Constructing Hooches

If you play games regularly then it will not be too long before you will need to have some hooches on the tabletop. After all, a great many engagements took place either in close proximity to, or else actually in and around, rural villages and hamlets. This article is written from the perspective of Vietnam Crossfire using Barrie Lovell's excellent Incoming! rules. However, there is no reason why the technique described here should not be used for other rules systems or figure scales with only minor adjustments.

When I sat down and thought about the design of my buildings there were a number of key considerations that would determine the eventual outcome;

the buildings had to be able to accommodate either one or more fireteam stands
they had to be easy to assemble since I was going to produce a lot of them
they would need to be reasonably sturdy to withstand wear and tear as well as storage
they had to be made from inexpensive materials
the end result was to be representative and not an exact replica

In the light of these considerations I came up with a simple and cost effective design that enabled me to produce nearly a dozen buildings in a couple of days at a cost of almost nothing.

Materials and Measurements

For the material I choose to use picture-framing card. This is relatively thick card that is easy to work and cut and is generally very tough - certainly tougher than using balsa wood. Besides, I had obtained dozens of small sheets of this material from where I work - offcuts and wastage, but to me, a complete gift since it was free!

In terms of dimensions, my first consideration was the internal floor space. I wanted to be able to place one or more fire-teams in each building and the size of the fire-team base (1½" x 1½") became the determining factor in terms of floor width and length. The building also had to be able to have a removable roof and sufficient height so that when a fire-team stand was inside, the roof could still be placed back in position.

Here are the measurements that I decided upon;

floor = 2" x 3½" (this gives ½" leeway around the fire-team bases if placed side-by-side in the building
side-walls = 1" x 3" (the height of one of my US stands mounted with an RTO and antennae is 1")
end-walls = 1" x 1¾", with the apex at 1¼" height
roof = 3" x 3½"
floor-supports = 1¾" long (I cut these by guestimate in terms of height but it is about ½cm)

Before rushing ahead and cutting sufficient components to make a dozen buildings, I decided to make a proto-type in order to determine if everything looked right and went together OK. Once I was assured that all was well, I proceeded to cut sufficient components for all the buildings at one go. After cutting all the pieces, I then cut assorted doors and windows out of the walls. I also left some blank spaces on the walls where I intended to place shuttered windows later on.

Assembly

For the assembly I used a simple impact adhesive called Evostik.

Glue the floor supports to the underside of the floor. There was no precision here, I simply glued them in place by eye. This will raise the floor off the ground and give that familiar look so common in most pictures of a slightly raised floor.
Glue the four walls to the floor and to each other. I decided to glue the side-walls to the inside edge of the end-walls but you can do it the other way around - just make sure that you are consistent. It may take a bit of fiddling to get the walls squared off.
Take the roof component and score it with a craft-knife down the middle. Be careful NOT to cut it in two. Once it has been scored, fold it down the score line.
Corrugated Tin Roof - to represent corrugated tin roofing I used a piece of corrugated board that I purchased from a local craft shop. I intended to have several buildings with tin roofs. Cut out two pieces of corrugated board 1½ x 3" and glue these onto the surface of your cardboard roof. Then, simply cut out a strip of paper and glue this along the top of the roof so that it overlaps both roof faces like a ridge tile.
Finally, assemble your building by placing the roof in position.

Painting

One problem that I have always encountered with Vietnamese village huts is how to represent the grass, reeds and bamboo used in their construction. Resin models deal with this quite simply but when using a flat material such as card it is not so easy. I have tried putting a thin coat of putty on the building faces and then creating the texture by scratching the putty but this has proved to be less than acceptable. The result is often quite good but it is too laborious and inefficient when constructing a lot of buildings simultaneously.

My decision eventually involved using a simple textured paint and then using painting technique to represent the building materials of grasses and reeds. The textured paint that I used was a mixture of Color Party Basetex and green - this gives a rough textured finish. Note that when I applied this, I applied it using brush strokes that all ran from the apex of the roof, or top of a wall, straight down in parallel strokes.

Once this was dry, I applied a thin wash of watered down chestnut ink. This considerably toned down the green and resulted in a brownish finish with a tint of green. This was to be the basic surface that I was going to paint on.

Using short, straight brushstrokes, as mentioned above, I started applying the colours that I hoped would result in what would look like dried grass, reeds, straw etc. My first colour was a light brown (Snakebite Leather). This was then highlighted with a mix of light-brown and ochre (Bubonic Brown). I continued to add further highlights by adding white to this mixture. The eventual result was a kind of sunbaked, dried out finish which was passable for dried building material.

Finally, I painted the floor around the building a dark brown and similarly, the shuttered windows. Both of these items would have further detail added.

Detailing

Painting the floor brown was fine except that it left them looking very flat, plain, and boring. So, using a fine pointed liner pen, I drew lines in the surface to represent the floor boards. I only drew these lines at either end of the building where the floor extends beyond the end-wall of the building. I then simply added a light-brown highlight in-between each of the lines to further define each board.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, I left some wall faces blank so that I could place shuttered windows. These were simple rectangles of card that were stuck directly on the wall and stood proud of the surface.

These 'windows' were then painted a plain brown and, using the fine liner pen, I simply drew the louver shutters onto the surface of the card.

That was it - the building was finished.

However, like I mentioned, it was my intention to construct about a dozen buildings simultaneously and that is precisely what I did. To avoid complete uniformity, I designed a smaller building that would accommodate a single fire-team stand. This was built in exactly the same manner as the main building and of the same dimensions except for length. I also tried to make sure that each building was painted slightly differently so that there would also not be uniformity in colour.

Using the techniques outlined above, I was able to produce a dozen buildings in about three days total - sufficient for a small fortified hamlet - and now had enough rural buildings for a reasonably large game.

Completed Models

Just a few images of some completed buildings. What I find very good about this technique and method is that there is no real limit to what you can achieve. Barrie Lovell produced a fabulous Vietnamese shop-front using card and this technique is essentially the same as that used by Barrie.

Structures both small and large can be easily produced. I quite fancy the idea of producing a temple or French colonial house, perhaps a Catholic mission or church.