One of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit...

Warlord Games do a very nice model of the Cromwell Cruiser tank

 Scaled at 1/56th of full size, it fits nicely with their range of plastic and metal WW2 miniatures. The model went together well. It is just awaiting some decals and weathering.

The Cromwell was in British service until the Korean War, variants served in Greece and Finland until the sixties.

The building in the background is part of the Warlord Games Ruined Hamlet.

City Block

At Salute this year I bought four Sarissa buildings: a container, a Wild West shack, an Explorer pod and a City Block.

The container went together with no problems, though it is rather large (I was expecting something nearer the size of an ISO container).

I put together most of the Explorer pod (pictures to follow at a later date) but it is waiting for some finer weather to allow it to be spray painted.

And then there was the City Block.

It is supplied (at least at exhibitions) in a very compact stack of HDF in a plastic bag.

I found it rather intimidating, and put it to one side.

Time passed...

One evening, I was at a loose end and thought that I would "just have a look", just pull the instruction sheet out and have a look.

About twenty minutes later I had dry fitted the whole thing together.

Time passed again.

I took it all apart, and here is a picture of the bits.

Unlike a number of other laser cut kits, the City Block range is supplied already separated from the sheet.

The kit is supplied in 3mm and 2mm HDF. The outer walls, floors and ceilings are in 3mm HDF. The window and door elements are in 2mm HDF.

The ground floor was assembled using the floor above to assist in making everything square.

It was at this point that a slight problem in my assembly occurred. When I did the dry build, it went together fine. Unfortunately when I put it together, I managed to get the end walls in the wrong place. No, I did manage to get the side door on the ground floor, unfortunately the floors are designed to use the top tabs to hold them in place. So when putting it together, ensure that you do not have a down tab in the slot that is supposed to be used to hold the levels together.

So I managed to put one of the end walls in the wrong place. Emergency surgery ensued to remove said tab.

So now I have a two storey building in 'natural' HDF.

Agents Blue and Red check out the new building.

So, how to paint it.

I did not glue the door and window elements inside the building (if you peer closely at the above picture, you will spot the blu-tack (tm) holding the windows in place.

This allowed me to paint them separately.

I sprayed the exterior and interior of the building with Halfords grey primer. The windows and doors were sprayed with Citadel Skull White. Once again the doors and windows were held in place by blu-tack.

Tweedy and May discover the Photonic Spanner is no guarantee of entry.

While May keeps an eye out at the front, Tweedy tries his luck (and Photonic spanner) on the side door.

Though the exterior face of the windows and doors are painted, the interior face needs to be painted, as does the walls.

Additional details required include drain pipes (how else do you access the first floor - especially as the building has no interior stairs), and some detail on the roof.

It also needs some detailed painting, mortar between the blocks, oh and some door knobs.

I was concerned that the etched detail might be lost under the paint, but as the photographs show, the detail is still visible.

Now I need to build the other two kits, and then get some more so I have a town for my miniature figures to run (or in the case of the zombies shuffle...) around.