The Peninsular War - Buildings

Ever since I sold off my Indian Mutiny collection I have been looking for another setting for Sharp Practice and a new project. Initially I was looking into the French-Indian War with it's small skirmish groups and distinctive terrain. In the Autumn of 2016 I met another wargamer Erik, and we got talking about different projects. Unlike my friends Erik likes unit based games and is very eager to play Sharp Practice. With the Dawns and Departures campaign setting PDF released I got thinking about trying out Napoleonics again in The Peninsular War. Erik was also keen and we started to look at minis and I looked into what terrain could be obtained without breaking the bank.

So with miniatures ordered - I will be playing the French, while Erik will be putting some Rifles on the table - I settled on the War Bases modular buildings and some extra bits. These are very cheap and will form a good base for a larger buildings.

Researching what other wargamers had done with the buildings I found that for a small price I could get plain tiles sheets for all the buildings from Wills - so an order was placed with Model Railways Direct.

Both orders arrived within a week of ordering. Assembly of the modular buildings was very easy and only took about two hours in total.

Looking at the buildings I realised that I would need to put them together with other types of buildings in order to make them more usable. Luckily for me Rich Clarke from Too Fat Lardies is also doing Peninsular buildings so his blog entries has provided excellent inspiration.

I began to put some small walls, extra buildings etc. next to the War Bases models so that I could get an idea of the buildings I wanted. I ended up with four buildings.

Next up was gluing everything in place on 3mm MDF.

The most lengthy task was up next - plastering all the buildings and walls with filler. This took more hours that I care to remember, but the end result was what I hoped for.

For the walls I had some small tiles that was suitable, so they were glued in placed. Sanding of the bases was done quickly and left to dry for a few hours.

Everything was then spray primed with a dark brown colour.

3 layers of drybrushing from light brown/beige to unbleached titanium white to off white gave the look I wanted.

The bases where repainted dark brown where the paint from the buildings had touched. 3 layers of drybrushing was then applied before adding some light green flock in different places around the models.

The tiles on the walls was painted in antique red and then drybrushed with a red-orange before a final highlight of light rosa. The same was done with the Wills plain tiles sheets.

Finally I added some barrels, benches, crates etc. as the final touches.

In all this has cost me around £40 since much of it is scratchbuilt from pieces I had lying about.

I am very pleased with the final look and look forward to gaming with the buildings.