Catching up on things done in 2011: Cork Tile Houses

Rob at my old club turned up one time and raved at his discovery of making cork tile buildings, as described on the brilliant Matakishi Tea House website. Easy to do, very cheap material, much cheaper than foamcoare, light and take a bit of bashing around. Since moving from solitary figure collecting and painting back to actual wargaming in the last 4-5 years or so, I've managed to put together a reasonable selection of terrain, at least of a basic standard. My last club was so small as to not even have a terrain box, and generally one guy turned up with every thing-including a pair of armies and all necessary terrain. So if you wanted to put on a game you had to think in terms of having everything necessary to stage the game. If nothing else this was a good discipline, as it is easy to get carried away with a scenario idea and forget it generally needs more than just the figures. The one big gap in my terrain collection, indeed in my wargaming collection overall, is buildings. Until I bought a couple of boxes of Pegasus 'Eastern Front' wooden thatched houses I had none at all, and versatile as they are you can't use them for everything. I have a figure collection covering just about everything period and conflicts across the globe, so I was keen to build up some sort of collection. On the other hand whenever I look at model houses, nice as they often are, I always think they're a bit pricey, and I am also acutely conscious of how much space my wargaming collection needs for storage already, and model houses can take up a lot of space. Since my 'new' club has its own terrain box and different people at the club often have stuff they will lend, it is less of a pressing issue, but it is typically in 28mm scale, while my figures are generally 20mm, so I'd like at least some items.

I'd acquired a pack of cork floor tiles a while ago, but I was first spurred into action by completing my 'Sharpe Practice' skirmish set, themed around the Pennisular War, and found a description of a little action that I thought would be perfect for our first scenario but it had a village in it. So I decided to kick off with some Spanish style houses. People tend to think in terms of Spain having 'white' houses, but I lived in central Spain, and know that while the 'Casas Blancas' are common in the south, elsewhere whether in natural stone or plastered, a sandy colour is much more common. I took the guidelines from the Matakishi Tea House website tutorial. Windows in older Spanish houses are often smaller than in Northern Europe (to keep the sun out), so I went with window 1cm square rather than the 2cm by 3cm recommended. I drew up a 'standard' three storey design, the top storey just an attic room, with below three windows a storey front and back, varied the design only by the position of the door, and some times having windows on two stories and sometimes just on the second storey at the side. I put the 'triangle' of the sloping roof across the front and back rather than the sides, that is at least the common design of the 'masia' country houses in Cataluna. I was pleased with the overall but my wife said she thought it was "nothing like Spanish houses", so there you go!

Having drawn all the designs with a pen, I then cut them out - and this was revelation number one about cork tile - it is SO EASY!!! Not only were the windows not too fiddly to do with a craft knife, but I could even cut the walls out with SCISSORS, which made the job - well just a snip!

I cut up some cereal boxes to make strips of tile for the roof (in the past I've found this a tedious job, but went for bigger tiles this time and it didn't seem to take long at all). I also cut little rectangles of cereal packet and glued them on to the cork to represent a few bricks showing through, along with some strips of thicker card - which I found better in this scale than the matchsticks recommended - for window sills. Then I stuck some matchsticks on to hold up an interior floor.

Next I stuck some normal dress making pins through one sides and a little way into the thin side of the other, using some pliers, to hold the building together. I then loosened pins a bit, slapped PVA glue in the join and pushed them back together. Matakishi recommends superglue, but I've got a huge tub of PVA which I know is a very strong glue, and didn't mind the extra drying time. Having left them overnight I pulled out the pins and 'voila'.

The only thing I had trouble with was the roofs, which I still don't have sitting properly. I realised I made the mistake of cutting a roof from cork the 'right' size for the house, when I would have been better cutting them to fit INSIDE, then covering them with the tiles or at least some thin card before attaching the tile which is WIDER than the roof to produce eves. Combine this would give a snug fit, whereas the thickness of tile is standing proud. I also should have been more careful to follow the instructions on how to tape them in place and more careful in cutting the cork for the internal 'supports'. Roof fitting is clearly the trickiest part.

