Thursday, 6 January 2022
Irish/ Scottish Tower House in 28mm
I've never lost my childhood fascination with castles, and after a trip to a clan reunion in Ireland a fews years back where I managed to visit a few, I was determined to try to scratch build a simple fortified tower house. I wanted to be able to use it for table top fighting in Ireland and Scotland, so something generic was what I was trying to achieve. During the 2021 lockdown in New Zealand I decided to have a crack at making one using artist board and cardboard. I did cheat a little bit by getting a resin portcullis doorway printed off at work and I bought a roll of vinyl brickwork from our local Christmas shop for the floor of the parapet. This tower is loosely based on Dunguarie Castle on the shore of Galway Bay. I may have made it a bit too big, but I had to be able to have single figures on 30mm base defending the parapet. The following is a series of photos taken through the building process. This is only stage 1, as I intend basing the tower surrounded with a barmkin (defensive wall) and a couple of out buildings, such as a stable and small forge. So this is still a work in progress.
Thanks for taking a look. Until next time.
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This is fantastic, nice work!
ReplyDeleteLooks good! 🤗
ReplyDeleteYour game room looks nifty too.
Cheers! My wife thinks I have too many prints on the walls and is keen to get in there and make it 'more appealing to the eye,' but I'm more likely to win the lottery before I let that happen.
DeleteRight - lets try that again! I had 95% written a comment a couple of hours back, then Bloody Blogger did something weird and I was no longer even on your blog! I totally agree about the attraction of tower castles like this - we had a couple in the local area when I was growing up in Scotland and I also remember an article on how to build one using mdf in either MM or WI back in the eighties - it was all too fiddly for me though! After starting a Border Reivers collection about two years ago, I finally got around to giving it a try - you can see the results here -
ReplyDeletehttps://1808534.blogspot.com/2020/09/first-batch-of-reivers-completed.html
I did get a bit carried away with buildings to be honest!
You have done a great job on your Tower Castle too - it looks more solid than my card versions and you probably took a bit more care making sure windows and so on were aligned and all the same size etc!
Your buildings look good and far more practical and historically correct than mine. I can't do any interior fighting in the tower and I made a hash of gable ends of the roof in my first attempt in cutting the foam artist board, so gave up on that. We're using the same foot figures as you for the project, but will use Perrys ECW Moss Troopers for the mounted elements...but this is still very much a sideline project, so it could take some time to complete. I need to get down to our local model shop this week to get more paint and brushes before the Omicron reaches us in Christchurch in case we have to self-isolate...there's got to be a silver lining to all these shenannagins.
DeleteVery true, who knows where we will all be in a week or two, given the current situation. I just took delivery of six of the Hokahey mounted Reivers to match one of the bands (Red Rowan) of foot figures...bloody expensive from the UK too, with £15 postage! One band of six mounted plus six Borders civilians and not much change out of $100. sigh!
DeleteLooks awesome Wayne. Looking forward to having a game with it.
ReplyDelete