You Can Break Our Bricks...

JR Models makes some great models of buildings in several scales, including 15mm. This Stalingrad building is molded in gray resin and it has been shown on this blog in the past in unpainted condition. Now that I have painted it, I figured it was a good time to post new photos. I am using this building for my Battle of Berlin as a Luft Hansa building. Notice the poster on the wall. I got this off the Internet, reduced the size and printed it out and pasted it on the wall using white glue. It is one of the many organizations that conducted civil defense in WWII Germany.

This poster is for the NSFK, the National Socialist Flying Corps. They were a Nazi organization that promoted flying sports in the pre-war years. In WWII they conducted training for the Luftwaffe. Despite being 15mm building, it works really well with 1/72nd scale figures. Much of the Stalingrad range workes will with 1/72nd scale figures, and I will be showing more of them as I continue this project.

I used a Vallejo Model Color Saddle Brown recommended to my by Master Modeller, Erik the Manager from Pegasus Hobbies in Montclair. It was an excellent choice for these broken bricks. I dry brushed them with both a light gray and a black wash.

I used light grey for the building fronts and a dark brown for the columns. A gold decoration at the top of the pediment finishes this model.

All of this is part of my Luft Hansa project for the Battle of Berlin. This final photo for today is another view of my stairway to enter and exit aircraft. All made from scraps in the spares box. As the American and British bomber attacks were destroying German cities in WWII, life, commerce and war continued. Factories were often moved underground or dispersed; and the war went on. "You can break our bricks, but not our hearts."

More Ruin Uses

Matchbox, the folks that make the little metal and plastic cars, have also made some sets that have figures, plants, and animals. This set is the cowboy set, it has a big horse, a man on foot with a six shooter, two cacti and a wolf or big dog. The set originally came with a couple vehicles. These sets are pretty good as 1/72nd scale figures but the vehicles are way too large. Matchbox has made many of these sets; military, civilian, cowboys, even space aliens.






















I posed these figures with some of the previous 15mm JR Miniatures Stalingrad ruins. Buildings for Stalingrad work well for many eras and regions of the world. The American West saw many towns build up and fall down in very short periods of time. The mine runs out, the railroad stops at the next town but not this one, any number of things could kill a town. Sometimes major fires would sweep through towns and there would be little left over. So ruins were not uncommon in the Wild West.

Ruins can be used in many areas of the world and in many eras in wargames. I like ruins because they can be used in so many places. The ACW saw a lot of civilian buildings destroyed, as did the First World War and World War Two. They can also be used for construction sites where the ruins represent buildings being torn down. Ruins can provide troops cover, can block attacking forces and provide some interesting things to look at on the table.

Ruined Models

I got some new ruins at my local hobby shop. These are supposed to be Soviet ruins from Stalingrad, in 15mm scale from JR Miniatures. These are highly detailed one piece resin models that have flat bases and are free of flash.























I find these 15mm ruins actually work well for 20mm 1/72nd scale figures also. These are Forces of Valor WWII Germans.






















How large is a brick? How big is a doorway? Often doors and windows can look very small, particularly on older buildings. Since these are ruins, I figure they will work just fine with my 1/72nd scale figures. I typically use buildings in 25mm, 20mm, 15mm and HO scale and even O Guage. In real life doorway size varies from too small to very large, bricks and stones vary in size, so as long as the building looks right with the troops, I figure it is okay to use.





















Ruins are important wargame pieces as warfare often destroys buildings, either the attacker destroys them trying to capture them or the defender destroys them trying to save them. Ruins can be used in wargames to provide cover for defenders or to canalize the attacker into areas of limited movement. Not until the infantry move in and occupy the city have the defenders lost and city fighting can be very dangerous, ruins like this allow you to conduct those kinds of operations.

15mm Buildings, 1/72nd Scale Army Men

This is a 15mm scale wargame building by JR Miniatures. You can find them at http://www.jrminiatures.net/ They make a number of different types of buildings for many different eras and in several scales. These soldiers are Casesar Miniatures 1/72nd scale soft plastic SAS set. As you can see these large figures work quite well with the smaller size buildings. Old European buildings are often have rather small doorways. So these figures don't look that out of place. 15mm buildings have many advantages over 20mm, 25mm, 28mm and 1/72nd scale buildings when used with 1/72nd scale soldiers. Their footprint on the ground is smaller than the other scales. They look okay with the 1/72nd scale figures, despite their large size. 15mm buildings are often less expensive than larger sizes. Often buildings are just used for background or as obstacles so the precise size is not really important. Sometimes rulesets treat single buildings as small groups of buildings so they need not represent actual buildings anyway.

This particular building is item 1593 Stalingrad Ruins. It is made of a nice soft resin with excellent detail. I use HO 1/87 scale model railroad buildings for most of my structures and this fits right in. I paid $12 for the building. It is fully assembled right out of the bag, so no work. Model comes in a gray color so you don't need to paint them but painting would be nice.