Just about everything else fitted easily, especially the interior floor - cork is so easy just to trim with scissors it wasn't hard to get an exact fit. I made a bit of a miscalculation on the height of the internal floor, not allowing for the thickness of the tile, so figures stand a bit high for the second storey window, but it is no big deal to re-stick the matchstick supports lower down. It was then a couple of coats of sand paint, red brown for tiles and bricks, a couple of dirty washes and a dry brush. I haven't fitted a chimney yet, nor bothered with doors or window frames, but apart from the problem with the roof that I'm still working on, I'm pretty happy as a first attempt.

I was so enthused with the sheer ease of making these buildings, especially the cutting out, just with scissors, that I sat and designed no less than THREE different styles of building that I wanted for different games and started knocking out some more buildings. I produced all of this lot in the space of about just THREE days (and that was only because of drying time) from just ONE pack of cork tiles which cost me about a fiver.

The first style of house was what I call 'Modern Nothern European'. I've only started one in this style, a larger house, suitable for Napoleonic period onwards. The style is two-storey, with 2cm by 3cm windows and 2cm by 4cm doors, pitched roof, with the roof 'triangle' at the sides. You can easy use this basic plan for terraces of 'two-up, two-down' houses, or stick with the 'six-window' approach of this larger house but put the door to one side and make a bigger window if you want a shop front as your first floor. I'll plan to tile the roof and I'll be re-cutting the roof as per my comments above on the Spanish houses.

Here's a view from the back. Note how its best to try and line up the window-sills a bit better than I have. Obviously if you want a 'ruined' version, with cork tile this is just a question of ripping it! You can even just snip the 'bits' up into small rectangles and you have lots of bricks for 'rubble'.

Next up are some one storey flat roofed desert houses. When I came to do these I realised I could perhaps be more systematic in building up my collection. These show my most basic design (which I have nicknamed 'Number 1 Hovel'!), a single storey with door and single window next to it- in this case a smaller 1cm window like the Spanish houses- at the front.

As well as the three 'Number 1 Hovels', I've done a 'Number 2 Dwelling' ie. same thing but with two windows. Here's a front view. The idea is to do a few variations on a 'Number 2' then try a 'Number 3' , or a two-storey etc..

For all this style, I've cut a gap at the back or side and plan some steps to the roof. This is everything drawn up ready.

For steps, I'll just use this folded card glued inside a shell cut from cork.

These flat-roofed houses could not have been easier to do. I doubt if it took more than 20 minutes to draw and cut them all out, then it was really just the messing about with pins and glue and giving them drying time. The main error I made was again upper floor height, and I need to reposition the matchstick supports as currently figures on the roof have a wall only up to their knees!

This is a different style of building that I've moved on to, a half-timbered style, which I can use from dark-ages/medieval period onwards. Again I've very quickly knocked up the basic structure for three 'Number 1 Hovels' and two 'Number 2 Dwellings'. I hope to do some two storey one's too. Windows are again the small variety. So far I've stuck on some cardboard strips to represent the timbering. I plan to make two different types of roof for these, a thatched roof and a tiled one, so I can get a bit of 'two-for-price of one' variation out of them for different battles, easily. I'm also thinking of a far-eastern style huts for Vietnam etc., maybe on stilts and if they are done to the same dimensions I can literally use the same roofs, especially the thatched ones, for those too-all economising on effort and storage space with a bit of luck.

I'm keen to make sure than I can fit the different sizes of house one inside the other 'Russian doll' style, to minimise the storage requirements.

Now with this project, like all my projects, like any good wargamer my motto is 'Why keep things reasonable and actually finish a project' when you can let meglomania take over and never finish anything!!!

So, instead of finishing what I have started, I thought I would have a crack to see how quickly I could get towards making progress on a ridiculously ambitious project - in this case a little Western town for 28mm. Well such is the speed of how quickly you can work with cork tile, the answer is a surprisingly long way! In a really short time I have drawn up and cut out the fronts of two sides of a little street of 'false fronted' shops/saloons. When complete, these guys will have a covered 'boardwalk' in front, with 'hitching posts', and signs on top. Obviously, all the other sides, floors, etc. need to be cut out, but as a little 'tester' I got this far in not much more than an hour or so-not all bad. For now these cut up bits will go back in a drawer, not least since starting, I've discovered at my 'new' club one member regularly turns up with a complete 'cowboy' game including his own town...but I'm sure I'll come back to this project...

