I need more buildings!

 Although I have plenty of figures, I'm aware that buildings are something on which I'm rather short, especially for zombie games in an urban environment.

The basic sections with doors & windows cut out.

 This post was going to be about building the cityscape (well, a small part of it anyway), but instead it's ended up being about an off-cut that I removed from my sheet of foamcore before I started work on the city.

Edges "distressed" and ready for assembly.

I decided that they were just large enough to use for some ruins to go with my desert dwellings, all of which have been built as intact structures so far.

Building 1.

They'll provide some extra cover to bulk out the desert games but shouldn't take nearly as long to build as the multi-storey intact buildings.

Building 1 alternative view.

Note how I made use of the slightly shorter bits of wall by adding a doorway in the middle so the building is still a regular rectangle.  Windows are 10mm above ground level and are 10x10mm or 5x10mm in size, doorways are 15x20mm.

Building 2.

And finally a view of the first of my big city buildings in flat-pack pre-assembly form.  It's foamcore with thick card (1mm, quiet tough to cut!) used to add surface detail. I've tried using cork tiles in the past but I don't really get on with it so these days I just use foamcore as the basis for most structures.

City building.

Desert Village

Well, after several months I've finally managed to finish off my Afghan-style desert dwellings.  These will be used in modern games, they'll also appear in the more arid desert regions on the colony world of Gordon's Gamble.

I started working on this back in May 2011, but work ground to a halt just after I'd applied the initial texturing.  This was mainly because I'm lazy and flit from project to project when I get to any difficult bits, in this case trying to create a dome for the mosque/meeting hall!

Here is the finished article - plastic ball former covered with cling-film received a papier-mache base layer followed by a coating of thick plaster of paris.  A good firm sanding smoothed it down and it was fixed to a foamcore roof with than cardboard edges.  Texturing helped bring the whole lot together and concealed any defects in the construction!

Windows are made of that mesh stuff you use for cross stitch, carefully cut to size and PVA glued in place.

The largest building, also the tallest.  The little canopy at the front is glue-soaked kitchen towel and cocktail sticks.

 All the roof sections lift off.  In this case, the top section is completely square so that you can position it 4 different ways.

Some buildings have stairs, others have ladders.  I imagine that this one has stairs inside to first floor level, then the little ladder to the roof.  Ladders are chopped up matchsticks and balsa scraps.

 All the buildings have received a thick coat of Dulux weathershield masonry paint which I hope will be long lasting and wear resistant.  The roof areas were painted in the sand colour first, then lightly stippled with the white, leaving dusty areas in the corners.

 I'm pleased with the end result.  The yellow matches our gaming club's desert boards, so they'll fit in nicely.

Afghan Houses part 2

Works progresses on the Afghan houses...

The one on the far right with 3 arched doorways will be some sort of meeting house (for far off sci-fi adventures) or mosque (for modern Asian/Middle-Eastern games). It will have a domed roof - once I've added enough layers of papier mache over the plastic ball former that I'm using!


They've been painted with a thick & gloopy mixture of PVA and filler, cheap white poster paint and Windsor & Newton burnt umber acrylic added for colour. It gets painted on thickly, then stippled to give some texture.

A large 3-storey building will be the centre of the settlement.

A few people for scale...

Afghan / Middle Eastern Houses

Inspired by Force on Force and having read Attack State Red and a few other books recently, I've been building a few Afghan style houses. I'm using 5mm foamcore.




I've gone for 25mm high walls. This allows a 20mm high door, plus 10mm square windows, set 10mm above ground level, leaving a 5mm strip along the top to keep it all together.

I've cut one side of the card plus all the foam away at one end of each wall.

This means I get a nice butt-joint on each corner, giving stronger joints and smoother walls - no exposed lines of foam at the edges which will show through the texturing/painting.

The basic buildings assembled - things are starting to take shape...

I'm giving them all a flat roof for now. I've gone for 1, 2 and 3 storey structures. Some have chopped-up matchstick ladders to provide roof access.

Others obviously have internal stairs to the first floor, then a ladder to the top.

Some just have external stairs.

Each storey is separate, allowing me to position people inside and forget about them, thus losing the game because I can't keep track of where everyone is.

Hmm... hang on, I may have to rethink this last part of the plan!