Got a little brown on your stone...

My first mdf kits (evah) are from Burn In Designs (link at right).  I like this material!

For my residential neighborhood, I picked up a three-pack of 6 Story Brownstones, from the Federation City product line.

These types of apartment buildings can be found all around American cities.

The buildings come three to a pack and are all identical.  They consist of four walls and a roof, which all fit well together (wood glue is perfect for them).  Compared to my GameCraft houses, these apartment buildings are large.

As I've seen elsewhere, the tabs on the buildings stick out a bit after assembly and should be sanded down.  Don't get too vigorous with the sandpaper, though.  Some of my buildings are now a little wavy in spots.

Assembled and sanded.

After sanding, I filled in the cracks with Milliput and added a styrene rod to the roof to serve as a chimney.

The wooden material is very easy to paint and the dark paper that I inserted into the interior of the building glued on nicely.
I've finished one of these buildings, so far. 

It's not exciting to look at, but it isn't supposed to be.

I'm happy with these buildings and will be ordering others from Burn In Designs.  As a first exposure to mdf, these have been a positive experience.

Thanks for wrecking my house.  I didn't really want to live there, anyway.

Little Business to Report...

Part of my GameCraft purchase included a few resin buildings.
Resin has the reputation of being able to hold detail very well, but also being prone to air bubbles that can ruin the details you are trying to so-nicely show off.

I ordered this set of small businesses and this larger building with a restaurant on the ground floor.
The three of them came in a white-ish resin that required almost no cleanup of flash.

The backs of the buildings were rough with some deeper pitting.  I filled in the larger holes with Milliput and will paint the backs darker colors. 

This roughness/pitting in the back of the models doesn't concern me much.  Having spent much of my life living in large cities, the rear-ends of commercial buildings are frequently pretty ugly.

Lots of unsavory back-alley deals go on here.

This is pretty minor stuff, nothing to be concerned about in terms of determining the quality of the product.

The other sides of the larger building were perfect.  It's really a nice looking model, with window panes and decorative brickwork. When I get to painting it I will have fun.

I can already hear music in my head as tiny patrons sip foreign coffee and laugh during a wonderful summer eve's dining.

The other two buildings had some problems.

This second building had very nice details, with minor warping on the front bottom corners of the facade.  This is not really an issue to my mind, as both corners turned inwards identically and this gives the appearance of being intentionally designed by its architect.

The second one has the same detailing as the first, but in this one bubbles created damaged arches.  I filled these in with greenstuff.  I'm not a sculptor, but when painted it should look okay.

Overall, I'm happy with these buildings, they fit in with my general expectation of quality from GameCraft, even with some of the problems that resin is noted for.

So far I've painted up one of them.  It took about as long as it does for me to paint up a typical 28mm miniature.

Lovely arches.  Those window frames and door knobs are sculpted in.

I will definitely be buying more resin products from GameCraft.

Those who live in acrylic houses...

... shouldn't shoot missiles.


So much of Robotech takes place in or around cities, so it is no wonder that many of the people who have picked up Robotech RPG Tactics have taken an interest in city terrain. 




Not to mention it makes for interesting layouts and the "cool factor".

There are several manufacturers of suitable terrain and I plan on ordering from many of them.
The first company that I ordered buildings from is GameCraft Miniatures (link can be found on the right).  GameCraft has a reputation for quality.  I didn't own any of their products prior to ordering, but I do have a friend that uses some of the 28mm buildings from the company and think they are good, so I knew that I wasn't just blindly ordering with no idea what I would end up with.

GameCraft offers buildings in a few different materials, including resin, matboard and acrylic.  I ordered a sample of buildings in each of these to see what they are like.

I ordered the Small Downtown Flats, a set of 14 buildings for the low price of $16.50.  A good deal.

These are smaller residential buildings of three to five stories high and largly around an inch in width. They are five pieces each, made of laser-cut acrylic.

They smelled all toasty.

The GameCraft site has got some useful tips on how to deal with acrylic buildings, including suggestions on the type of glue to use.  Although the site says that super glue such as Zap-A-Gap could be used, it suggests using different types of plastic glues.

Of course, I used Zap, which wasn't the best choice.  The buildings did go together,  but the bond was not strong.  I dropped one of theem and it fell apart.  Since I had already assembled all of them using Zap, I'm stuck.  I reinforced them by filling in the seams with Milliput.  Besides helping to hide the seams, it will also strengthen the bond.

