Thursday, 31 July 2025

Two Grand Manner Napoleonic Houses Completed

After languishing in the pile for nearly fifteen years, I have finally got around to completing the first of many Grand Manner buildings I have accumulated:











This post should probably have been titled 'How to Disappear Down a Rabbit Hole' as I hadn't intended to make a start on them yet. A few weeks ago I started work on some 15mm Najewitz Modellbau 3D printed terrain; a rather nice Spanish town with eight buildings sitting on a sculpted base which I thought we were going to need for a game. 

I completed the buildings but the base is made up of twelve individual pieces and I realised that I would need to affix them to a large MDF base. 

I purchase all my MDF bases from a guy in Adelaide who offers free postage on orders of $75 or more. I then remembered I have a rather nice 28mm Medieval stone church with graveyard which I had purchased from Grand Manner ten or so years ago and which would also require an MDF base.

Thinking that this and a few other odds and ends would be good to get me above the required $75 I then set about trying to locate the church so I could measure the required footprint.

The problem is that I must have purchased over seventy buildings from Grand Manner and they are all in their original dense packing spread across five very large boxes, so I spent a few hours cutting my way through bubble wrap only to find I had now unpacked ten buildings from their Napoleonic Europe range. There was no way I was going to repack them again so I thought I may as well make a start.

The first of these is called a Lindenau house, modelled after one in the Leipzig area. This is I believe actually the rear of the house:











While this is the front and side:





















The houses all have lift-off roofs with, in this case, two levels of interior. Perfect for skirmish gaming, but I debated whether it was worthwhile going to the effort to paint it and if I should just glue the roof in place. In the end I decided that since it was there I may as well put in a bit of additional effort:












All up, I estimate this model took me over twenty-four hours to paint, mainly because it was my first attempt at these and there was a fair bit of trial and error.

The second house is styled after a Holzhausen cottage, from the village to the south of Leipzig:































I was a bit quicker on this one, although it still took me around twenty hours or so:



















These models are two of the smaller pieces and cost me around £50 each to purchase in the raw resin. They were however destined to become available only as painted models as the owner transformed his business into more of a painting service, and the cost for each was then around £240 when painted to a collectors standard. 

After painting them myself and given the detail I can see why, which makes me think the price that Mark of 1866 and All That is charging for his works of art is an absolute bargain. 

All the Grand Manner terrain is now sadly out of production, so I am glad I scooped up what I could even if it means they have been sitting untouched for over a decade:



















I again painted up the interior, albeit doing a much quicker job on it:





































That then is my first two pieces of Grand Manner terrain completed:



















I have another ten or so of these central European buildings to go, plus a dozen or so Eastern European and the same number of Spanish buildings ahead of me. I also have a fair bit of Thirty Years war, WWII and Ancients to plough my way through, but they are such nice models each with their own individual character, that I am looking forward to it.

Speaking of terrain and storage, I finally cleared out one of our spare rooms, set up some shelving and moved some of my storage boxes with completed armies in:



















This has freed up more space in my painting and storage room. I took the opportunity to also move in my long-unused table tennis table and throw a bit of terrain on it to try the area out for space:

























Not much room either side and certainly not conducive to comfortable gaming, but it should be good for a few solo games at least. I have to admit I don't relish the idea of solo gaming as much as I do playing against a live opponent, but once the last of my AWI Continentals are finished I'll try out a game or two of British Grenadier.

I just need to stop any further distractions until I have finished the last ten staff figures. I still haven't found that church though.

16 comments:

  1. Lawrence! This post is a bit of a milestone! Fab buildings, storage cleanout AND you have a gaming table set up! Outstanding! You know, there are remote games you could Zoom into if solo gaming is so horrid.

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    1. Unfortunately time is one of my main constraints at the moment, with three newly-arrived grandchildren aside from the now four-year-old. I am managing on average one gaming session a week either on a Monday or a Saturday, and some weeks both. I do eye off your Zoom sessions though and will definitely be trying to wangle an invitation when things settle down a bit.

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  2. Wow! 70 Grand Manner buildings that's quite an investment! Excellent work on the painting Lawrence!

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    1. Thanks Mark. Yes, I went overboard on them but am glad I did, assuming I can now get them all painted.

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  3. They are nice buildings Lawrence and certainly very well painted but no way I would be paying fifty quid each for them - if the proprietor ended up trying to sell one building for two hundred and fifty, I am not surprised the business folded - but I always had a pretty tight budget for gaming and any money I have, I would prefer to spend on actual troops!

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    1. I was lucky I got in when I did Keith. I won't tell you what I paid for the Spanish Convent, but it made this lot look cheap.

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  4. Oh wow! Two fabulous looking buildings Lawrence! Far too pricy for me nowadays!

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    1. Thanks Ray. I'm not sure I'd be splashing the same amount of cash on them nowadays either.

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  5. Stunning buildings Lawrence. Perhaps we will all be amazed at what we might find if we dig around the house and through the storage boxes.
    The wargaming space looks good.

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    1. Thanks Richard. Not really big enough and I have had my eye on larger rooms once the last of the children finally leave home.

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  6. These Grand Manner Napoleonic houses are absolutely amazing. It's so cool that you finally got to them after all these years. The detail on them, and the fact that you painted the interiors, is super impressive. It is clear why they cost so much when professionally painted, your twenty-plus hours per model really show. It is awesome that you have so many more to work on, and that new gaming space looks like a perfect spot for some solo battles.

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    1. Thank you for you kind words Melody, much appreciated.

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    2. I may be a cynic but my hunch is that Melody is using AI to summarize your post and respond in kind. Clever use of AI and automation to comment.

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    3. I thought so too Jonathan as the text sems to have been scraped, but I didn't want to run the risk of causing offence if Melody is a real person, and I didn't want to offend if it was an AI chatbot in case it decided to clear out my bank account.

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