Empires at War 28mm Spanish/Italian Set

For our Peninsular War skirmish project, I bought a set of MDF buildings from Empires at War.

These are excellent kits. I bought the "prepainted" version, which meant that the external faces of the walls were coated with a textured sandstone coloured paint. This served as both a primer and basecoat for the walls. Once assembled, I used a large make-up sponge to dab white paint over the surfaces, avoiding the bases of the walls and around doors and windows, which gave a weathered look to the buildings.

The pantile roofs were styrene sheets, while the spines of the roofs were provided in the form of a coloured, scored dowels; a coat of watered-down red-brown craft paint tied the two together, and provided the weathering effect.

One of the packs came with a frame missing, and so I couldn't build a storage bin on the side of the building, and had to make my own doors out of balsa - but it was an easy fix.

I will certainly buy from the range if I want to expand my collection of pantile roof buildings.

Perry Miniatures Elite Companies French Infantry 1807-14 again

Here are five more figures from Perry's box set, painted as voltigeurs of the 26th Regiment of the Line. I have chosen this unit as it was brigaded with the Legion du Midi, which I have painted earlier. While the uniforms are of the same cut, these guys were harder to paint due to the piping on their uniforms.

With these guys done, we are on track for a game of Fistful of Lead in October.

Printable Scenery Country Low Walls

With our recent focus on 28mm skirmish wargaming, I wanted to add a set of low stone walls to my terrain collection. I wanted something that would work for both Northern Europe and Iberia, and preferably for both 28mm and 20mm.

I ended up getting a set of Country Low Walls from Printable Scenery. The seller I bought it from printed it at a resolution where you can see the print lines. To avoid emphasising the print lines, I dispensed with washing, and  highlighted by dabbing instead of drybrushing.

The walls are scaled for 28mm, but as my figures are based on slotta bases, the walls reached just to their waists.

I primed the pieces grey, picked out individual stones in red brown, yellow brown, dark green, and dark grey, then dabbed the whole thing with medium grey. This helps the walls blend with both the green mat I use for our Northern European games, and also the arid map we use for our Iberian games.

In terms of height the walls work well for 20mm, as shown by these Spanish Civil War figures from Minairons Miniatures. The individual stones do look a little big though.

As part of research for buying and painting the walls I read a few websites on dry stone walls in Europe. It's a rather fascinating subject and worth learning about if you have some free time.