Gold Rush Town - MDF Madness!

 For my Old West skirmish gaming, I've had a general preference to set the games in a more of a Northern climate, rather than the dusty, spaghetti-western inspired setting where the games more often end up.  Inspired by our Epic Arctic Adventure Epicness, I have decided to make sure that I can set up a northern table for gaming. One of the key elements will be to be able to set up a gold rush town.  A feature of gold rush towns is that they are built very quickly, so there will tend to be many tents, and many improvised or quickly built shelters.  So I placed an order with Sarissa Precision for their 'Tent Town', a set of 5 buildings.  I combined these with the saloon that was already in our collection, and a Sarissa Precision cabin that we picked up at Imperial Hobbies' recent customer appreciation sale. Here is the start to the gold rush town, new buildings up front and some older items of the collection (Renedra tents and cabins from 4Ground and Pegasus Hobbies) in the rear.

An image of front street.

Compare to a historic photo!  Check out more photos at this website:  https://westernmininghistory.com/gallery/538460/historical/towns/

Two MDF cabins, which are not completely dissimilar from the Robert Service and Jack London cabins we saw in Dawson.

Jack London cabin.

Robert Service cabin.  I'll have to source some 28mm moose antlers!

The roof of the cabin is currently corrugated iron, but I've seen older photos showing a verdant, green sod roof.  I chose to do neither!

All of the buildings have removable roofs to allow figures to be placed inside.

Here are the two smaller tent buildings - they are not actually small, compared to the rest of the buildings!  These have optional signposts to put in front of the tents but I left them off thinking that they could be homes, but I've reconsidered and I'll recast them as businesses.  The only difference between the two is the extra window space for the tent on the left.

This one is similar to the two above but with a leanto at the rear.  Signage is from a free PDF provided by Sarissa.

Rear view of the general store lean-to.

I added signage from the Sarissa old west signs PDF.

These are slightly larger tents, with an internal wall to break up the internal space.

Another find from the Imperial Hobbies sale was this set of walls from Xolk.  Xolk has sadly and suddenly stopped trading, which is a pity as I rather like their product!  

These walls fit in quite well with other walls in my collection, like the walls from 4Ground MDF and Italeri/Warlord Games.

A Mediterranean Church

Here is one last building for my Sicilian village - a church.  Every Sicilian village has at least one church, and there are multiple churches in most towns, so I'd be remiss to omit a church from my village!

I carefully studied Sicily guidebooks, and even Google street view for several communities in Sicily to get an idea what a Sicilian church looks like.  The biggest and most prominent churches are mostly quite Baroque in appearance.  However, I found outside of the town centres, and especially out of the towns themselves, simpler churches could be found.

This church is from Empress Miniatures. I was very impressed with the service from Empress, I received the church just 7 days after I ordered it.  I don't think I've ever received a package that quickly from the UK.

The tower is completely separate.  This provides some flexibility in setting up the terrain.  The tower can be attached to the church or set somewhere else altogether.  

I used a sepia wash to try to match some of the colouring I saw on streetview.  I didn't get an exact match, and I was not very uniform applying the wash!

The tower has a few floors and a lift-off roof, so it provides a good place to put a sniper, or a FOO (forward observation officer, or artillery spotter).

Doors are a bit small, carrying on the tradition of wargaming terrain being slightly smaller scale than the miniatures.

The set includes a small statue of a saint and a crucifix to fit into the sconces on either side of the church doors.  

While browsing the shelves at Imperial Hobbies, I made an impulse purchase of some 4Ground church furniture, including an altar, a pulpit and a couple of pews.

I agonised over whether two pews would be enough, until I realised that I could barely fit even these 4 items into the church!

I also picked up a set of corners to match a set of straight wall sections I already had in my collection.

Tank obstacles

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped by Imperial Hobbies for their customer appreciation sale.  Among other goodies, I picked up a set of 4Ground MDF tank obstacles comprising 3 "Czech Hedgehogs" and 3 similar pyramid-shaped barriers.  Easy-peasy to assemble and paint.  Black basecoat, drybrush rust brown, then heavy wash with Nuln Oil.

Here they are with AGNM tanks for scale.

On a related note, the Panzer IV that I recently finished came with some "brewed up" markers.  I very quickly assembled them, and here they are, ready for the next time my tanks get on the table (which will also be the first time they take to the table!).

A nice bonus from Warlord Games!