He Built a Crooked House

...And a straight one as well.

A few weeks ago I presented a tutorial for making brick houses for 10mm and 15mm scales.  The project started out well, and I left you all waiting for me to add the roof and base.  I attempted to make a roof using the same techniques detailed in that post, namely pressing details into polymer clay and then pouring water-putty into the resulting impressions.  The result ended up being a failure.  I like the detail of the roof shingles, but the roof "slab" ended up being far too thick and attaching it to the house without gaps proved impossible.  The worst part was the cap; in order to make the crest of the roof look real I would have to use Milliput or some other epoxy.  The whole point of this exercise was frugality and simplicity so I didn't want to do that.  Instead I just started another house with a different roofing method in mind.

Seemed like a sound idea on paper...

This will not do

My second house turned out great.  The building uses the same techniques as before for the walls, but simple notched strips of thick paper (junk mail) laminated together make up the roof.  I based the walls on a scrap piece of plastic food packaging covered with a water-putty and sand mixture.  The polystyrene sheet had fiberglass wall repair tape attached to it first, giving the putty something to cling to.  This is how I do all my bases now.

I attached the roof using hot glue, then primed the whole thing black and painted with cheap acrylic paints.  The whole thing cost pennies due to the extensive use of scraps and cheap materials.  The time cost of course was higher but still not excessive, maybe four hours spread out over two weeks (a tiny bit after work each night).

The picture below features the finished house with some Old Glory 10mm Armored Gauls for scale.  I apologize for the unpainted miniatures, but I'm playtesting homebrew rules and can't wait for paint!  The picture also shows my very simple cottonball trees.

Do ancients games have objectives?

By the way, 10mm mass combat, where have you been all my gaming life?  I'm totally enamored with these little guys; guess the starships may take a back seat for a while.