If you have been flowing this blog, you will know that I have been amassing armies to play battles of the Mexican American War for a while. I was fortunate enough to find a batch of old Musket Miniatures Mexican War buildings on the Noble Knight website (well, I found them on eBay and went direct to their site). This was exactly what I wanted, so I was quite happy and ordered everything they had! Turned out I ended up with an old west building, so I guess I will an American business in my town!
I like the heavy relief on the adobe that they did on their buildings and the sizing. If needed, I can fill in with some Mediterranean buildings when I run Monterrey, but this batch is more than enough for everything else! The buildings are all resin and have good all around detail. There are a few spots on some of the bindings that have flat areas, but these are mostly out of the way. Most are single piece castings. The larger buildings with large facades are two piece The building and the front facing). One of the buildings had a separate porch section. These are quite old models, so there was a small amount of flash and the occasional bubble.
I cleaned them up and sprayed them with some bone tan I found at Home Depot to get them primed and base coated. I then set them aside, like so many projects! Well, after finishing my last cavalry units, I decided I needed to dig them out and work on them! I had a some Army Painter Soft tone I wanted to use up, so applied that to all the building walls. I then hit the tile roofs with GW Agrax Earthshade and then the tile porch floor with GW Sepia. I let all those washes dry as a base to work from.
I then concentrated on the tile roofs. I painted them all with some contrast Poppy Red speed paint and hit them with an orange drybrush. I felt they needed a bit of toning down, so I hit them with another Agrax wash. This gave the look that I was looking for.
Next, I worked on all the dark wood. I wanted to do this as an oiled wood effect (that is what I saw in most of the photos I could fined), so I just painted all the wood areas with Army Painter Dark Wood speed paint. I hit a few areas with a light gray drybrush for aging. On the cabin building, I wet brushed with medium gray first, before the final light gray drybrush.
I next moved to all the windows openings and lower bridge opening.s I used Black speed paint on all the openings, as I figured this would be faster with the capilary action.. This proved to be a big mistake! I did not get the coverage I wanted, so had to go back with regular black paint. Unfortunately, I also had a bit too much running on a number of areas… That meant I had to go back with Iraqi Sand and fix all those areas (so much for saving time!). I then did the fancy trim with white.
I hit some of the higher areas with some light sand and wrapped up by spraying all the buildings with Krylon matt spray to seal and protect them. Now I have my buildings, and a new terrain mat from Cigar Box. I do need to find a sign for the store and a bell for the church, as some point… Now I just need to work on various shrubs, bushes and trees for Chaparral!
- Manteuffel