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Looks great I like the holtz matt.. was thinking about getting that for demo boards but I went with Zuzzy and mounted them to a 2x2 piece of plywood. Now that I know how much carrying around I gotta do at cons I think I'm gonna look into Holtz instead so I can just roll em up and they'll be light

Filbert those buildings are great. I really like your cacti, too! Adds a nice touch.

Necros sorry if I missed it, but is there a US source for those Battleflag buildings?

As far as I know it's just all from the UK right now, but last time I made an order it didn't take too long. They're good people over there

Looks great.

Got my Burn In Designs western buildings today.

My first impression is that I should use Elmers Wood Glue on them.. but, maybe that is a bad idea. I tend to use that glue to repair chairs or other large wood furniture etc...

Any suggestions for gluing wood designs togeather for a hobby purpose?

Actually I use plain ole elmers white glue, no problems at all yet.

Lately what I've been doing is spray painting the buildings and assembling after.. Like I'll spray all of the walls one color, then the window trims another color, and glue them on after. I find it's kind of a pain to paint them after you build them.

Anyone got any tips for painting the BattleFlag buildings? The wooden planking effect is simply burnt into the panel rather than shallow cut or anything like that so I am worried that painting over it will make it look like the building is one solid block of colour rather than painted wooden planks. Or does the burnt in plank effect show through the paint? Anyone had experience of painting these? How did you do it? Do you paint one whole colour and then go over the plank lines after with a pen or something?

You could always use a knife to cut some shallow grooves into the wood, that might help accentuate the details.

 cybogoblin wrote:
You could always use a knife to cut some shallow grooves into the wood, that might help accentuate the details.

I think that is the way forward; I just wondered if people 'stained' the wood somehow rather than paint it in the conventional way so that the plank detail still shows through under the colour?

I am going to have to wait a month or 2 for a good priming day outdoors..

wife put a kibosh on spray painting inside the house.. (obviously her priorities are out of whack)

I've been painting up a bunch to get more buildings for demos.. what I did was I went and got a bunch of different spray paints, flat/satin colors not gloss/enamel. I spray all the walls 1 color, then I spray the window & door trim another, and then the roof and boardwalks in a brown color. Then I glue the trim and everything together with plain old white glue. And then for weathering, I use Minwax water based wood stain, and I just brush it on like you'd wash a figure. I use a sopping wet brush to brush it on so it's not too dark, and then do extra coats if I need them. It makes a nice effect because the wood soaks up some of the spray paint instead of the paint just coating it, so you get little spots where the stain shows through more and it gives it a more weathered look.. plus it fills in the cracks between the wall planks so they stand out better. I bought the wood stain in a mini can like 3 years ago and it's not even half gone, a little goes a long way.

I also found it's a lot easier to do the window trim that way, for some reason it's a pain for me to paint them when they're already glued on.

I've also painted some with just the plain wood stain and that works too if that's the look you want.. but since it's MDF wood all it really does is tone down the tan color a bit, you don't really get any kind of wood grain effect since there's no grain in the wood itself.

wanted to share this train that I just found thanks to the fine folks on lead-adventure.de .. the Fastlane Western Express


it's a toy train set, comes with track and a few cars. I can't find the old post I read the other night where a guy repainted it and it looked really good, and it's the perfect size for the game.

Going to be ordering up 1 or 2 sets and painting them up for the gencon gang war event, I'll probably do a painting blog for it

It was Rob_Jedi's thread, I believe.
http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=46818.0

I thought it looked to be the right size too. I plan to pick up one sometime soon.

I just picked one up. It is a good base for conversions at only 30 dollars. It is a bit of a flimsy POS, but a good piece of terrain that you can easily modify to have playable interiors.

OK, so I have built my western buildings from Burn IN, and thanks to Necros, spray painted the large bits and small PRIOR to assembly.. and they look "good".

However, they look FLAT and large areas of solid color..

I want to weather them, and make em look like "real" buildings and really don't know how to go about doing that.

My initial thought was to use a large wide brush and drybrush dark gray and then a second layer of light gray up and down (not side to side) to make em look weathered, but.. would love to hear other ideas or colors for that..

Yeah spraying the solid colors is more like a base coat that will still look good if you want to stop there. I don't weather enough :( but what I use is water based Minwax wood stain.. water based so I don't have to worry about paint thinner and all that stuff. I wouldn't use GW's washes for buildings just because you'll use up a lot of it real quick.

