Sarissa Scenery for Test of Honour – the Shrine

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing Test of Honour at the club and a few weeks back I decided I needed to invest in some scenery.   Looking around the Internet I found that Sarissa Precision do a fine range of 28mm mdf Japanese scenery that would go just fine the the Dixon Samurai I have brought out from the cupboard where they have been lurking for about 25 years.  So off went an order, Shrine, Torrii Gate,  Rice Store,  Rice Cart and one of their Mountain Village Scenery Sets.

I have written before about how I don’t really  like mdf buildings built straight out of the box and painted and how I like to add texture and detail to what you get if you build things straight off the instructions.    It can take a fair amount of time and effort, but I think it’s worth it.

So here’s my shrine.  I’ve added strip-wood to the walls of the building, following the pattern that Sarissa have engraved on there, and added tiles to the roof.

To my mind it all looks quite a bit better than the version Sarissa show on their website, which has just been built and painted.

So how did I do it?  You can see the strips of wood I put on the walls in the picture below.  I painted them red before sticking them onto the walls as it’s a sight easier doing that than trying to paint them afterwards.

The roof was made by glueing cut up rectangles of cardboard on as tiles and using wooden barbecue skewers to cover up the join where the roof edges meet.

I contrast I found that the Torii gate, the rice carts and the fences from the village set didn’t need much work at all and were a simple build and paint jobs.

I feel I should make it completely clear that I do not intend to disparage the base Sarissa  buildings in any way whatsoever.   They are all really good models that fit together fairly easily if you follow the instructions.  I rate them highly as a product, it’s just that I want a bit more from them than I can get without additional work and tarting them up myself.  I consider the extra effort as well worthwhile.

Coming soon, the Mountain Village.