Building of the Month - Hougoumont Leven Style

OK this is the one I have been waiting for, yes I give you Hougoumont from Leven Miniatures. This is not yet released but it will be soon. Due to the large number of pieces it will be cast to order so at least you will not have to wait for Mike to build up stocks. 

The set has ten buildings in total though two are cast together, eight larger wall sections and two lower wall sections and of course the well. Final price is yet to be disclosed but I believe it will be around £35 for the set though the buildings may also be sold individually if you want to create other farms and such.

I think this is very reasonable for the amount of resin you get and the detail as you will see from all the photos is excellent. Take a look at the grey roof tiles and you will see what I mean!

It's been about two weeks worth of hobby time all told but that was to paint up two sets so I would say 10 days would cover it. I have yet to finish the ground work on Mikes set as I wanted to try out the shale in the inner courtyards and did not want to risk ruining two sets.

Rather than sort the images taken by Cath I thought I would just add them pell mell and the devil take me. I even planted a vegetable garden though by the time of the battle I am sure the contents would be in a lot of stomachs but that's my licence.

In some of the images I saw a garden out front and it was impossible to resist so a big splash of colour has been added.

The Manor House is an excellent building and I suspect many more of these will be sold as a single item and given the crisp detail rightly so. I have a couple of the already available Manor Houses from the Leven Napoleonic range to paint but can see me adding this one as well. Can't have too many can you?

All of the buildings can stand alone or be added to larger bases so it's great news that Mike will offer them as single items. When added to the other new Napoleonic buildings Leven have either released or are set to release you will really have a great selection of European buildings to choose from.

The covered well looks great and the open door in the interior wall was a nice touch as well. The detail and thought put into the set is just top notch. Mike will also supply a wall pack so you can build the walled gardens as well if you have the room for it (yes we are doing this for our game).

The stables are similar to previous released ones but are different and perfect for the set. No short cuts when it would have been easy enough to do so, top marks for effort then.

The eye candy that the main house is, I take into account that I really like Mike and what he is doing for 6mm terrain but even so on painting this set I have to say IT BLOODY ROCKS! I am really impressed, the whole thing just has a great presence about it but then it should it's really big.

It was really easy to paint, I thought I would have had trouble getting to grips with it but after looking at a lot of images on the internet and choosing the best images for me it soon took a momentum of it's own and it skipped on at a fair pace.

The board Hougoumont is based on is A4 close in size to America's Legal size, so as you can see it's a good footprint for 6mm. The orchard and gardens are each as big again, we will reduce both by about 30% so as to be able to work even with the space we have available. No doubt it will dominate the table and no more than it deserves..

Mikes version will have the shall part covered with sand and fine sawdust to take the edge off the size of the shale but I quite like the finish as it softens from a little distance. With Mikes being a display piece I think it's better to do the extra work.

Another chance t look at those tiles LOL. By the anniversary of the battle Leven will have all the iconic buildings available and as such 6mm will be the best represented scale for your Waterloo enjoyment. Not bad to say that Leven had not a single Napoleonic building let alone Waterloo based collection.

One last image for scale, here we have a battalion of Prussians, sorry I don't have any British and French just seem so wrong.

Building f the Week will be back to normal next week and thanks for sticking with this post to the end.