Peking in a Box - Terrain Part 1

Over the last month or so I've gradually been accumulating all the necessary items to start constructing some buildings for my 55 Days at Peking project. The list includes cork tiles, bamboo, wooden dowel, wooden coffee stirrers, cardboard in various thicknesses and other sundry items for decoration. The growing pile has been slowly nagging at me, growing louder as the pile of accumulated items increased in size so I figured it was about time I started some construction.

Rather than start with the legation quarter I decided to do some of the less interesting but still important buildings, specifically the housing that constitute part of the playing area and from which a lot of the bands of Boxers will inevitably spring. It'll refine mi skills and leave the more interesting work to the end when I'm flagging a bit at the thought of cutting up yet more cork tiles...

I started out my working out rough building sizes and types and then mapped them into a storage box to ensure they would fit. Once I was happy that everything would fit neatly I was ready to start. Box One will eventually contain three medium sized houses, one large house and either one small house or a small shrine or other character type piece. As you see things fit well...

The outer shells of all but the small item were cut from cork tile and assembled last night, along with detailing like window and door timber work and some additional character on the large house.

This morning I cracked on with the first of the roofs. I don't normally do removable roofs because they require extra effort and the buildings lose some of their structural strength without the roof glued to the walls. Given this is a (large) skirmish project though it's important that miniatures can enter / exit from and hide in buildings so I've bitten the bullet.

I'm going with a variety of roofing styles to mix things up including timber (as above) and clay tile in various colours (still to come on some of the remaining buildings in this box).

All up I think it will cost something in the region of $6-12 per medium sized building and take approximately 2 hours to build each one. It won't break the bank spread over the time it will take to complete the project but it will take a number of months to get enough built for a decent sized table.

I suspect I will need another box of housing to make a convincing sized area and then I can start thinking about legations...

Cheers,
Millsy