I wanted to know if anyone sells any plaster buildings …
I do not know of any current vendor of plaster buildings. In the late 1980s I bought a fair number of plaster cast buildings for my own wargaming use, but these were in 1/285 (6mm) scale, and that vendor no longer appears to be in business.
Do any of you guys use plaster builds (e.g. hydrocal) for wargaming?
I have used, and still do use, my plaster buildings.
But I find them to be notably inferior to resin buildings. There are three shortcomings I observe:
1) There is less detail in the castings.
The plaster buildings I have are much clunkier. This may just be the characteristics of the vendor rather than the material, but I think it must be harder to get plaster to flow smoothly into find detail in the molds. So things like texutred walls, or shutters on the windows are generally not present.
2) They don't paint up as well.
Because it is such a dry porous surface, plaster does not respond nearly as well to one or two light coats of paint. You really have to lay it on to cover the plaster. Because the underlying plaster is white, if you don't really lay it on thick your painted surfaces wind up looking all streaked. This tends to discourage me from painting the whole building … I tend to leave large unpainted portions of the buildings and just do some of the trim or detail (what detail is there). White buildings with trim just don't really look that good on my battleboards. So I am generally disappointed in the results.
3) They chip easily.
This is probably the biggest shortcoming to my view. If I do paint them up fully, the next time I take them out of the box they've got bright white marks on them, where some bit of the plaster has chipped off. They get chipped every time they get handled. Resin can chip too, but not nearly as frequently, and when it does it doesn't leave me with a bright white "HEY LOOK AT THIS!" flaw.
In sum even though I have probably 10 or 15 plaster buildings still in my active terrain box, I am not a fan, and would not buy more.
Your mileage may vary.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