I am still wary of the long term durability.

The models are fairly basic, being boxes with windows cut out in them.  Painted up they would be functional, but I decided to add some extra details to some of them to test out how they would turn out.

In tonight's episode of This Small House...

For details I picked up a variety of shaped strip styrene from my flgs and glued pieces to add raised details to the buildings.  The buildings also came with acrylic "bricks" that were the cut-out windows.  I glued these onto the models as well.

I used some thin strips of balsa to add chimneys.

Chim-Chimeny

Chim-Chim-Cheroo

The styrene and balsa were glued on using Zap, which mostly did a good job but needed to be reapplied in a few spots.

Gratuitous shot of New Macross City surrounding the SDF-1.

After the details were added, I gave them a quick priming and then painted them.  I initially tried to use some craft acrylic paints that I have for terrain and other craft projects, rather than using my more expensive Citadel and Vallejo miniature paints.  The craft paints did not provide adequate coverage of the buildings, so I ended up using my better paints.

It took a few coats of paint to provide good coverage of the buildings.  More than I would have used on other materials.

After they were painted, I glued (standard Elmer's) pieces of black oak tag on the interior walls of the buildings, to black out the windows.  I painted the paper in the doorways to look like doors, then applied varnish.

No peeking...

I think that the effect is nice.  I didn't fill the seams as well as I thought I did.  They aren't too bad looking...
For the price, the buildings are nice if you are looking to make up a residential neighborhood.  I wish I had used a better glue on them, but they should do alright.   Putting in the extra work to add details to them paid off, in my opinion, even though it adds a good amount of time and some cost to making them.

I am not sure that I'll choose acrylic buildings over other materials, but GameCraft does have other nice offerings that I will consider for future purchases.






Flat strips, canals, tiled plasticard, acrylic brick used to add details.

Copplestone 28mm, as well as a Zentraedi Regult and UEDF Spartan (both mostly finished but still works in progress) shown for scale.

Quarter Round strips create awnings.

I've gots to have this!

Some things -- be they books, movies/television shows, music, food -- stick with you in such a way that you are fans of them for life.

Robotech is a cartoon that came out in 1985. I started watching it then or the following year.  I used to wake up early to watch it and waking up early is pretty much something I never do, even now.

HG, please don't send a C&D for me using this...

The show's target audience is teenagers and it frequently comes across in the dialogue, yet in many ways it approaches the topics of war, romance and growth with maturity.  Ultimately, the theme throughout is that peace, understanding and love are greater than conflict.  It is these aspects of it that continue to appeal to me thirty years later.

Ever since I first started playing miniature wargames, I had wished for a Robotech game.  Occasionally, someone would post about using 1/200 scale Macross models to play Robotech games and that really appealed to me.  I began to shop around when Palladium announced the Kickstarter.  I don't particularly like Kickstarter and Palladium has a well deserved reputation for producing quality products at a glacial pace, missing deadlines and they are lousy at communicating.  Knowing all that l, I signed up for different reasons, although it really came down to: ROBOTECH!

I was doomed to pledge and I am glad I did.

First assembled and painted miniatures.

The above shows my first Robotech models: a Zentraedi Armada Regult battlepod and a United Earth Defence Forces Defender destroid.  I had brought them to my flgs to show the owner (and friend) who asked if he could put them in one of his display cabinets.  An honor! I am just an okay painter, so the offer was flattering.

The only Kickstarter I have backed is the Robotech RPG Tactics one.  While it has been a bumpy ride and certainly should have been handled better, I am enjoying the models I have received thus far.

The easiest to assemble of all the first wave models, the Zentraedi battlepods allow a decent amount of posing for what is essentially an egg on legs.  The basic pod/Regult sprue has three different pairs of legs.  An additional pair is included on the artillery pod and scout pod sprues, which gives a total combination of 16 different leg pairings that can be attached at different angles.
Besides the legs, the primary and secondary guns are ball-sockets, so are adjustable to different angles, the rear thrusters can be rotated to point in different directions, as well as the main body of the pod being situated on a waist that allows some torso twisting.

The key issue with the pods are their feet.  The feet fit some legs better than others, so before applying glue it is best to figure out the better matches.

My very first assembled Robotech model.  The Baccus 6mm Romans and the GW LotR troll in the background give a sense of the model's size.

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