Converting the Middle East Houses

A while back I've covered the Middle Eastern Houses in a review, and with a second box of these, I began tinkering. A bit of cutting, a bit of filling and re-arranging.

The first batch looked like this, incl. the general mud house available from Renedra as well.

So I grabbed myself the stack of sprues, and played around a bit.

As you have two times, the sides A + B, I modified the door. Pretty easy step. Cut out a bit of plastic card, fill the door way and add filler / spackle to align it with the remaining wall section.

While mixing the sides, I had to keep an eye on the floor level. Not every piece can easily be swapped with another, at least not without putting in some additional effort. So I took off the upper level of some walls and added these to the side / ground floor. Just make sure that the floors align.

And depending on what you want to create, for example a corner extension like in this case, it might be necessary to cut out some part of the floor.

When bringing down an upper story to the ground (or the other way around), you might to add a door, this is pretty easily done with plastic. Take one of the doors, mark the outlines on the inside of the wall and cut it. I highly recommend doing multiple slight cuts instead of one forcing your blade through the material. You have much better control that way. And of course, make sure your blade is sharp. Dull tools make it much harder and easier for you to hurt yourself.

And as you can see, the first house is ready and converted. Adding something to the generic square footprint.

For the second building, I wanted to add an L-shaped extension. So I to align the sides with the main building, as well as the roof, to match.

The trim of the roof might be a bit low, but that's okay, you could always add a railing or something similar.

As for an access to the added building, I needed a door on the upper floor. Use a door as a template, mark the outlines and start cutting. Short dry-fit and then add glue.

And there we go, two new designs of buildings from this kit. And at the price for the bundle, you feel a bit pushed to repeat this - multiple times for a densely filled gaming table. But to be honest, I have now 5 buildings along with the mud house, that is enough for most skirmishes and mass combat systems.

We have now final touch ups to do, as there are gaps - not just created by me converting this kits, but by default. I used spackle / filler to do that and to close up the areas where there were doors and I made them into windows. But mostly along the edges, where the plastic parts not properly connect.

As pointed out in the review of the middle eastern houses, I can see these being used with settings like Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago, but I think they make for interesting Ork Huts for retro / 2nd edition tables.

Had a bit of trouble getting the right shade of yellow-ish beige with the DYI store acrylics, but am already painting those up. Maybe I'll add magnets to the insides, so I can add sci-fi add ons as needed, to swap from historic settings to fictionals as needed.