Old Town Scenics - Warehouse

When I first saw this building on eBay, I had my doubts about how big it could really be because clearly the Troll Trader have an A4-sized cutter (although if they want to sell theirs and upgrade to an A3 one.. I am so sold on mdf terrain that I am totally in the market for a machine now!). Fortunately, this building really does feel like a (small) warehouse once complete and although it comes on 7 sheets, that is simply a reflection of the size of each component rather than the complexity so you are only looking at 35 minutes or so to cut out, sand and glue everything together. Price wise, it comes in at around £16 and when you compare it with their awesome looking Pub Bar Hotel in the Old Town Scenics range, it becomes clear that the pricing is simply an indication of the number of the number of sheets in the set rather than the complexity or usefulness of the build.. which is a pretty fair way of doing things.

As suggested above, this is a nice simple build and it's only the weird crates with the two bands around them that are at all fiddly to build. There is one 'ooops' moment when attaching the side walls to the floor piece, however.. the cuts for the holes are not flipped (because the wall is facing the other way) so the tabs don't line up. It's an easy fix though, you just need to snip off the tab.

This one issue aside, it's really hard not to see the potential of this warehouse. Sure, it isn't quite tall enough to warrant walkways and support beams up in the roof but it would be right at home on a table used for the Batman miniatures game, I reckon. I just hope the Troll Trader release an expansion kit for this set. 1 x floor panel, 1 x front and back wall and 2 (slightly shorter) roof sections and you could make this thing two, three or four buildings wide. It would look ace! One tip though - sand down the backs of the doors where they slot into the floor piece and upper rail - it's a bit of a tight fit othewise and it won't be easy to slide the doors open and closed once they are painted. In fact, I would probably leave the doors and upper rail off until after painting it complete.

The miniature used for scale is the Rail Golem from Malifaux on a 50mm base (I believe). So although the building itself is not very fancy (compared to the Townhouse A or the as-yet unbuilt Tower), the footprint is great and the potential is excellent. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to use this in a modern day game, either, and I think it will probably be the first of the TTCombat buildings I will actually paint. It may not be as swish as the two warehouse offerings from Sarissa Precision (which I have seen but sadly, don't own) but for this price it's pretty damned hard to beat.

Old Town Scenics - Waylay Yukitan Blade Store

Inevitably, after watching me put together a few of these buildings, Younger Son soon wanted to have a building of his own to make. After several weeks of reassurance that it will arrive 'soon' (it took Royal Mail 22 days to deliver my next parcel from the Troll Trader!) he was very impatient, which is why there are no photos of the three sheets - he was literally tearing the pieces off the frame before I could even fetch the sandpaper and glue, let alone dig out my phone!

 

Since we were also watching a movie at the time, the build time was about 3 hours but I think for most people, you are looking at 25 minutes or so. A few tips from this build:

1) Consider gluing some additional detail to the roof - or - sanding the four tabs that attach it to the left and right walls for a looser fit. It's hard to get any purchase on it when you want to lift the roof off to get inside and it's a tight fit, too.. so much so that even if you hook your finger inside the roof hatch, you will still have some trouble getting the roof off unless you pick the whole building up. 

2) We totally built the shelves the wrong way. That doesn't really matter, of course, but to build them the way Troll Trader have done, ensure that the two small shelves have the 3 hole shelf at the top, and the slot shelf on the bottom. Obviously they are designed to accept the two different types of swords but I didn't figure that out until we had finished.
3) Be careful when punching / cutting out the front of the floor tile - unless you don't mind having a gap, there is a very small piece of mdf that you will want to keep that will fit between the base of the left hand pillar and the left side of the door frame. You can see this pretty well in the first picture.

All in all, a fun little building although I think I've been spoiled by the two floor structures I've been assembling recently because it seems pretty small, especially with that flat roof. Still, you need somewhere to snipe from, or to hide from Graboids, right?

December hobbying.. in January. Old Town Scenics - Townhouse B

There wasn't an awful lot of hobby time over the Christmas period and the OhGodOhGodOhGodIHaveSoManyEmails week upon my return to work, but there was at least some time to put together more of the excellent Troll Trader TTCombat buildings, starting with the smaller of the two townhouses, Townhouse B.

