A New Old Coaching Inn

During my first visit to the Battlefield Berlin store I already noticed that they had two of DIMA's resin coaching inns in their shelves. You know, this one. Even though I already own one - no, actually because I already own one - I was very tempted. Painting it was the most fun I ever had painting anything and the building marks the beginning of my Gierburg board with all the buildings that followed. So during my last visit, after a great game of Flying Lead, I could not withstand temptation and bought one of the houses.

I don't think I will paint this up anytime soon, though. I have a lot to do with the remaining buildings from my Tabletop World order and I am more interested in those currently. But I will definately paint the inn some day. Maybe it will be the last building I finish for the board - a nice way of coming full circle. This time I will do some modifications to the building. Firstly, I want to remove the Mordheim emblems from the wall. Also, looking at the windows, they are quite thin so I could probably easily remove the "glass" and make them "see-through-able". Creating a proper interior for the house would be really cool and I think I will do something similar like I did with Resina Planet's Governor's Mansion by adding stairs, walls and interior. But that is still some time in the future. For now I just wanted to share my nostalgia. :)

Facades by Geboom

I don't usually do news posting on my blog but this has really inspired and impressed me:

After a long break Gerard Boom (aka Geboom; check out his website) has resumed his plaster carving work for tabletop scenery. I met him at this year's Tactica convention and it was great watching him do his thing and trying it myself. Now Geboom has posted some of the new facades for his "Amsterdam Canal Project" on his website (go to the projects section).

They're stunning. Geboom uses sketches from the Dutch digital archives for reference (search for "bouwtekening", or "voorgevel"). These first facades look very authentic and detailed. I can't wait for him to release resin castings of them and paint up a few myself.

Update:
After an update to the website the "Amsterdam Facade series" project is now available here.

Medieval Inn from Tabletop World

Today I want to show you my version of Tabletop World's Medieval Inn. The resin building basically consists of a ground floor piece, a first floor and a roof piece, plus a chimney. There are some very nice additional bits: a bucket, a barrel, a broom, three lanterns, a sign, flower buckets and even a female citizen miniature. (Which is - let's face it - sub-parly sculpted. But hey, it's free - so who would want to complain! Their current figures look way better - check them out!)

What I especially like about the design is that there are see-through windows on both floors which makes the house perfectly playable from the inside. If you need to you can easily saw a hole in the first floor and add some stairs or go with a trap-door.

The painting was done quite similarily to the Merchant's House although I didn't paint the walls as bright. In the comments to the recent WIP post for this building Ivan of Tabletop World suggested using Bleached Bone instead of full white and, of course, I followed. :)

The sign that comes with the house has no modelled emblems so you are free to add whatever you want. Of course, this can be difficult as freehand painting is not so easy for the average painter - it definately is hard for me! Since I already have an inn with the Blue Wolf Inn and I still dream of getting the huge Coaching Inn from Forge World some day I didn't want this to be yet another inn. Thinking about possible signs and logos I came up with simple scissors to represent a tailor's house. To spice up the sign (and to somewhat distinguish it from a barber's shop) I added a "T". I think it came out okay. Lastly I once again added posters for a bit of additonal character.

Hope you like it!

Up next: the Blacksmith's Forge

Reading Tip: Scourge of the Seas

Recently I bought Osprey's "Scourge of the Seas" by Angus Konstam. This 240-page hardcover book compiles the contents of the previously released books "Elite 67: Pirates 1660-1730", "Elite 69: Buccaneers 1620-1700", "Elite 74: Privateers & Pirates 1730-1830" and "New Vanguard 70: The Pirate Ship 1660-1730", and thus provides an excellent overview from the rise of the bucaneers to the golden age of piracy. Highly recommended to anyone wishing to get into piratey wargaming and interested in knowing what it is they're recreating - beyond the Hollywood clichés.

WIP Medieval Inn

After the Merchant's House I am currently painting the Medieval Inn from Tabletop World. It will take a couple of more days of painting, but to bide the time here is a first WIP shot.