Scenery - The 15mm ACW Buildings

I have put up a few shots of the 15mm ACW table, even though I am currently documenting my 25mm French Napoleonic collection, and I thought I would finally get back to blogging with a little guide through my 15mm American Civil War buildings and houses.

A word about my buildings; they are all by Timecast (I think?), and are technically 10mm buildings. However, this smaller scale does look nice on the table, and helps keep the table from "growing" too large, if you know what I mean. After all, the figures are representative, so I don't necessarily want the buildings to be life-size.

First up is the pair of buildings shown above. The first is a brick building, obviously fairly large, with two doors. It was painted red first and then given a brown ink wash. The windows, like all of my windows, were picked out with a light blue before the shutters and the frame was painted. It is sold on Timecast as Dunker Church, from the battlefield at Antietam, but I wanted to use it simply as a brick building.

Beside it is a small shed, from the Bennett Farm set. I painted it grey-brown, gave it a wash, and then a little highlight. I think it came out just fine. As with a few other buildings, including the house above, there is some undergrowth modelled alongside the shed.

There are a few houses that I picked up with this collection. Next up is a small farmhouse, also from the Bennett Farm collection. I painted it a pale yellow as an homage to my parents house, a 300 year old farm house of the same color. As before I dotted the windows with blue before painting in the frame. You can see beside it one of my newly completed stone walls; I will post more about these in the future.

Up next is the outbuildings for the yellow house as they are set up now. The first is a barn that should look familiar to anyone who has toured Civil War battlefields. The standard red went on, along with a wash, as well as some white highlights. I hope I painted the white in the places it should be... I am not always perfect with this stuff, so if you see a place that needs white, or that is white and shouldn't be, please comment and let me know!

Near the yellow house is another shed, from Timecast's Brian Farm set. It is a pretty boring little shed, painted brown. Maybe I should weather them a little more with gray, since old wood does seem to go gray eventually. As always, suggestions welcome!

Now we come to that traditional wargames piece on ANY North American wargames table; the Church! I know some people who have two and three churchs in their collection, as nothing looks QUITE as American as the North American style church! I am happy with the way this one turned out. The sides are painted white, and the roof was given a green tinge. The windows were dotted with blue as with the rest of the buildings, but I then put in a few random red and yellow dots to simulate stained glass. It worked actually quite well, even though it is hard to see in this photo. The base was obviously done with a drybrush of grey, a wash, and a highlight. As there was no bell, I used a bronze color to paint in the impression of a bell, if only because the bell tower looked VERY empty just black!

I do have, of course, a few traditional looking white wooden houses to scatter about the board. Here is the first of them. This guy has a small storm cellar, the entrance to which can be seen beside the front door. A brown drybrush and a wash, and bingo, done.

Next up is a single small wooden cabin that I often use in the more wooded parts of the tables. It isn't fancy by any means, but it has a chimney and a door, and that is enough to keep whoever lives there warm! It doesn't really fit right off of a main street, of course, but it is the perfect building to plop down in the middle of the woody wilderness!

Of course, another mainstay of the wargames table is that building that anyone with a river needs; the mill! I left the wheel unattached so that it will follow the fall of the river and you aren't left with either it or the mill itself floating around above the ground. The stone bottom half of the mill gave me a nice chance to do some drybrush work, which DOES look very sharp. The top half was done in a grey-brown mix, with white to help pick out frames and the like. I hope I picked accurate colors!

Here is another of the small white houses that dot my table. This is another simple design of a house and not very fancy... perfect as a small farm house right along the main road. Like some of the other houses it has some modelled on grass on the sides; rather than simply painting these, I painted them and then flocked them so they would match the flock on the table. I call this the American house, as it is white, the front door is blue, and the back door is red.

So those are my 15mm American Civil War buildings, which are also suitable for a 15mm AWI game. My next few blog entries (one of which will be later today) will be another 25mm Napoleonic French army, a shot of my newest finished unit (my first 25mm Napoleonic Russians to grace the blog!) and a short guide to the non-building scenery for the 15mm ACW collection.