  

As with their previous house sets, there isn't much need for a step by step assembly and this time around, the stairs are actually long enough to reach the ground floor (7 steps instead of 6 with Townhouse A). Yay! Unfortunately, the stairs still 'slot on' to the upper floor. Hopefully with later sets (or even when their stock of the current sets run dry) the people at Troll Trader will fix some of the 'bugs' including the arrangement of the stairs.

 

Sorry about the varying photo quality and lighting - I don't really have a booth set up so it's usually just a case of snapping the pictures with my smartphone wherever I am at the time.

As with the other houses I have made so far, I would recommend gluing the ridge to only one half of the roof - this will make it easier to lift off the roof (albeit in two pieces) for gaming. Also, I have continued to glue the chairs together the wrong way (aka my way) as I prefer the taller, narrower look to the way they are in the official photos. So another fun 40 minute build and for the price, a great addition to the tabletop.

Old Town Scenics - Townhouse A

So, another day, another Townhouse from TTCombat. Yet again they have produced a really nice kit with a larger footprint than the previous building and a second floor, too! 5 sheets, about 50 minutes build time and only two "Huh?" moments!

A few tips for this build:

1) I would suggest building one floor at a time.
2) Be aware that there are differences between the sheets and the images on the eBay auction. Notably, the window frames are a little different and the large window and frame on the front are quite different. Also, note the side wall on the ground floor that only has one window. The window is towards the back on the eBay picture, but towards the front on the sheet.
3) Since I kept knocking off the window frames during the previous build, I cut them all out first this time and as each wall piece was cut from the MDF sheet, I glued the frames on immediately. That way they were all dry by the time everything else was cut out and the building was ready for assembly.

The first "Huh" moment occurred while I was building the upper floor - I couldn't figure out where the triangular roof pieces were supposed to go. But then I realised the front and back outer walls didn't have any tabs on them to take the roof so I figured they should be glued to the inside of the front and back walls.

The second "Huh" moment occurred while I was about to call it done - I noticed that the stairs don't actually reach the ground floor..they are about 2 steps shy. More on that later.

All things considered, this is another great building for Malifaux or WWE and - as is the theme with the TTCombat range - very reasonably priced at £12. While I would have once again liked to have seen some detail on the ground floor / upper floor, such as some wooden planks, my only real complaint here is the stairs. While this can be remedied quite easily by cutting up some of the MDF left on the frame to create a raised platform at the bottom of the stairs.. or by TTCombat extending the length of the stairs.. the real concern is the way it is attached to the upper floor. 

Because it is slotted in and not in anyway attached to the ground floor, every time you lift off the upper floor you are taking the stairs with it and thus you risking moving / knocking over models that are inside the ground floor and any models unfortunate enough to be on the stairs are probably going to fall off. Even if you remove the upper floor successfully, you will have to slide off the stairs before you can set the upper portion of the building down somewhere and they might be easier said than done depending on how many layers of paint you have applied to the MDF. Instead, I think it might be better if the stairs are glued to the ground floor and the top of the stairs simply butt up against the upper floor without slotting in. 

Tomorrow I will hopefully tackle Townhouse B, then it is on to the tower! Next week I'll probably return to eBay and pick up a bunch of the new buildings that just popped up today. Dare I say it, but they look even better than the ones I have built so far!

Old Town House A

Another MDF building from TTCombat, this time one of the western-themed dwellings suitable for Malifaux etc. 3 sheets, 35 minutes build time (including sanding) and definitely no need for instructions here since we know what a house looks like.

 

 
For the price, this building has a nice footprint on the table and I can see that it would be pretty easy to pick up 3-4 of these (or maybe two of these and two of the Old Town Scenics - House B) and call it done. The only piece of advise I have is.. don't glue the two halves of the roof together. Because they sit on tabs that are at 90 degrees to the angle of the roof, you won't be able to lift the roof straight off without having to bend it along the join.. which is probably going to break it unless you use some tape along the inside of the roof. Instead, I would suggest leaving the two halves separate and only glueing the ridge to one of those two halves. You'll just have to remember to take them off in that order.

