a pretty nice range of WWII era buildings too, among them a Norman church! http://www.miniaturebuildingauthority.com/products.asp?cat=25mm+European+Buildings

I was about to order the café, but then real life interfered with my hobby and I had to cancel . Just for your information guys ;-).

[Col.Stone]

Galland, i have a few GM-buildings, happy to show them in person next time you're up here=)

[Jim French]

Good Looking work so far!  Keep it up.

[Marine0846]

Really am impressed with the building you made.
Love the stonework.
The Sarissa houses look good.
May have to pick up some.

[Bloodsbane]

Not much progress to show on the barn, but after modelling and painting all weekend we finally tried the first example scenario in the Nuts! rulebook at 6am this morning. I'm pretty sure we got most rules wrong, and I don't think it's entirely designed for 4 rowdy players, but we had a great time with it.

I'm pretty happy with how the Sarissa houses turned out after some detailing as well. Closeups are coming, I promise!