Knee-deep in the hoop-la.

So this afternoon, mi hermano del gestor de proyecto Jonesy came by and we had what could best be described as a relaunch meeting for the Victorian City terrain project. If you've been following the blog for a while, you'll remember last year we were working on some scratchbuilt Victorian slum buildings, after which I kinda went a bit mad with the credit card and bought a whole load of buildings from PMC, Sarissa Precision, Warbases and Ziterdes.  Well my primary goal for this year is to get this city terrain completed and on the table.  Since there was now way too much for one poor fool to keep track of, I asked Jonesy for help.

We started by unboxing all the buildings that I'd acquired and fit as many of them as possible onto my 4 ft square wargaming board.

The Great White Whale in the foreground is the fantastic Ministry Building from Amera Plastic Mouldings, the dark blue-grey primed buildings are Sarissa Precision laser cut MDF, the plain MDF on the right is the Warbases corner tenemant building, the sandstone buildings in the furthest corner are PMC resin models and finally the left and right corners are occupied by Ziterdes hard foam buildings.

What's scary is that this isn't even all the buildings we have.  There's another Warbases tenement and terrace, the Amera church and all the scratchbuilt buildings we had been working on.  But this was the first time I'd had so many of the buildings on the table together with any street-like spaces between them.  Despite the buildings being of different materials and styles, I was pleased with how well they seemed to work together, clashing and contrasting but in the way that real city buildings do.  The overall effect did seem suitably Victorian.

Between us, Jonesy and I thrashed out all the design decisions that had been rattling around my head, and then we developed a plan.  The Ministry, epic as it is, will be backburnered for now as constructing it will be a major project in its own right.  The Ziterdes buildings, while they will benefit from a little TLC, don't look too bad in their raw state on the tabletop, so for now we'll use them as is.  The PMC buildings are also ready to use and need no work, although we did note that they might benefit from a repaint later to make them fit better with the rest of the buildings.  The Warbases buildings can also more-or-less be used as-is.

Our main focus is going to be the Sarissa MDF buildings.  We agreed the Wolf Grey I'd primed them in was a little too blue, so at the very least they're going to need some heavy drybrushing to tone it down.  I've also been tasked with getting new baseboards made with the improved cobblestone texture paper I'd found.  These are going to be three 4ft by 2ft boards of 3mm MDF, plus the two half-boards that I'd already cut.  That gives us up to 8'x4', with the option of breaking up the shape with the half-boards.

The important thing is that we've decided to put on a GASLIGHT game at the local club with this setup for the first Sunday in March, so we're committed to having at least the baseboards and the Sarissa buildings completed by then.  Remember when I posted yesterday that working towards a deadline was the best motivator for getting things done?  Well Jonesy reads this blog and he quite rightly reminded me of it.  I think the target's we've set are achievable, though I think I'd like to see if we can get a quick win with regards to polishing off the WIP scratchbuilt slums as well as the Sarissa buildings, and maybe roofing the Warbases terraces (which are otherwise 95% complete)

And of course, finish the remaining British figures on the painting table...

And a couple more from the Steam Tank queue...

<sigh> If only someone would invent the 48hr day?!!!