The only oddity is that one of the side walls has a cut for an extra tab that doesn't exist on the front / back. It isn't a big deal though. I would also liked to have seen some interior detail on the walls but that would have required etching on both sides of the wood which TTCombat don't / can't do just yet. Some wooden plank detail on the floor would have been nice, too. Despite all this, "House A" is still a very nice, cheap dwelling for the tabletop. 

I also picked up the two larger townhouses, as well as the tower. Hopefully I will get the chance to build them during the week.

Market Stalls.. complete!

So the market stalls were very easy to build, with each one only taking about ten minutes and that's assuming you are sanding off the burrs for each piece. The large gazebo type stall comes on a sheet of it's own, where as the smaller stalls are two to a sheet.

No build steps are needed for these stalls - you just need to make sure that when you make the big one that you insert the two notched beams into the slot cut into the side of the stalls. It's the only thing you can get wrong and naturally, as soon as I started gluing things to other things, I got it wrong. This is how it should look:

When complete, the large stall looks like this:

The pair of canvas stalls look like this:

The pair of wooden stalls look like this:

Note that I didn't cut out all of the produce that comes with the stalls; the loaves of bread were fine and the wine bottles were OK (but a little annoying to cut out). The apples and bananas, however, were too small to bother with IMHO. Instead I will probably buy the produce set from Warlord.

I purchased all of these stalls as a bundle for 7.95 but the three different types can also be purchased separately for 3.95 each. With two of the bundles you would have more than enough stalls to make a street market to spruce up your game of Malifaux, Mordheim or D&D.

Carriage.. complete

..but obviously not painted. I've dry-fitted the side, roof and interior seat so that I can easily come back and paint this when I have time. I'm super happy with the carriage and even if you take your time removing the parts from the frame and stop to sand off the burrs from each piece as you cut it off, it shouldn't take more than an hour to make. Hopefully I'll have time to start on the market tents on the weekened!

I love the smell of burned MDF in the morning..

A few days ago I noticed that the Troll Trader were listing some new "TTCombat" branded MDF terrain on their eBay store with themes that would be of interest to Malifaux and Infinity players. I suspect that the guys at Troll Trader have gotten hold of a laser cutting machine and are producing these kits themselves. I'm a big fan of terrain and working with MDF in general so I decided to order a few of the smaller pieces to see how they go together and.. really.. to see if it is worth investing in some of their larger sets such as the buildings or the castle.

The sets showed up today, so lets stat with the Noble's Carriage:

This comprises of a single sheet of MDF. It comes with no instructions (none of the sets did) but it is relatively easy to build if you refer to the photos on the eBay page. As is typical for MDF terrain, each piece has detail etched on to one side and is attached to the wooden frame / sprue at one or two points depending on how large the piece is.

When assembling, I recommend that you start with the rearr (parts D, R, S, T and U) first, to create this:

No, that's not a toilet. Next, assemble the seat with parts G, H and I and put that to one side:

Note that the rear part sits on top of the very back of the chassis (K), and will be held in place by the sides (A and B):

At this point, with the front (C), one side (A) and back assembled and stuck to the chassis (K) it would be a good time to attach a few of the detail pieces to 'fill the holes' and paint the interior. I would go ahead and glue the lantern holders (N) into the sides of the carriage, and I would attach the 'prongs' (P) which support the foot steps (Q) to the underside of the carriage. Finally, glue on part M to the lower front. Now all of the holes are filled I would paint the inside of the carriage. Don't forget to paint the 'inside' facing of the other side piece (B) and the roof (E)!

 Once the interior is painted, I would paint the seat (separately) then glue it in to place before attaching the other side piece (B).

Now that you have a fairly solid 'box' everything else is straight forward. Attach the driver's seat (J) to the upper front - I did this too early in the photo avove. Four of each part O will slot onto a lantern holder (N) to create the lantern and finally the wheels (L) will be glued onto the chassis and held in place by the four bolts (F).

I will try and paint the interior of my carriage tonight so that I can fully assemble it and take a 'completed' shot. For £3.95, this carriage is a bargain in my opinion and the only 'fault' I can find is that some of the small, repeated shapes such needs to be flipped on the sheet so that the burned side is facing outwards like the other carriage pieces.. but this is just me being anal. Of course, if you're going to paint it up, that's probably not much of an issue at all!