A roof over our head.

So, I have been knocking up some buildings for our SAGA games, especially because some of the scenarios require buildings to play.

Anyway, I have built a few buildings before, in 15mm, but these were for ancients (ancient Egyptian buildings, to be precise):

I built these from foam board and then covered them in polyfilla.

I hoped to be able to use the skills I had learnt building these to be able to construct 28mm dark age saxon buildings that were constructed in such a way as to allow our models to be placed inside.

And here they are!

They are not yet painted, that will come later.

I made a few mistakes along the way and a few minor things I would do different. But on the whole, I'm quite pleased.

I made them from foam board; first constructing foamboard walls in a rectangle, cutting a join then glueing and inserting wooden matches (cut to a point) for strength:

(This is the only picture I have of the 'naked' walls - I forgot to take one while building it...)

I then constructed a roof in a similar way; cutting a join at about a 45degree angle and gluing the 2 halves together (using matches for strength again) and also cut 2 glable roof ends and glued them (again, matches for strength).

Once the walls and roof was done, the building was glued to a base made from a cheap dinner place mat with a hardboard top and a cork bottom (these are really great for basing your building on!).

(Here, you can clearly see the building's construction)

I then cut some green plastic scouring pads and used them to make the thatch (the pad was too thick, so it was ripped into 2 thinner pads first).

(This is the A-frame building, but you can see how the roof was constructed)

(And here is the long-house/drinking hall roof being constructed. One of the mistakes I made was to have the porch roof attached to this roof, but it was too high, so it was taken off and attached to the wall for the final building).

And here is a finished, pre-painted, building (actually, I added a beige paint to the PVA glue for the thatch - this thatch was another mistake as the top piece was a total pain so I did not include it for the others).

The buildings have all been made with removeable roofs so that you can actually place your models in them while you play (we usually place our models in the building and 1 at the door outside so you can tell it is occupied).

 (The drinking hall)

(The wealthy man's house)

(The poor man's A-frame building just has a footprint modelled into its base)

The buildings are great and serve the purposes of SAGA perfectly (they are even the correct size - 6" and 12").

I will post more pics of them when I paint them, but the next post will be of model soldiers!

See you in the next update.

Anthony