So I just water down the wood stain, and paint it all over. Then when it drys, paint on another watered down layer in spots that would be dirtier, like under windows or in corners. The more layers you do the darker it will get.

You can also use powder pigments if you want a dusty look. Any kind of sand colored powder would work good, but you will need to spray it with matte varnish at the end or you'll end up rubbing it off if you touch it.

Just came across this cool scratch built gold mine board Would be perfect for a 3D version of Curse of the Skinwalker when we finally get that finished

http://onemanhisbrushes.blogspot.com.ar/2013/07/the-mine-part-1.html

Well since this thread has already been brought back up and I missed it earlier, I just have to say- Killer town, filbert!! Very very cool

I prefer card buildings and use Finger and Toe Models www.fingerandtoe.com. Here are a few pictures of my set up at Wartorn 2013, Scarborough, UK.

I just found a great blog reviewing all the different laser cut building companies out there. A good read if you want to start building out your town Lots of photos too

http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-28mm-laser-cut.html

I have been scratch building western buildings and assembling several different kits from Tri-City and Gamecraft.

I have to say that while it is relatively easy to scratch build western buildings, it is very nice to use a building kit, and the costs, depending on what products you go with, can be pretty reasonable considering the time and effort saved.

I've found that Gamecraft buildings have a lighter, more realistic feel to them. They can be tricky to assemble, and you have to sort of just...figure it out...but the finished products are nice and reasonably priced. However, I really love the Knuckleduster Tri-City Laser buildings, and they are far better for gaming purposes in my opinion.

First off, they all include floors, and this is a HUGE benefit. It makes assembly easier, the buildings are sturdier, and you can store furniture, scenery, etc. in them. Second, the material is stronger. The plywood is thicker than MDF (though they have gone thinner with detailed surfaces), and much stronger. It is easy to distress.

What I like best about the Knuckleduster buildings is that they feel like they can take a serious amount of punishment. Once assembled with wood glue, they feel like you can kick them across the room and they will hold together. In a bustling, high energy, alcohol fueled gaming environment, I consider that to be a very desirable quality. I trust those buildings pretty implicitly whereas I always treat my Gamecraft buildings with kid gloves.

So take that as you will, but that has been my experience.

gothique wrote:
I prefer card buildings and use Finger and Toe Models www.fingerandtoe.com. Here are a few pictures of my set up at Wartorn 2013, Scarborough, UK.

those look great!

I like my GameCraft buildings, the prices are good and they look good. I got a few from Aetherworks recently and they were real nice too. BattleFlag makes some great ones too. I have a few from Sarissa and always meant to get some more but haven't had the chance. What I like about Sarissa though is the mexican / adobe style buildings they do. Lots of variety and they look great, you just have to do something to hide the corner connections so it doesn't look like sawtooth wood connections. I covered mine with spackle

I think I'll be checking out Knuckleduster's next, they have some nice looking kits.

I like how there's a lot of different kits out there, you can get a couple from each company and have a nice looking town where nothing looks the same

I've been back and forth over trying to make my own BWG kits, but so far I haven't been able to find a good way to get the kind of detail I want at the cost I want, so right now I'd rather just focus on making more minis I might do some resin obstacle packs though sooner or later.

I like the Game Craft Buildings, and I have some of their first Wild West stuff that has been improved since I got it.











More pictures here: http://s247.photobucket.com/user/CptJake_Minis/library/Wild%20West?sort=3&page=1

I put floors in before they were available through Game Craft...

Jake

I did not notice that you can get floors. I can obviously make my own, but for 2 bucks a pop...although I can just cut floors with the measurements on the site and avoid having to do my own measuring.

I used very cheap plastic card with a wood board pattern cast into it for my floors. Except the barn, that is just on a big thin plywood sheet with some wood putty put on it to give some dirt texture. Nothing fancy, I'm a pretty lazy no talent modeler. I did add the upper hay loft and 'stalls' to the barn too. The stalls are obviously less than realistic, but I wanted to give the interior a tiny bit of detail, break it up a little while still keeping the interior as open as possible for figure play/placement. The hay loft is a sheet of thin plywood which lays on the two beams I glued in, and is obviously removable.





Jake