...as well as cracking out a good selection of buildings in the other styles, as and when I have my different forces (eg. for Sudan, Napoleonic, '44 Normandy) finished.

I've had a conversation with one guy at my 'new' club who is terrain-maker in chief, and says he would only use foam-core, but my experience of working with cork-tile for a week or so, is on grounds of ease of use and cost, this can't be beaten, and I plan to use it until I have at least a nice little 'basic' collection in place for most of the stuff I might need in the near future.

Catching up on things done in 2011: US infantry finished

Another 'quick win' in terms of completing things was finishing off some of my US Infantry for Rapid Fire or Cross Fire. In truth all, like the US Marines, the hard work ie. painting, was done quite a few years ago, maybe even 10 years ago in fact, but I had only done the most basic job in terms of basing. This made them look decidedly unimpressive next to the Germans which I had bought to fight against them, and I'd nicely based up to match with the Russian army I'd completed.

All of these are Revell US Infantry, sculpted very much with the Ardennes in mind, many being dressed in heavy greatcoats. I have not, however, gone for 'snowbases' (but am thinking I might do a separate force, at least say for Crossfire, with them), but had added quite a few clumps of green (from Gale Force 9 basing scenics) to the bases along with static, to make them look right for Western Europe.

As time as gone on, and I've got to fight out some Rapid Fire games, I've become less and less 'coy' about using multiple basing, as it not only looks better, but is so much easier for moving them about and now have rules from 'platoon-level' to 'brigade-level' none of which absolutely need individual basing, and have more than enough 'singles' should I really, really need them for, say, a man-to-man skirmish.

Here are only around one battalion's worth of figures, but I also have an absolute stack of Esci US Infantry, in various stages of painting, including at least as many again that are completely painted. The only reason for not completing the basing on them is that, once again, I've used up all my storage boxes and until I get some more, there's no room to store them once they are based. So for now this is just a 'taster' of what the infantry contingent of my WW2 US army for Europe will look like.

Catching up on things done in 2011: WW2 US Marines Finished

I actually painted this whole lot up a few years ago, put a brown wash on them in 2010, but at the end of last year decided to base them up a bit better, in line with the large bases I started using with my Russians and Germans, and the 3 figure stands I've used for my Japanese and Aussies. For a lot of them I've, stuck with a plain rough sand basing, as they might be actually making a beach landing, but I've also used some static and sprigs of 'jungle scenery' (ie. plastic acquarium plant) on some bases.

The figures are all Revell 'US Marines', and a box of them has given me a Rapid Fire battalion. That's less than my Japanese, for example, and the set doesn't include heavy weapons, but I have lots and lots of Esci US Infantry in various stages of being painted, too, and these are close match (rather than Revel US Infantry, which are produced very much for the Ardennes) and have lots of heavy weapons included, so it would not be too much of an effort to add a few more battalions. Similarly, kit I've bought for the European theatre (eg. a Sherman or two) can be added, although it would be nice to add a few Buffalos or DUKWs. The old Airfix US Marines set was pretty good, too, so somewhere along the line they may get added. In any case, as soon as the WW2 Japanese are completely done, they'll have not just one but two armies to face!

I've found one Rapid Fire Scenario based early in the war in the Philipines, and wasn't sure how these were uniformed until I was watching an old black and white war movie on attack boats in the Philipines, which showed US troops equipped with the sort of helmets more associated with the British, in fact as per US soldiers in WW1, so Hat's WW1 helmetted US infantry might be the best to use. Local forces seem less formally dressed with floppy hats etc. so need to do a bit more digging for suitable figures, maybe the GerMan Spanish-American War Cuban Infantry might even be the best for the part.

These can, of course be used for Korea, too, and even slipped in to Vietnam (in the early part of the war not all forces were issued with M16s).

Here's a finally shot of the whole box of figures:

Catching up on things done in 2011: Jungle Terrain

Having to move house again in the autumn, I realised that I seemed to have even more boxes of 'stuff' hanging around, acquired, scounged or saved to 'make' things than I had figures! This included a lot of things for making terrain, including some acquarium plants for making up some jungle terrain. I'm quite close to finishing both Japanese and Australian/Commonwealth armies for Rapid Fire/Cross Fire (and also have US Marines too) and also acquired the old Esci Vietnam War figures (now Revell and Italeri re-issues) last year, plus I'm hoping to make getting all my Darkest Africa stuff my 'big project' for this year. All need plenty of jungle, so among the things I decided to try and 'blitz' ahead of my house move was the jungle.

