Sunday, December 8, 2019

Dragonfrog Asian Shop Type 5/6 Combo

I'm back again with another 28mm MDF Asian shop from Dragonfrog Games for my Chinese warlord and WW2 wargaming. This particular building is a type 5 kit, with the shopfront and balustrade swapped out from the type 6 kit. As with the other build, a lot of upgrading has been done with paper textures and plastic elements. Of particular use on this kit was the Plastruct 90886 0.187" styrene half rounds, whose width is almost an exact match for the building's column width.

28mm Chinese Building: Dragonfrog Games MDF Asian Shop 5/6 comb

On the previous kit, the seams between the floors was fairly well camouflaged by the darker brick pattern.  Unfortunately, that was not the case with the cream-colored bricks, so additional plastic trim had to be added to hide them. 

28mm Chinese Building: Dragonfrog Games MDF Asian Shop 5/6 comb

As mentioned previously, the upper floors are shorter in height than the ground floor, with the attic level being too short to accommodate standing figures. This is a shame from a playability standpoint, but visually it still looks fine on the table.


A couple of shots of the finished building.  The gaudy design was inspired by this Chinese medicine shop.

28mm Chinese Building: Dragonfrog Games MDF Asian Shop 5/6 comb

Looking at the finished project, I wish I had done a better job to hide the MDF joints on the sides of the bottom columns, but hopefully they will get lost when part of a larger table setup.

28mm Chinese Building: Dragonfrog Games MDF Asian Shop 5/6 comb

And here it is next to the first shop I built. The reduced height of the upper floor isn't so glaring, and as I look at it, a full-size floor might actually look proportionally off given the narrow width of the building. It also demonstrates how very similar kits can look vastly different by changing the trim elements and color schemes. 

28mm Chinese Building: Dragonfrog Games MDF Asian Shop 5/6 comb

Lastly, I generated some new paper elements for this build that you can find below for your personal use.