Terrain Tutorial - Birdhouse Towers

A while back on one of the Frostgrave Facebook pages someone posted a link to Michael's Birdhouse Castle and commented they could make some good cheap terrain.  At $4.99 they were right about the price but a little work needed to be done first.

Michael's' Birdhouse Tower

 Other than needing a paint job the tower also cannot fit a standard 25mm base on the second level.

To solve this I decided to have two towers for the price of one.  The first thing I needed to do is get rid of the off center base on the bottom of the large tower.  To the band saw!

With the crooked base trimmed to the walls I could now get a straight cut between the top of the large tower walls and the crenelations/roof.

To make the roof and crenelations usable I needed to remove the small tower.  

I used a Dremel cutting disk on my DeWalt cordless drill to cut out a base for the small tower.

The crenelations were now free of the small tower but there was a lack of a roof!

To fix this I cut two pieces of 1/8 inch plywood.  One matches the dimensions of the crenelation square and one roughly matches the inside dimension of the square.

I then drilled a hole in the center of the roof pieces for a ladder to get to the top.

Add some Gorilla Wood Glue and then drop the wife's Kettle Bell on top until it dries!

Once the top was re-attached to the tower I wanted to make the walls look more like stone than wood planks.  So I used a rock to begin marking up the sides with divots and gauges.

Next I added some DAP spackling putty to fill in the gap between the new roof and the crenelations.

I then added some DAP spackling putty to the edges of the new roof to fill some slight gaps.  I also added some bits to the walls to give even more texture.

With all the hard work done it was time to paint.  First I primed the towers in Matt Black.

Next I added a base coat of Anita's All Purpose Acrylic 11086 Charcoal.

I then added the first highlight of AAPA 1200401 Antique Nickel.

And finally I added a highlight of AAPA 11084 Rainy Day Gray.

With a little bit of work we now have two towers with top floors at 4.5 inches and 2.5 inches, with an extra 0.75 inches in height for the crenelations to give your ranged miniatures some cover!

These towers allow for some cheap, easy terrain suitable for both fantasy games like Frostgrave and historical games set in the Dark Ages, all for about $5 and a little bit of work!

Weekly Workbench 17 September 2017

    A little late this week, between Cub Scouts starting up, PME starting back up, and my mother arriving a day early for her visit it really threw my week out of wack for getting things done.  This includes the Painting Guide post which will be out on this Wednesday.  I did get in a game of Warlord Games' Test of Honor on TableTop Commander's After Hours Paint and Chat Ep.99 hosted by Rocky's War Room.  The game was surprisingly easy to learn, especially online with no rule book to refer to.  I had a lot of fun and won the first scenario.  Thanks to Matt for hosting and to Bob for being a worthy opponent! I will likely look at picking this up once the Frostgrave campaigns are up and running and my SAGA war bands are completed.

Fantasy:

    Here is where the majority of my work this week got done.  First up is Duncan's Frostgrave Summoner crew.  They have been base coated and washed and now just need some minor highlights and then dull coated.

First up is the Summoner himself.

The Apprentice bringing forth some extra-planar entity.

The Captain.

Sheppard's Garr War Dog from Reaper Bones is in the same state.

War Hound in need of some highlights.

And I also finished up six large Reaper Bones rats, always useful and playing a role in the first scenario.

Playing the primary antagonist in the first scenario will be the Alchemical Monstrosity, represented by this HD Minis D&D Displacer Beast.

Need to clean up the lines and add some dull coat.

Terrain:

    Dave Graffam is  having a sale on his paper craft sets over on Wargame Vault.  Most sets are only $1.00!  This is a cheap way to quickly get some terrain on the table and add some variety.  He has everything from fantasy buildings, medieval buildings, frontier buildings, ships, walls, bombed buildings, floor tiles, and accessories. The first set I printed out and started putting together are the Wooden Crates, which will add more dimension to the Alchemical Workshop in the first campaign and find uses in other scenarios as well.  I am using insulation foam to wrap them around for added stability and durability with the kids.  After attempting to cut the foam with a hot wire cutter and an xacto knife I found the band saw works just fine and provides the straightest, cleanest, and quickest lines.

The start of my crates.

    So far I have completed a 4x4x2, 4x2x2, 3x3x2, 3x3x1, 3x2x2, 3x1x1, (2) 2x2x1, (2) 2x1x1, and (5) 1x1x1s.  I still have (2) 4x1x1, (2) 3xx1x1, 2x2x2, (2) 2x1x1, and (4) 1x1x1s left from the first 15 page printing.  The kits look really good, though I will need to invest in some other color sharpies to handle edging as the black is really apparent on the crates, and pretty sturdy on their own when printed on 110lb card stock.

That is it for this week, the painting guide will be out this week and next week will have a terrain tutorial as I finished the painting last night.

Weekly Workbench 10 September 2017

Lots of different things getting done this week with my extra time off.  The big one was rearranging the work bench from one side of the room to the other.  I no longer feel squished into a corner, the lighting is brighter, and the room is much open!

This was done in part to add an additional space for the new photo station I received.  The make shift desk is temporary, once I have the funds for a second desk I will also be adding a spray booth for an airbrush.

Speaking of air brushes, a good friend gifted me this Paasche Talon from his modeling days.  I cannot wait to put it to use!


With the four different tips and three needles I will be able to use it on everything from detail work to large area coating on terrain pieces!  This should be a great time saver and money saver when it comes to priming large items.

I will be spending a lot of time with it and reading the handy pamphlet that came with it during the next week.

Historical:

Here is a better look at my Scots Thanes for SAGA with their completed bases and shields.  Much better results in the new photo booth!

The warlord should be completed this week as...

...a package arrived from Footsore Miniatures and inside...

...were a large number of reinforcements to include...

...the Picts/Scots Handler and Warhounds!  While the SAGA Scots army list does not have a place for the warhounds (Irish Wolfhounds), I am going to place one of them on the base with my warlord.  Some of the others will likely make it into some of the Frostgrave warbands for the kids.

Also in the package was a set of Scots Warriors with Hand Weapons...

...and three sets of Scots Warriors with Javelins to use as my levies!  All the Javelin throwers were the same four out of the eight possible variants but with Footsore a month behind orders due to their furnace breaking I cannot hold it against them.

Also included was the free Viking hero Torston Oakhammer, which will be available for purchase towards the end of the year.

Fantasy:

Three wizards and their apprentices were finished and are ready to enter the Alchemist Lab in Frostgrave's Felstad city once they hire some helpers.

First up are Shep's Chronomancers: Bubba Timehopper and Clara!




Next is Ivy's Elementalists: Rhea and Karana!

And last is Mugzy's Sigilists: Mugzeritte and Meadow!

Duncan's Sumonners and Gideon's Enchanters (that he is having me redo his paint job on new models) should be done this week and then the exploration will begin!

Terrain:

Speaking of exploration, more work got done on my first foam ruined building.  I glued it to a plywood base, added rubble to the sides, a broken ladder to reach the platform, and then primed everything black.  I have to touch up some of the primer in some tough to reach spaces and then should have it painted sometime this week!

I have another terrain project I working on as well but I am going to save that for the tutorial post the Wednesday after this coming.

That's it for this week but be sure to stop in Wednesday for a Painting Guide on Radagast the Brown!  See you next week!