I had a sheet of 4mm MDF and got to work with a jigsaw cutting out lots of shapes for this and other stuff, plastered them with a generous amount of PVA glue and then my trusty rough sand, and using a variety of acquarium plants acquired from Pets at Home got sticking them on with a hot glue gun. I've finished some off with a few twigs to represent fallen logs and some tea leaves - dried out again or not used in the first place, which was a tip I picked up on another blog and makes passable leaf litter. Both regular brown and green Chinese tea works well for this, and I used a combination of both.

I started with large 'stands' which are handy for putting down a couple to represent a reasonable sized area, but I also went on to try out basing them on some smaller bases and even coins. I found a variety of different sizes bases worked well for covering a bigger area. As the top photo shows a single A4 box when closely packed for storage can be spread out to cover about 4 feet by 2 feet and still look like dense jungle. It also looks even better when you add add palm trees (more 'island look') or just normal model trees (more 'rainforesty look') or both - sorry I didn't have these to hand when I took these shots-and doing so also increases the table coverage you can get from this much jungle.

In the event I probably only got half or less of what I wanted to get done completed, but this was largely down to running out of storage boxes which I thought I'd ordered in generous enough quantities but obviously not! I've got plenty more plants and have done another tray of bases already so, I can whip up some more when I've got more storage boxes.

I've added by 20mm Aussies to give a sense of scale, but it looks good with 28mm too.

Catching up on things completed in 2011: Arthurian British

These are a couple of units that I got finished around June/July time, They have been kicking around for a some time and are Gripping Beast Romano-British figures. I've always loved the Arthurian age and it seemed a period I could only do justice to with 28mm figures.

The unit at the top are 'helmeted' auxiliaries to uses as 'milites', of which more later. The first units to show off, though are bare-headed types.

This is a unit of 'Pedyts', the term given in the Warhammer Ancient Battles 'Age of Arthur' supplement to the 'levy' type infantry that it is assumed that the British had to fall back on after the Legions departed. Warhammer is copying DBA in this useage, and both sets of rules like many wargamers like to identify 'troop types' when in fact, 'pedyts' is fairly obviously just a corruption of 'pedites', which just means foot soldiers, but there you go...

I need to give the standard bearer a standard but otherwise this unit is completed.

I had thought I might have to buy shield transfers, but instead had a crack at hand-painting them following the transfer designs. They might look a little crude in extreme close-ups like this, but on the table, they look pretty decent to me.

Next up are some more shots of the unit of 'milities' shown at the top of this post. 'Milites' is the Roman word for 'soldiers', and in WAB 'Age of Arthur' supplement is for term for better trained troops found mainly in the 'Civitas' (ie. highly Romanised states self-governing areas around important Roman cities in lowland England shortly after Imperial central authority was lost) armies. Again any differentiation of troop types in this era is short on any real evidence and long on conjecture.

Again, I've hand painted shields and I'm generally pretty happy with them. I don't have a command element painted up yet. I will probably buy some late Roman figures for this.

Another close-up. I am actually not sure that Gripping Beast figures actually look the best on the table, but they sure do photograph well!

Next are some Saxons, in fact, 'Gripping Beasts' 'Germanic warriors'. They have subsequently produced some more figures with smaller 'buckler' shields for this earlier period. Although I'm not familiar with the archeological evidence as such, wargamers are often keen to 'over-interprete' what is often scanty evidence, and determining the size of a shield from what will be the faintest trace of the long decayed wood and leather - only metal shield bosses generally survive-can often be misleading, so I'm not inclined to get too worked up about this.
Saxons were initially mercenary auxiliaries, but then revolted so you can have these within the Romano-British army or as an enemy. I have some armoured figures I can use as command figures or as a separate unit.

Another close-up, again shields are hand-painted, as unfortunately a few make obvious!...

