Victorian Terrace - Empire of the Dead - WIP - MDF structure

With the immanent arrival of my Requiem kickstarter figure allotment for Empire of the Dead, in June /July, I decided I had better get cracking and try and clear the backlog of outstanding figures I still have for this game.

I still have 3 Police Inspectors, 4 London Gents and a few civilians to paint up. These are all from the Vampire Wars Range from Westwind. I got these all prep-ed, based and undercoated, so good to start painting.

I also realised I must make a start on some appropriate Victorian urban setting buildings, and decided to make a start on a simple terraced block.

I used 3mm MDF sheet, as it's cheaper than foamcore, and more sturdy. It is admittedly a little more difficult to work with than foamcore, but you can still cut it with a sharp Stanley knife though it will take several strokes.

Here's what I have managed so far, all cut out with a Stanley knife and steel rule.

The idea being its two houses terraced together, with a walled yard at the rear. The two yards will be separated by a wood fence (balsa/matchstick construction). The rear yard wall, yet to be done will have rear gates for access to a rear alley way. I may also add a coal bunker and outdoor W/C adjacent this back wall too, for each yard.

I grew up in one such Victorian terrace in the North of England, as a kid, so know their layout old, and new... Thankfully ours had an indoor loo in my time, and the rear yard had been converted to a garden but I could see across to the neighbors and they still had the outbuildings on the back wall intact...

So far I have managed to cut out the basic shape and have done the window frames and door frames with cut matchsticks. I have just gone for a very simple small square window for these humblest of dwellings...

The plan is then to clad the exterior, with DAS modelling clay, and roller this smooth ( I got myself a small lino roller) . Once dry I will etch in a brick pattern. No doubt this will be laborious, but I can't think of a better way...

I am going to do this to each building panel, then assemble the building, and fix up the joints with more clay, and etching.

In effect, this is a test case building construct, to see if these techniques are going to work and how long they will take to do.

A Victorian gent shown for scale.

The building is 24cm wide at the front and  I have allowed 6cm per story, with a further 7.5cm for the pitch of the roof. ( I recall the ceilings in the house I used to live in were very high). The depth of the building is 15cm and another 15cm for rear yard.

So far this was an afternoons work.

So perhaps while laborious to do, at this 'footprint' size it won't take too many to fill up a 120cm x 120cm board, with space for alleys, pavements and roads in between....

For the windows, I plan to use some clear plastic cut from the blister packs all the models come in), glued to the inner surface. I have some white wedding veil material, this I will cut into small strips and again glue onto the inside of the clear plastic to effect a mesh curtain appearance. Then some black paper behind that to blank out the view into the building.

I pondered doing lift of roofs and internal floors, but I think this will become too messy to play, and if figures actually enter a building in the game, I'll switch the action to a separate floor plan to side of main table.

I am also pondering having little lights inside that will give a glow from the windows... I'll have to check out how best to do this with Joe, who's quite clued up on this wizardry!

If all goes well, I would hope to do a few more of these. I'd also like to do a corner public house, shops, perhaps a police station, some warehouse type buildings, may be a church?... We'll see how I go, grand plans and all that!

However as normal I have several things on the go at once, there's still 13 dwarves staring at me from the painting table, and a bunch of FOW stuff; 3 Universal Carriers and 3 Stuarts just awaiting decals and final varnish, a Typhoon that's long overdue finishing off to add to my XXX Corp, and I just got a pack of Pioneers to give my German grenadiers some extra help, these are about 50% base painted now... Busy busy as always!

So this building and all those figures are vying for my time...