I've not posted here in a few months - I've been warhammer-ing as usual amongst the other hobbies but I've got the mordheim bug again and also been finishing and painting up some regiments in the backlog, both of which have involved spending too much money on eBay. I also find the terrain pieces require more and more courage to start now. But with some time off I've made a start on a new piece for the town, detailed below.
When I started building my own doors and windows one of the earlier things I made was a big round-topped gate, so I thought I'd finally get round to using it and build the gatehouse. This was the gate:
This would mean I could join the two wall sections I have already, maybe making it usable in a siege battle (if I can understand the rules). I wanted the door to be openable, however, and as it was originally made as a one-part mold, it has no reverse side. So I sanded down the reverse of two of my doors to make them slimmer, glued them together, cut in two and tidied up, and I had my two-sided (and still thick) door. Attached to cocktail sticks I figured I could find a way of making it move. I didn't photo this so you'll have to take my word for it.
I originally also wanted a portcullis. I've been reading the Gotrek and Felix books and increasingly feel I'd be unsafe in the warhammer world without a portcullis. Or with one, frankly. However, I couldn't figure out a way of making that openable/liftable easily as well, so in the end shelved this idea. Some of my original ideas were quite ambitious, they got shelved too:
I ended up settling for something a little less ambitious:
To begin, then, I simply cut down my base, two small bits of pinewood for the two wall sections, and went about constructing the main wall of the gatehouse out of card:
To make it open, I needed to cut away parts of the wall surrounding the door to allow the cocktail stick hinges and the door to swing fully open. This required some shivving with the craft knife after the door had gone in, since I wasn't clever enough to figure it out beforehand.
Anyway it worked OK and here you can see the door open and closed, also with some plasticard brick texture onto the walls.
This was my first afternoon of building, and when I returned the next day I added some of the walkways, wooden construction of the floor above the gate, etc. This was all coffee stirrers, some polystyrene, bits of discarded DIY softwood etc. I have a big bag of the stuff, although I'm nearly through the really useful 'beam' sized bits now. The metal post is I think from an 80s bretonnian siege engine, off eBay, of course.
One one side there's a stair going up from the wall and the other there's a ladder. There is a little door hidden behind the main gate, which I've since realised is a really stupid place for it as you'd never be able to get in or out with the main gate open, but, there we are.
I decided to make the roof separate to make it easier to fit models in and out of there. The little crow/raven/magpie with the key is from one of the new Broken Realms boxes (I just bought some bits separately on eBay)
The next stage is filling any cracks, adding texture. I used too much sand in my filler/glue/sand mix this time so the plaster texture is a little claggy. I hope it'll look OK when painted. It's a messy stage and I rushed it a bit.
I also used the Mantic wagon I'd got in the terraincrate set and added some GW wheels to it as the originals (like many of the mantic pieces I got) were badly warped and bendy. I added some bottles from I guess an Empire kit; someone has evidently been or intends to have a drink there.
The next day I undercoated. I'm almost out of ArmyPainter brown so mostly grey went on.
That's where I am atm. I probably won't be able to paint for a few days but I shall of course post here when I'm done