I had planned to use this army for my 'new' club's 'Winter King' tournament, but I actually bought this little force before the Warhammer rules, much less the army lists had been published. Initially I just bought enough for some DBA armies, but decided they looked too small and having 3/4 figure elements didn't look right - in fact I've since seen people who use 28mm for DBA generally use bigger element bases with more figures on.

In any case, I think WAB is probably a better rule set for this period, as its 'characters', essentially 'heroes', fit in better with the smaller scale of Dark Age warfare and its semi-mythic quality.

I subsequently bought some more figures, but not having an army list or much idea the sort of point values of armies people generally used, I did not really buy enough. Left to paint I still have a (small) Armoured Comitatus force on foot, an understrength 16 man 'shieldwall' of Late Roman figures, and quite a few cavalry of different types (Arthurian, Late Roman and Pictish). Unfortunately, you can't really field the armoured 'Comitatus' on foot and mounted in the same army, 16 figs is too small for a viable WAB heavy infantry unit, and I could make the points value for the tournament, but only making at least half my army cavalry, which is probably not a winning combination under WAB rules.

Realistically, I concluded I'd need to buy at least another £150 worth of figures to get this army into shape, and this was at a time when funds were tight, and I happened to unearth in a box a stash of Anglo-Saxon figures I already had which turned out to be the exact number for a full WAB 2000 point plus army, so.....

Catching up on things completed in 2011: WW1 French

I had not really expected to make a French army my next choice to paint up for WW1 but a couple of things conspired to move it up the list. The first was I noticed that Hat had discontinued its WW1 ex-Airfix figures, maybe because Airix were manufacturing them again and had presumably withdrawn its licence. The thing was I could still buy the Hat figures for £3.50 a box but the new Airfix re-issues were over £5. So it made sense to grap those I could while they were still around. The WW1 British had sold out everywhere already, so I decided to grap four boxes of WW1 French while I still could. Second, I bought some Hat Canadians to use as WW1 Mid-Late War British, but found there were so many heavy weapons crew in the box, that my 90 figure box yielded only 50 odd riflemen, so I'd need to get another box.

So there it was, I had a full force of French, only half a force of Brits, and a painted WW1 German army waiting for an opponent to get into action. So it seemed like a good plan to crack on with the French.

The French began the war with a bright uniform of blue coat and red trousers and kepi, but like all the armies in this war switched to more modern 'drab' uniforms and metal helmets during the course of the war. The French were the first to do this, and adopted the paler, drabber 'Horizon Blue' and the Adrian helmet by early 1915 and continued to wear this uniform throughout the war.

I mix all my our colours and getting the right shade for the 'Horizon Blue' uniform proved tricky. I thought I had the perfect match with an actual coat pictured on the internet, but when applied to a 20mm figure it looked too 'blue', especially after I'd applied a wash for shading. So I went over and dry brushed them with a grey shade. I kept looking at reference works and uniform websites for guidance, but it was pretty clear that there was so variation in the degree of 'fade' that you'd expect. So I think I didn't do too badly in getting a compromise.

The Adrian helmet was initially issued in a shiny light blue, which proved a liability to snipers, which led many soldiers to cover them with sandbag cloth covers. These in turn proved a liability as they got dirty and a source of infection when soldiers suffered head wounds, so they were discouraged and a darker blue dull helmet was issued later in the war. I thought this offered a good chance to work in a bit of subtle unit identification, so painted my figures in all three styles.

The French also replaced their backpacks during the course of the war. I painted most with this khaki canvass issue backpack. ...but I also did some with the earlier issue brown leather backpack which originally went with the dark blue uniforms but some units retained, again to help with a bit of subtle unit identification. WW1 saw huge mass actions, so you want to put a fair number of figures on the table, so far I've painted up 140 figures based as my later war Germans on 2p coins which I think looks much better than the 1p coins I started using for this period. For either a Contemptible Little Armies game -where this would give me close to 10 'units (units can represent anything you want from a platoon through to a bridgade in those rules)-or GW's Great War, where I would easily have a battalion (for these rules deploy 12 odd figures for a 'platoon'), this is plenty.

