Desert real estate: Embracing the grid.

Having reorganised and rebased my Crusades collection (units are now on three stands, each 60mm frontage) for To the Strongest rules, I decided to re-do my desert buildings so that they could hold units more comfortably. There were several ways I could have done this but, after much thought, I pitched for building modules that fully embraced the grid and TtS box sharing rules. I made four modules including a mosque. 

Each section is 210mm wide. My grid boxes are 200mm and ideally the building modules should have been the same but, during the design process I realised that the unit frontage plus the thickness of the walls wouldn't quite make this possible - so I added 10mm.

All the buildings were all made in the same way. They are based on 2mm MDF (or hardboard from the back of a broken picture frame - waste not want not). The walls are constructed from 5mm foam board. Doors are balsa wood and the gates are made from the wood of ice lolly sticks (because the latter is much stronger than balsa). The dome is a plastic lid (I found in the street last year and picked up) with a crescent made from a spare shield. Brickwork is old greetings card / cereal box (I keep some of this about the place too). Roof supporting beams are cane barbeque skewers. Plaster daub work is heavy body artists acrylic (dark blue and left over from basing ships for a client - Hi, VDS). Ground texture is artists acrylic, a bit of sand and grit and cat litter (unused: I do draw the line somewhere). All are painted using household emulsion (when you choose your room colours, think about what you can use the leftover paint for afterwards) and artists acrylic paint and ink.

They take the units quite nicely, as you can see here.

Building with tower. This is a good looking, very basic design.

All the buildings are built as fully enclosed 'compounds'. I got the idea for this from footage of the goings on in Afghanistan a few years back. 

A secure compound structure seems fitting for built up areas in 'lawless times': I imagine compounds would be the normal format for most rural buildings in the Holy Land during the times of the Crusades. 

Note two new flags for the Armenians. The mountain lion on red features in a film, as does the small cross. A white red and yellow tricolour is the flag of modern Armenia (horizontal stripes?).

Two storey building with long one storey warehouse attached. This will give a 'multiple module village' a bit of height.

Note the small high windows on the outer face of the compound. Windows low down would defeat the compound's purpose.

Two small, single storey, buildings sharing a compound. 

I might make another similar to this. As a design, it came out much better than expected. The narrow gap, between the buildings, leading to a smaller courtyard beyond, was important for its success, I think.

A mosque. 

Domes are a bind because they preclude putting troops on the roof and spoil any chance of two unit per box occupancy...

...but wait! 

I actually managed to think about this before gluing the dome structure in place: the dome lifts off when required. 

I very nearly glued it on. Phew!

The roof has a hole in the centre and the dome has a plastic locator pin. these centre everything when it's put together. Troops on the roof cover the hole. 

Will I make more? Yes, four, I think. Three will be made with a single building on one edged and a road on the other (the road being the position of the second 'occupying' unit) so that I can have a road going through two module villages. I'm still at the design stage for these - getting these to look good is actually harder that it seems; one will be a row of shops with a cloistered front.

On the rules front. TtS rules for 'village boxes' are not quite right, IMHO. So, I'm tweaking again. 

• I'm only going to allow occupancy of a single unit of cavalry (in the streets) per section. 
• I'm going to say that units can fight back out of a flank if attacked, though the attacker still gets an extra chance to hit. 
• I'm going to allow units in a village to choose to shoot out of their flank, choosing the front or flank facing they wish to shoot out of for the duration of each turn: once the direction of fire is chosen it is chosen for the whole turn; if a unit chooses to shoot out of a flank, any other unit in the same box, or entering the box at a later point, can't shoot out of the same flank that turn if the original shooter is still there. One stand of the shooting unit can be turned to the flank to indicate the direction of fire.
• Light troops can't use special move and shoot activations on entering, or leaving, a village box.