Plancenoit buildings for our Waterloo game (Update 25.10. Finish!)

[Admiral Benbow]

As every year it's about time for some special terrain features for our upcoming game at the Crisis show in Antwerp in November. This year we'll have a Waterloo anniversary game with focus on the prussian relief attack on the belgian village Plancenoit which led to the final defeat of Napoleon in the end. My club mates did a deep research into the archives to create a historically correct plan of the small town while keeping playability in mind. My part will be to create one of the most iconic scenes of that attack into miniature buildings, the famous painting "The prussians storm on Plancenoit" by Adolf Northern from 1864:



It's a dramatic scene with two buildings framing the storming prussian troops. The one on the right is nicely detailed and I'll try to create most of the details shown, and the left one will leave much more artistic freedom as there is only the ruined annex shown and not much of the building itself.

So where to start? How to get proportions right, and how to come to some useful measurements? I started to scan the web for contemporary drawings and pictures of similar buildings from the area and found quite some useful stuff. I was even more lucky as the US company "First Legion" did those exact buildings from the painting for their 54 mm range of historical miniatures for collectors. Some of their pics were downloaded and then printed and I could start some exact measuring and calculating to find a ratio to transfer the main features of the buildings to about 1/60 scale.






My drawings were transfered to 5 mm foamboard (Styrodur) and cut out. The gable walls were cut from 3 mm material as they must be sandwiched from two parts to get a supporting frame for the roof. All parts were only fixed with needles during this stage of the modelling, not glued together.






As you can see some pieces of plastic brickwork were glued into pre-cut slots where the plaster would be chipped and brickwork visible. I used I used WILLS 00 scenic materials plain bond brickwork for this as it's very niceley cut and modelled and superior to other brands for my taste.



I scribed a wooden floor into a thin piece of balsa, glued it to the house's floor and painted it with some dark acrylic stain. The inner walls got a coat of thinned down plaster-with-paint-mix as they would not be easily accessible when glued together, and some nicely laser-cut windows from Andy Slater had been prepainted and glued into the openings now. Then all walls and the floor could be glued together, fixed with needles again and left to dry thoroughly.










The last two pics already show the removable attic floor I build from wood strips. The model will be fully accessible later for placing miniatures inside firing out of the windows and from the roof openings.




So far for today. Next time: the roof construction ...

 

[von Lucky]

Ooooo this is going to be special.

[Andym]

Great start!

[Thunderchicken]

This is going to be good! 

[OSHIROmodels]

Watching with interest Michael 

Your builds are always superb 

cheers

James

[gamer Mac]

Stunning amount of work for one day of building
Looking forward to seeing the results

[dampfpanzerwagon]

Very good, very, very good.

I look forward to seeing more.

Tony

[Admiral Benbow]

Stunning amount of work for one day of building
Looking forward to seeing the results

Yes, that would be nice ...   But I worked on the house for some days now, I guess around 10 hours working time all in all. Plus research time and preparing the working plan.

[Cadet13]

This is great! 

I shall follow with keen interest!

[FramFramson]

This is going to be good!

[rumacara]

Very nice work so far.

[Driscoles]

You guys do incredible looking things for our hobby.
I am sure it will be fanta when its completed !

[Monty]

Stunning stuff, Michael! 

As always I'm looking forward to follow the progress on those buildings. Really inspiring.   

[Hu Rhu]

That is a fantastic project.  Great idea about the removeable upper roof.  cant wait to see the finished project.

[Malamute]

Watching with interest Michael  

Your builds are always superb  

cheers

James

Yes, seconded.Brilliant as always