When making the Russian village stuff I worked on two laser-cut MDF kits, which Garry Broom had been given by our late friend Mark. They are by 4Ground and only just about compatible size-wise with what I'd already made. I'm not a massive fan of MDF kits, to put it mildly, but thinking they'd be good for the skirmish end of what we wanted from these Russian buildings, I was determined to do what I could with them. I think laser cut stuff works best when aiming to represent wooden buildings and least well in any attempt to model tiles, slates, etc. In this case, they are wooden buildings with a bit of crumbling render, so not too bad.
I worked on them by first of all trying to add to the wood grain on the roof, scoring a bit more texture with super-rough sandpaper, although I'm not sure this added very noticeably. I plugged the hideous locating holes and lugs in the roof with green stuff. I remodelled the rendered areas using household filler in my usual way. I left off the useless porches and lean-to's which just increase the already huge footprint without adding anything useful. And although these are sold as "pre-painted", I completely repainted the kits to pull them closer in style and colour to my own models. I think they've come out useable in the end, at least for skirmish gaming and they have featured in one or two Chain of Command WWII games.
At the risk of labouring the point, these are awfully big. Perhaps a 28mm Russian peasant would be delighted to enjoy such spacious accommodation, but I have a bit of thing against over-large wargames buildings. You can see the comparative size in the last photo. The first building is about my usual size. The mashed up plastic kit one in the middle has a footprint over 50% bigger and the MDF one is 130% bigger. I could get a village in that space!
That looks quite good - though your scratch built ones look a lot better.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit I have always hated the look of mdf buildings and terrain but I succumbed to buying some Russian houses from Charlie Foxtrot and Sarissa for my planned Chain of Command project I hope to start working on later this year. I figured I could use the buildings and hopefully spruce them up as you have done to make them look decent and I really needed something that would take less time than scratch building them as I am very time poor.. I will probably scratch build a few to compare as well.
Interesting what you say about the size John. The first time I saw a 28mm mdf kit, I thought it looked far too big. However (and you will be able to comment on this with professional knowledge, given your architectural model making studies) a friend who was in the past a professional model maker...for councils, building companies etc, told me that the reason the mdf kit seemed so large was that there has been an accepted convention, inherited from model railway scenery, that bukidigs, whilst generally in scale height wise, are almost always scaled down in terms of area footprint. His contention was, it's actually all the resin buildings we have been accustomed to seeing that are too small, and if you place scale furniture and some figures inside one of the mdf kits, you will see that it is actually closer to the correct size. What's your opinion on this theory?
ReplyDeleteInteresting point there, rross. I think there are two questions here. 1) Is a particular model too big for optimum wargaming purposes? 2) Is the model bigger than it should be as a scale representation of the real thing?
DeleteThe first of those questions is subjective: different wargamers have different views. You are weighing up a number of factors: what looks OK against the figures, the massive contradiction between figure scale and game ground scale, and what an individual building is meant to represent on the table. I will cheerfully admit to preferring the smallest feasible ground area for each building, because I mostly like to do games representing large battles, where the ground scale (1" to 100 yards or whatever) makes a whole village only the size of the MDF model above. So by my subjective standards this model is too big. As I said, I will accept it for a skirmish game, but even then it's longer than the range of a sub-machine gun, so do you see what I mean?
On the more objective question of whether the model is literally overscale, I think it is slightly so. The building above is 19cm long, so to 1/56 scale it's 10.6 metres. At a quick look I think that's a slightly bigger ground area than the house I am sitting in now, so, yep I think it is a little bit oversized even in these terms.
OK thanks John - hmmm...given they struck out on both fronts (I agree with you about the advantages of buildings being a smaller footprint by the way) I wonder why the main mdf manufacturers have gone this route? Initially I thought perhaps because its easier to produce a sturdy, detailed model if its a bit larger - but they make dining room tables. chairs and carts and carriages that have very small parts, and they all seem to work fine - I have a War Bases Tchanka in my own collection that went together perfectly well...
DeletePersonally I think they make everything on the big side for two reasons. Firstly it's easier to make a big model than a small one. Without rigorous control, models just "grow" as you make them, adding the thickness of the material to the dimensions in every direction for example. Secondly, other things being equal, many observers find a larger model somewhat more impressive than a smaller one. That's why we've always had "scale creep" with wargames figures. Remember that sheet MDF bought in trade quantities costs the manufacturer very little, and they feel they can sell a larger model for a somewhat higher price, when it doesn't really cost them more than a fraction extra to produce.
DeleteYes I guess all that is correct John...reminds me of my (frequent) old man rant about cafes. I don't know about the UK but here, a scone is now fist sized, almost a meal in itself, and my theory is, they make them so large to justify charging $5 for them...they could make them half the size, customers would be just as happy, but they would not buy two, so cafe misses out on $2.50 profit!
DeleteYou've done a nice job on that model although I do feel mdf buildings to be rather soulless, unless one spends a lot of time adding texture, especially to the roofs.
ReplyDeleteAs for the size of the thing, it is rather on the large say to put it mildly. As discussed above, there is a compromise to be had between what looks right, what is to scale and the ground scale of the rules. This is one reason that I went down the 6mm buildings route for my 10mm figures as they look fine, but don't have a huge footprint and so I can get a few buildings together that looks like a village rather than a house with some outbuildings.
Another reason I think for the bigger houses is so that gamers can put more figures inside for skirmish games etc. Given how small a standard two up two down is, this does not make for an interesting space in which to game. Just my two penneth of course.
I agree with all that, Steve. I've not got much experience with the smaller scales for gaming, but what you say 10mm figures with 6mm buildings sounds just about right to me.
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