"AWI City/Town Buildings" Topic

I know John has brought this up before but I am compelled to point the lack of 28mm town/city buildings for the AWI. There are all kinds of frontier type buildings but few for towns.

I am sure there will be all kinds of links posted to this thread but most will be farm buildings, barns and cabins. I am planning for Trenton and I have researched the specific buildings which figured prominently in the battle.

I do not have to have the specific buildings and will gladly substitute if I can find some generic AWI town buildings. There is a difference between most frontier building and city/town buildings.

Grand Manner has buildings and I have purchased their tavern. Great looking model but more appropriate for true 25mm and they are expensive. Anyway they are on vacation or something and couldn't order from them if I wanted right now. 18th Century Euro buildings are different. Any suggestions short of scratch building?

JR Miniatures – few (even less under new owners.)
Grand Manner – Closed
Miniature Building Authority – none
GAJO – Yes, but limited variety (JR Miniatures?)
Tons of others – none

Manufactures please take note!

Preach, Brother!
Preach.

I keep pestering my old D&D brother in arms Scott to do some buildings for Trenton and Concord. It's not like there are no suitable pictures anywhere.
Like the Osprey "Taverns of the American Revolution, vol 1, Massachusetts and vol 4 New Jersey."

Seriously, the Osprey on Lexington Concord and almost any book on the Trenton campaign provide fodder for the foam core cutter.
Model railroad shops have sheets of stone for walls, etc.
Dover even has some cutout AWI period booklets in HO scale.

Fiddlers Green has a DVD of a New England village. You can print out quite a few appropriate buildings on 110 card stock.

I visited Colonial Williamsburg this summer and picked up a great book for reference. It has line drawings of every building there.

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Wargames Vault has a very nice New England Saltbox house to download in several color combos.
I have printed it out and it looks great, but not assembled it yet.
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Try this for some Lincoln period buildings. Free downloads, and SOME could work for AWI.
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Again I have printed some but not assembled yet.

Don't forget the church that the Perrys or renedra supply. It looks good.

Serissa MDF has some stuff that you could either use as is or use it as frame and add your diy to suite your taste.
sarissa-precision.com

Hovels ACW range also has buildings that will work for AWI.
hovelsltd.co.uk/acw_25mm.htm

Christopher

These are cut and assemble HO scale buildings – if that helps

link

link

amazon.com/lm/RWOZEI5W7II0M

Yes. Those are the Dover ones I mentioned earlier.

Look at Perry's, it's what I have used for AWI. I found the Church useful. You can always make them from scratch out of foamcore board.
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Thanks Grossman. I have looked at Perry's before hand and yes they have a church and frontier farm houses which I will probably purchase assemble and use. But not really what I am looking for. Here is a type I am looking for and you would think this would be a no-brainier for some company to model and sell. This is the Douglas House which still stands in Trenton. I believe the color is correct (they weren't all white). You don't have to use it only for Trenton. This could be used in a variety of battles and periods.

I wish my father were still alive. He made me an entire AWI village with many of the buildings and outbuildings modeled after Williamsburg, but in 40mm. He was making them for customers also in 28mm scale and 40mm scale but alas, he is gone now.

It would take me a couple of days to knock that out, were I of a mind to do so. Got a picture of the back?

Nope can't find a picture of the back. This angle photo is closest I could fine. If I didn't live on the other side of the country I would just drive there and take some photos.

Here's the back of the Douglas House. Even includes historical flavor!

JR Miniatures made the courthouse from Guilford Courthouse. Could be used as a tavern.

JR Miniatures made the courthouse from Guilford Courthouse. Could be used as a tavern.

btsrr.com/bts7701.htm

This is supposedly early 20th century, but if you modify the window mullions and shorten the porch you might get something that looks right. At $50 USD for the S scale model though, it might be more than you want to spend. They also have an S scale church that might fit in an AWI town.

One of the problems is that so few AWI battles revolved around built-up areas, that manufacturers probably don't feel that the cost of designing and producing them is worth the financial outlay. And I can see their point – up to a point.

Off-hand I can think of Trenton, and the three sieges (Savannah, Charleston, and Yorktown) where you would need a range of different town buildings. Many battles had single – often iconic – buildings (usually a plantation house, courthouse, tavern, or barn) which occasionally get made; but little else – most manufacturers expect us to use those singular buildings, plus whatever ACW stuff they make. And to be honest, it is usually enough for anything short of a "gee whizz!" demo or participation game at a big convention/show.

Don't forget Battle Road, Lexington and Concord.
You need a tavern for Sam Adams to hide in when he fires the Shot.

It's hard to tell if that is one building in an "L" shape or two different buildings. Is that building on the left part of the original house?
The front doesn't really match the back, as far as I can see.
Look at the roof line. I cannot tell if the second building is attached or not.
Anyone?

I agree. That's weird.

Winston – I think Grand Manner made a set of buildings for the April 19 contretemps, including a rather splendid Merriam House. They are all "full size" in terms of 28mm figures and so have very large table footprints. I don't think the Meeting House or Buckman Tavern were among them, though – in all honesty, would anyone want to "game" Parker's old men and boys getting shot up by two light companies?

No. Concord is much more fun.

Grizzly,

Thanks!

While many built up areas were not involved in battles the fact that people want the buildings should be cause enough to get ambitious manufacturer looking into it.

Not every wargame is recreation of an actual battle. What-ifs are a big portion of the games played.

I can think of Trenton, Princeton 1 & 2 and Germantown. But these buildings could be used in several periods. After all a few of these buildings still stand today.

Nevinstrip
The Douglas House is one building, and is L shaped in plan.
The first image, above, shows the base of the L, viewed from the street – whilst the second image, with the reenactors, is taken from the right of the L.
So what you see is the tip of the base [coming towards you in perspective] and the vertical of the L beyond that.
The two story base of the house is taller than the rear projection – in other words the ridgelines of the two portions of the house are at different heights. In the map image below the property is top rightish….

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