Old West 28mm Buildings by 4Ground

OK, so there is a relatively new outfit in the UK that makes scale laser-cut wood terrain/buildings. They are 4Ground (link here). I got interested in their 28mm wild west buildings (made for the game, Dead Man's Hand) late last year, and ordered up a set from Architects of War (link here).

The building kits are very reasonably priced, and come in these plastic bags.

As you can see, all the pieces are pre-painted, and the kits come with very clear assembly instructions.

The laser-cut pieces pop easily out of their frames, and the entire kit goes together with a little white glue.

I started off with a couple of the relatively simple one-storey "side street buildings." Here, the interior is finished. The roofs come off, so the interiors are easily playable spaces.

This is side street building #2, with sub-basement, roof and boardwalks constructed.

And here, the whole thing is put together. I built this while watching a movie...so about 90 minutes not paying very close attention to the construction process.

Here are side street buildings #1 and #2 together. Quite lovely and easy to assemble. I'm going to move onto the more complex multi-storey buildings next. Great wild west flavor!

'Til next time!

In The Beginning...

Hello Cyberspace.

Never thought I'd do a blog, but several guys associated with my game club have started up blogs, so I thought I'd jump in.

I'm pretty passionate about my miniatures gaming hobby, and I'm always looking for info on what other miniatures enthusiasts are up to. Hopefully, you are like-minded and will find interesting material here.

Starting a blog after being involved in miniatures gaming for 20 years feels a little weird. I could just go straight to what's on my workbench today, but I think it would be better to do a light survey of stuff I've worked on over the past few years (or decades...I suppose).

I've been a game designer since 1985, and fell into miniatures gaming as a result of that career choice. I designed my first set of miniature game rules back in 1990 with Silent Death, which was a set of space fighter rules inspired by Star Wars and set in my Spacemaster game universe.

I have plenty of painted miniatures for SD, but no pics of my own stuff...so here is a pic of someone else's figs.

Back then I was playing a lot of Advanced Squad Leader as well. I got into DASL, which was a micro armor version of the game. 6mm is a pretty small scale, but that just means you can collect a lot more of it! Here are some of my micro armor pieces, painted between 1989 and 2006.

Sherman V and Priest.

T34/85.

Ram Kangaroo with Infantry.

25 Pounder Battery.

Around 1999, I was contacted by my old friend from FASA, Jordan Weisman (who was responsible for games like BattleTech, Mech Warrior, Earth Dawn, Crimson Skies, etc.). He had an idea for a new miniatures-based game that would do away with the monster rule books which pervaded the industry at that point. Together, we came up with Mage Knight, the first collectible miniatures game. Our company was called WizKids, and it went on to produce lots of different miniatures games based on cool properties like DC and Marvel superheroes, Mech Warrior and Major League Baseball.


Here is a pic of some of the figures from that game system.

I moved to Edmonton in 2005 and hooked up with Bob Barnetson's excellent Edmonton Wargame Group. Miniatures gaming really took off for me at that point and I started collecting lots of armies, gaming models and terrain sets.

Here is a sample of some of the figs I've collected and painted for our games over the past few years.

15mm German PaK and Infantry for Disposable Heroes.

15mm German Motorcycle Troops & Panzers.


25mm British Paratroopers.

15mm Ancient Greek Hoplites.

1/72 scale Pfalz D.XII for Canvas Eagles.

25mm Troll Chieftain for War of the Ring.

25mm Wild West Gunfighters.

1/144 scale diecasts for Warbirds in Miniature.

30mm Warmachine miniatures.

25mm Romano-British Calvary

Well, there's a sampling of what has occured in miniatures gaming for me over the past while. Next, I'll move on to current projects. Thanks for taking the time to look through this blog...hope you liked it. I'll try to update regularly.