Monday 20 December 2021

Customised Warbases Church

 It seems a necessary piece of table top dressing for any ECW campaign is a little old English church. For some time now I had the intention of building or buying one; in the end I settled for a  MDF kit from Warbases, although I have added quite a bit to it. 


I essentially used the MDF kit as a starting point, a frame onto which I added 3 main  extras:

  • Slaters Plastikard 7mm dressed Stone for the walls
  • custom made and cast slate roof 
  •  quoins and window trim sculpted from grey stuff
Here we have it before the customisation:


And after:




I didn't use the windows that came with the kit but instead I glued drywall mesh to the inside of the building and painted it black.


For the front of the entrance I glued sheet styrene, textured with a craft knife to represent wood, to the MDF. The walkway is foam pavers.


The tree is a plastic Woodland Scenics armature with my standard foliage recipe. The most time consuming part of the build was making the roof. I wanted something that was a bit more 3D than the paper offering and although the slates did come out a smidge fantasy I am quite happy with them. I made two moulds so I will be able to make them up quickly should I decide to make a similar roof later.



 I'm not 100% confident in my colour choice for the quoins; in the end I am satisfied but I think If I was going to do it over I think I would go with something a little more tan, a little less yellowy orange.


I cannot recall where I bought the statue; I originally bought it for my Mordheim project and had forgot about it- I just remembered it yesterday- but it is a beautiful little piece of work.


What's a church yard with out grave stones? These ones are simply made from XPS foam.



One of the reasons I chose the Warbases kit is that it has a small footprint on the table. I think if I was building it specifically for skirmish gaming I would have gone with a bigger kit, like Sarissa Precision's church.




Hopefully there won't be such a long break between posts through the next few months. Works slows down during winter and I have some ECW figures lined for the Analogue Hobby Painting Challenge which starts in about two and a half hours.

15 comments:

  1. Absolutely amazing works Cod!

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  2. Gorgeous church and graveyard, well done!

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  3. Very nice upgrade on the original mdf kit

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  4. That’s a really good improvement on the original kit. Great idea with the drywall mesh.

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  5. Look great, very inspirational. I have a Sarissa mdf church for this years’ challenge. The quoins look right and stand out nicely to give a good bit of texture.

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  6. That is some fantastic work. Love the weathered tone on the stonework.

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  7. A really lovely job and the idea of the overall scenic on a small footprint is perfect.

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  8. Fantastic work. The stonework and weathering really adds a whole new dimension to this model.

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  9. Thank you everyone for the kind remarks.

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  10. Faboulus work on that, a great table piece and as you say essential for ECW gaming.

    All the best for 2022, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

    Cheers
    Matt
    French Wargame Holidays

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  11. This looks awesome. It has a really rustic feel to it. The colouring of the stonework looks authentic too.

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  12. Superb makeover and useful for so many periods - well done!

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  13. I just found this - its superb and I would like to think about copying the church - how much plasticard sheet did you need?

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    1. My apologies, I just noticed your comment. Thank you for the kind remark. I think I used one package of the dressed stone (7mm) from Slaters. Two sheets to a package, each sheet is approximately 30cm by 17cm.

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