Wednesday 19 December 2012

4ground walls and a Paratrooper

It can't be avoided the recent explosion in MDF products, buildings, scenery etc. which is swamping the wargame world. Having purchased from Warbases (still be best for bases) and Sarissa (great buildings) I finally made a purchase from 4ground. Nothing to large but some of their MDF damageable walls for 28mm. Though I actually picked mine up from Northstar.

I had first nearly bought a set at the Alumwell show earlier in the year, but decided against it at the last minute. Well having spent the last week or so assembling and painting them. I can say they are GREAT!!!


Like similar products they come 'flatpacked' and after breaking them off the sprue, you have to glue the two separate halves together and mount them on the supplied bases. It is dead easy. There are little tabs on the bases which you have to break off to be able to fit the walls together, a design feature I quite like. So here are the finished pieces...


The two end pieces are missing from this picture, but not from this one...


I've used 4grounds own base render on the 'smooth' part of the wall. I had used this before on one of the Sarissa buildings I did earlier, but this time I followed the directions which come with the kit and are available on their website as a PDF.


It is good stuff and a little goes a long way. I found it was easiest to add a watered down layer first then leave it for a few minutes then add a slightly thicker layer and leave for a minute or two and then stipple the render for the desired effect. Now as mentioned above the set does come with instruction sheet, but I did not completely follow this. As described earlier I did build the walls then paint once assembled.


For the render colours I used Decoart craft acrylics (reasonably cheap, picked up mine from Hobbycraft). I used 'Tan' as the base colour, then dry brushed 'Cornfield Yellow' and finally 'Antique White'. The brick was painted using a very old pot of GW 'Terracotta', then washed with 'Ogryn Flesh' and then 'Devlan Mud' but mainly in the recesses, the mortar joints. I also used 'Devlan Mud' on the lower part (but not exclusively) of the render. The gate pillars were painted GW 'Codex Grey' and then the bricks and pillars were drybrushed DecoArt 'Sandstone'. The wooden gate I did not paint. NB I did not apply a base coat to these models. This meant particularly when applying the terracotta that the amount of paint applied would decide on the level of stain to the MDF, so if some of the bricks look lighter its probably because I used  thinner paint on that section.

To give an idea of height. Here is a section of the wall with a 28mm figure. A Bolt Action US Airborne Paratrooper....


And from the side...


As all ways the figure is mounted on a 2p coin.

I have another set to build, the damageable short wall set (the above is the long wall set). I have glued the damage sections in on this set and probably will on the next one too.  I will probably get at least one more set of these MDF walls, which I may 'damage'.

The figure is another recently completed US Para to add to my growing collection. Once again a very nice figure from Warlord..

 

2 comments:

  1. Nice painting on the figure and I appreciate the side by side comparison with the walls.

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