Shots above and below show they do a reasonably good job of filling a table with a couple of 'waves', and would obviously fill an even longer 'trenchline'. I suppose I could do more, but you have to draw the line somewhere as ultimately things like having time to paint other things and space to store them comes into play!For now I've got them snuggly fitting in two of my plastic A4 storage boxes. I still have a few figures to finish off, including a Hat set of French artillery to start, but all the basics are done.

The Hat/Airfix set has loads of special figures in it, buglers, flag bearers, dead figures, wounded figures, figures on bicycles, figures with spades, figures carrying sacks, figures with telescopes, a figure with a basket and a carrier pidgeon! All great to have, and the figures with a telescope and carrier pidgeons handy for HQ stands. It does cut into the number of straight riflemen, so I needed the four boxes. There are no figures much use for high ranking officers, so I'm still pondering if I should convert an officer figure from the Airfix German set. The biggest weakness though is that THERE ARE NO MACHINE GUNS!!!! For WW1?

This would be a major pain but as luck would have it, Pegasus has just released a WW1 French set which is packed with machine guns. So next time I send in my order to Model Hobbies, I guess I will be adding a pack of these.

Catching up on things completed in 2011: Napoleonic Skirmish Set for Sharpe Practice

One pair of armies that I seem to have missed out documenting for this blog is the Napoleonic skirmish set that I knocked out in the middle of 2011. The set had its origins in a conversation with Rob at my old club. I had bought a stack of Revell 20mm British Napoleonic Riflemen for 'paint conversion' to light infantry but Hat has since produced a British Light Infantry set, so I wasn't sure I'd need them. He mentioned he was inspired by a chapter in Bernard Cornwall's Sharpe books and might be interested in acquiring them to try out the Too Fat Lardies 'Sharpe Practice' ruleset. We never got around to arranging the sale and when I jogged his mind about it a year or so later he said if he was going to do it he would probably now do it in 28mm.

So in an idle moment I took a few Revell British Riflemen, based them on 2p coins(instead of the old 5 peseta coins or 1ps that I'd been using up to then) and painted them up. They weren't as good as the Italeri Indians which I tried lke this, but still looked quite nice for a little skirmish game. I had some Hat French Light Infantry that I'd bought and based and painted up a similar amount. Overall the two forces made a nice, if modest little set.

Based on 2p pieces they look great when terrained

I still didn't have any rules, so I was ordering a few different rule sets from Northstar games and included 'Sharpe Practice' on the list.

Once I got my hands on the rules, however, I discovered the rules were more designed for 'small unit' actions rather than man-to-man skirmishing, so my 15 or so figures per side would not really be enough. So I painted up a few more of each of the forces that I'd already done and ordered a box of Hat's Pennisular War British infantry.

I found a bunch of Italeri French Napoleonic Infantry I'd already undercoated and painted up three more units of each, so I had about four units of around 24 figures for each side. I based one of of each (British Light Infantry and a French Voltiguers) on 2ps in the same way.

I decided that for the close order troops 2ps did not look right, so reverted to 1p coins.

These guys are mounted on some of the movement trays for figures mounted on 1 pence pieces that I ordered from 'Warbases' when I got my 'War of the Rings' bases from them. I got them to try them out, and really liked them. They'll look even better once I've terrained them.

All the time I had been building this force, I had been working hard on my 'main' Napoleonic armies, and although finishing any of these big armies has for yet another year proved elusive, I did finish and terrain the bases of all my British and Napoleonic Cavalry and artillery.

Next up I needed a scenario and hunting on the internet I found a brilliant account on the 95th Rifle Renactors site of the action at Cacabellos on the retreat to Corunna. The action was perfect for our first 'Sharpe Practice' action.

I made up some cards on the PC and Steve and I had a game at the club. Both of us are 'grognards' and have seen lots of sets of rules come and go, but whether I'd set up the scenario well or it was the hidden strengths of the rules, I'm not quite sure but we had a really, really good game. It really added character to the gameplay to call out 'Captain Lawrence, 2nd Battalion 95th Rifles' as you drew each card which determines the order units move in, and even without the fancier character generation rules which we ignored, each commander developed their own character simply due to the number of influence points each one had, whether the dashing General Colbert, a 'Cock o' the Walk', who could quickly order and rally his dashing cavalry or a stumbling Lieutenant who struggled to get his men into action. We will DEFINITELY be given this rules another spin!