Sunday 2 January 2011

Pre-Printed Cut and Assemble Villages

Full colour pre-printed educational 'Cut and Assemble' model buildings are a cheap and effective way of getting terrain on your tabletop.

I'm a big fan of these. A wide range of historical building types are available at a third of the price commonly sought by the model railway market.

For Winter of '79, I want to bring to your attention two sets by Dover Publications in particular. Unfortunately both are out of print but can be bought second hand at a reasonable price, if you ignore and step past what some book collectors are trying to charge for 'new' copies. These models are HO scale which is slightly smaller than 1/76th. Don't worry though, it's a positive as the models fall between 20mm and 15mm scales so unless you are a fussy bugger, can be used with both.

The Cut & Assemble Old English Village In Full Colour (Michael Grater & Marc Sewell, 1986) gives you a timeless country village that you could find anywhere in Southern England. It's a bit Miss Marpleish and more suited to VBCW, but I walked through many just like this in 1978 when I did the South Downs Way.

The 48 page set includes a village church, pub, post office and 5 other houses, plus walls and other village paraphanelia to make up the '12 Buildings and Structures'.

I picked up my copy in a book clearance for around £2/$3. Dog-eared at the corners but didn't effect any of the buildings.

To complement the English Village, Dover also published Cut & Assemble an Old Irish Village (Edmund V Gillon Jr, 1991). This has 5 buildings and a renaissance tower. It reminds me of villages on the road to Braemar, so could equally be used in a Scottish setting. Available second-hand for around £7/$10 - bargain.

You could extend both sets with maybe a download and print or Superquick (etc) card country garage, school or maybe some more modern detached houses.

Happy Hunting!

Cheers
Mark
   

5 comments:

  1. Great stuff! I remember seeing stuff like this everywhere when I was a kid. Heck, I remember you used to be able to get card terrain on the backs of cerial and cookie boxes.

    I'll have to track some of this stuff down. I keep telling myself I'll make terrain and to avoid card stuff, but the realities of life keep telling me how wrong that plan is.

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  2. Hi Eli

    I have a dozen semi detached card houses somewhere. They were a promotion in a bank to advertise mortgages. Can I bloody find the things now!

    Cheers
    Mark

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  3. Eli

    Dover also publish a range of American Victorian and 20's/30's buildings/villages/seaports etc. useful for Cult of Cthulu, VSF and 2nd American Civil War (VBCW in US) games.

    Cheers
    Mark

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  4. Silly question time, but as I have never used papr buildings before, is there a way to construct them so that the roofs lift off, allowing access for figures within?

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  5. Not a silly question Darryl. The roofs are mostly separate, fold and can sit on the building. I would suggest reinforcing them with card on the underside and thin card batons at each ends will hold the roofs in place.

    Cheers
    Mark

    ReplyDelete