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Old West Buildings

It's January, so SWMBO found these two Christmas Village votive holders on sale at the craft store. They're a little big for 28mm, but I like to have buildings scaled up a little larger. It helps with the disparity between figure scale and ground scale. It is also easier to visually gloss over a structure that is a little big than one that is too small.

Of course, two completely different ways to get the bottoms off ...

I have wanted a mill for a while, but hated the idea of scratch building one. But this shell makes it pretty easy. The bottom of this one came off pretty easily - just untwist the wires and pull. Looking at the inside, I (eventaully) decided not to give this one an interior.

This one required unscrewing the faceplate. Then just tearing it up with the tin shears. Lesson: sometimes taking random craft store stuff apart is easy. Sometimes not. No big, just be aware.

These are pretty basic on the outside, so I want to dress them up a bit, but not to the point of lots of greeblies. Just enough to evoke more realistic buildings. I decided that that is done with a masking tape layered roof, and some thin card on the bottom of the window frames. I also threw a 3D printed door that DOM did for me on the mill.

Here's the mill on a piece of Pegasus modular river. I am going to have the mill baseboard line up with my existing river pieces, so I am using this piece and the mill to draw ...

... an outline of the composite piece on a baseboard.

Now cut the outline and put some tin foil along the river bed.

The outlines get some aid dry clay.

Then glue on top of the clay, and push the mill down into the edging.

The mill gets a three different colours of brown and a light grey undercoat for the walls.

Now dary grey stone pattern. The dark grey has matte sealant in it to make the paint go on thick. This gives a little relief effect for the stones.

The river bed gets a thin coat of metallic blue. Shiny blue on a shiny base.

Lest the kitchen's plastic wrap feel left out by the use of the tin foil, I cut and bunched up some strips to go on top of the water.

Like this. They add depth and texture, especially where they go around the rocks in the river bed. I put a layer of regular PVA glue down before puttin the strips on and a layer of gloss Mod Podge on top to seal it down.

Now, a thicker strip of plastic wrap from the lowest wheel section.

Then the next over top.

And the highest.

Last, gurgly bits of splashing water for the ones going up.

Here you get both buildings, the other one just painted up.

The mill mates up with the modular river pretty well. I think I will use some more of that baseboard to add a couple extra pieces I want for the modular river, like a Y fork, a wide bit with an island in the middle, and a source/pool.

The other building also makes a nice piece of blocking terrain with interesting elevation and corners. I put "Himmelskirche" on the sign so it could be a (Heaven's Church) church, or that could just be the last name of someone who owns a store or saloon.

This one had a large, rectangular open bottom, so figures can go inside.

And I can even make a nice church interior. This is a quick and dirty bit of cardboard folding. I may detail it more later with something on the pew ends and a bit more on the altar.

The basic of the design, however, is for gaming. Without seats, I can get a couple pews in where you can put a figure in between. The spacing was dicated by base width. And it's pretty simple to say the outside track is -1" move, through the pews is -2", and over the backs or over the altar is -3". And shooting through any obstruction is -2 to hit. Even though the footprint is small and the furnishing sparse, it has simple visuals for movement and combat penalties, so you could play inside, outside, and from inside to outside through the windows.

A bit more sparse, but the same idea for the saloon set up. I have tables that I can add in, but I wanted to show the piece alone. Or bookshelves. Or shelves of stuff for sale.

Here are the two interiors alone. And, since they are single floors and the building is a little tall, they both will store inside the building!