For quite a while it seemed to me that the one major flaw in 15mm skirmish gaming, when compared to 28mm, was the building interiors. I looked at some of the buildings the 28mm players developed for Infinity and thought to myself that the same stuff in 15mm would simply be much too fiddly. And then, while studying the design of
Micro Art Studio buildings, it occured to me: why not turn the typical wargaming building design on it's head?
See, most of the comercially available 15mm buildings (and a good deal of the scratchbuilt ones) are actually made up of a couple of stackable boxes -
Gamecraft Miniatures residence buildings are one of the best examples here:
As great as it looks, the design makes it rather hard to move miniatures inside the building - not mentioning putting any kind of interior walls in there. But what if we inverted the 'box'?
I've started making some buildings for my 15mm Batman project - at first I wanted just 'solid' buildings without accessible interiors for it, but then I thought I may try out the 'inverted box' idea.
Here's the WIP pic of one of the buildings:
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As you can see, each floor is separate so they can be removed to put miniatures inside. But instead of the usual way of gluing the pieces together, where each story consists of a set of walls and the floor, each of the 'boxes' has it's ceiling glued on the interior walls are attached to the floor below, as seen on the picture:
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The walls hold the floor above in place and after the floor is removed, the miniatures can be easily accessed and moved around. Or lurk around the corner to attack the incoming opponent:
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More pictures of the building (along with a simple tutorial for making fire escape stairs) - soon!
On the side note: I've almost finished The Riddler, but as I was away for a weekend, I just couldn't get around to finish him. Anyway, here's the WIP photo of the mini:
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1. Great idea for buildings. And yours looks really well-built, at least so far. The ranked windows and general slabsidedness give it that nice 30's-vintage downtown Gotham look. I'd finish it with some art deco style copper patina panels below the windows, but I know that detailing it is probably a ways away.
OdpowiedzUsuń2. NICE Riddler! I may just like him more than the Batman... And he's not even finished yet.
Thanks, Allison! I will use art deco panels in some of my buildings, but probably will stay with a simple stone-like texture with this one. And your architectural advice is most welcome :)
Usuń(PS: another simple but distinctively period geometric design kind of like what I was thinking of. Sorry, I'll stop with the architectural advice now...)
OdpowiedzUsuńSticking the walls to the floor below is pure genius!
OdpowiedzUsuńThanks, Rodrick :)
UsuńIncredibly clever, Dis.. Amazing work!
OdpowiedzUsuńThanks, Spacejacker, glad you like it!
UsuńI like it, excellent idea. I have worked on the problem off and on for years.
OdpowiedzUsuńThanks, Kris, glad you appreciate it!
UsuńWow, dis, you amaze me with that rare talent to develop something really wonderful out of what is, at the core, a very simple idea. That's the kind of stuff I get most inspired by. Respect, Mate.
OdpowiedzUsuńBTW, I regard you one of the godfathers of my own little blogging adventure, so would like to invite you to drop in from time to time :) See ya
Thanks, tomo, that's something really nice to hear :) I promise to drop by!
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