Herr Schmied's house and smithy

A blacksmith's is another of those iconic war game buildings that I have somehow neglected until now. A smithy is easier to represent than most industrial buildings because it can be made with an open frontage to show the forge and an anvil. 

 Except for the inside of the smithy, this town section is a fairly basic construction. It is made in the same way as my other recently constructed buildings. The base and walls are MDF, the chimneys, brick work and timber framing and gate are balsa wood, the roofs are card. The windows and doors are by War Bases and the yard walls are railway accessories. 

Because this town section has two buildings it has two identifiable yards, one behind the house, the other in front of the smithy, each capable of holding a unit (four 45mm square bases) of troops but, because the overall base is only  8" x 9", it could easily be declared as a large one section piece.

Inside the smithy is the forge (with bellows), an anvil, a quenching barrel and a work bench. The forge has cat litter coals and a card cowl (out of shot but there). The anvil was made from a plastic matchstick from an old children's game set I ransacked years ago for tiddlywinks and other bits and pieces - I always knew those plastic match sticks would come in useful one day - mounted on a balsa wood block. 

So, now I have fourteen town sections for horse and musket battles set in northern Europe. Except for another church, I think I have enough for now. I certainly have enough for the Lobositz game at Derby later this year, which only needed nine.