The Long Road to Partizan-The Tower

 

The Pele Tower

Pele towers are small, fortified medieval tower houses built between 1350 and 1600 along the Anglo-Scottish border and in Northern England. Designed for defence against Border Reivers, these three to four -story stone towers featured thick walls, barrel-vaulted  basements for livestock storage, and flat roofs for surveillance.

                                                                                                                                                                      

They served as safe houses for the local people and sometimes as homes for minor gentry. They were built to withstand short sieges and provide quick refuge against raids.

They often have flat roofs for watchmen, crenelations for defence, and sometimes, iron beacon baskets on top to signal when attacks occur. They are found predominantly in Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland (modern-day Cumbria) and Dumfries and Galloway. Many churches in the region built these towers for protection, particularly in Northumberland such were the extent of the depredations of these “accursed people”

There are two structures that define this period of conflict, the Pele Tower and the Bastle House (more about that one later) and I wanted both in our game. My initial idea was to create them from XPS because I do like making things that way and I haven’t done so in a long time. I liked the thought of the challenge. However, I now know a 3d printing wizard Christianus of the Bailey, and he suggested using this instead.

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-small-scottish-bastle-house-28-32mm-486865

It’s obviously strongly influenced by Smailholm Tower, it looks pretty much identical. And it is perfect for our game. This link has some drone footage of Smailholm

https://fabulousnorth.com/smailholm-tower/

I am a complete newbie to this modern 3d printing newfanglery and I was very impressed. It is printed in plastic. It has lots of internal doors which can be hinged and my first thought was “we could play a whole game of Ruckus INSIDE this building!”

  And so there will be such a scenario!

I sprayed it. I never spray anything. I used a rattle can. It was quick but smelly. I don’t know what the paint is, it certainly isn’t acrylic, cellulose?

whatever it was it was cheaply bought from Craft and More. It did not take paint well on top of it, I think I may have been better to have brushed acrylic on as an undercoat as it took quite a lot of painting to cover this rather bright grey.

A very dilute mix of cheap black and brown acrylic paint as a heavy wash over the vivid grey.  Can grey be lurid? This one was. I had to paint over it twice! 

A heavy dry brush with a cheap brown. I watched my friend Martin Brooks (7^th son wargaming) video on how he painted his castle, for inspiration, you can see it here

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNymSvkhOHo

 

I then lightly dry brushed it with Citadel Ushbati bone. I was aiming for realistic rather than dramatic  

tis a messy business! 

The doors and floors I painted with AP Fanatics Banshee brown

The Upper Floor

the tower has removable interior walls. Some of the wood here is quite rough and has an unfinished unplaned look, it got the Banshee treatment.. 

The wood I highlighted with Citadel Baneblade and Gorthor Browns. The hinges I did in black and highlighted with Citadel Dark Reaper

The internal door frames I painted to match the stonework

 

the frames are cleverly printed with a hole for a rod to hinge the doors on! That we should live to see such times! Glory be! 

Cue brass rod and wire cutters!

Ta dah! Very satisfying 

They even remembered a little hole for the front door, so clever…

The cellar doors also are hinged. I am not sure how historically accurate this is, but it is there so…

Finished! I used a different series of greys for the flagstones and the slate roof tiles.

The basement! I wanted it to look a bit lived in and, if I am honest, to hide some of the slabs, which because of the printing process look a bit odd when washed.  I used Krautcover soil and some brown ballast, the “straw” I have had for many years, I have no idea where it came from. It is very fine almost like hair. 

I found the sconces on eBay . March of War! And very nice they are I bought 30 for £10!

The top floor! The interior walls are painted with Citadel Steel Legion Drab , Tallarn Sand and Karak Stone. The OSL effect was achieved with a light yellow and a mid-orange diluted with glaze medium.

The planking is done with the same recipe as the doors but highlighted with Citadel Ushbati Bone and then glazed with sepia ink. 

Hooray the doors open! 

this well-kept property features many modern conveniences…or …the dunny!

The first floor. The Tower has one removable external wall on each of the two middle levels which I think will look great at Partizan. 

The first floor with the interior wall removed. The interior walls are another impressive feature of this tower, each has its own opening interior door.  Each is finished with rough wood and stone on one side and smooth planed wood on the other. Brilliant! 

the removable interior walls are identical on each level and feature an opening door

the second floor, but where does that door lead? 

A second convenience! This is a posh Tower

The OSL has to laid on much thicker than I would normally do so on a figure. Ink disappears into the stonework, so I used diluted paint.

 Hooray! I am quite pleased with this. I think we will leave these walls off at Partizan and fill the Tower with interesting members of the household and a few pieces of furniture.

The tower comes with magnet holes which I filled with 5mm x 1mm magnets however they seem to be unnecessary as the walls fit so well  and simply click into place. 

They are a scrappy lot, these Reivers, Always fighting! 

Bloody Peasants! Who let them in?

The view from here is worth the climb! 

There we are, my very own Smailholm, although, in our game it will be known as Braepistle!

 

One step further on the long road to Partizan.

 

The Long Road to Partizan

Too Busy to Blog!

I had a fantastic time at Partizan last year. It was my first time at the show, and I was very pleased and extremely surprised when we won the Duncan McFarlane Award for the best demo game with our Robin Hood Ruckus game. I was doubly surprised to win this award as due to RL issues we had very little time to prepare and used the same mat and terrain as we game with every week however Wi lent us a rather fine castle at the last moment, and I believe it was this eye catching piece of terrain that won the day.

I was determined that this time we should produce something a bit more bespoke, crafted for the moment as you might say. But what game should we take?

I have been collecting Reivers figures from Flags of War for some while now and they are beautiful sculpts by Rob McFarlane, lovely to paint although the low relief and normal human proportions means that they require a small brush and intense concentration to get the faces right. In the FoW range is the Queens Envoy, a figure that bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain sarcastic, conniving, wheedling TV character from a popular Renaissance comedy and of course his rather scruffy side kick who can be counted on to come up with a Cunning Plan.

So…this year we are going to present a Ruckus of Reivery, a game of high skullduggery set in the Borders in the 16^th Century involving a plot to ambush and kidnap the Queens Envoy on his way to the Regent with a proposal from Queen Elizabeth.

I mentally listed the different aspects of the game and what we would need to buy and prepare. Figures- we had a plentiful supply of FoW and the Assault Group. Buildings- I wanted a Bastle House and Pele Tower. Ruckusteer Chris Bailey, a 3d printing wizard, found just what we need and printed them. Terrain- Hills I have one old hill made from plaster and wallpaper nearly forty years go and I thought a second would be good. I had seen a pic of Smailholm Tower perched on an outcrop of rock and it looks so dramatic I thought I should create something similar.

Smailholm

And... a mat I wanted something bespoke and impressive. With a built in road. 

The Mat

I had a rough idea of how to proceed, for some time now I have wanted to create a teddy bear mat like the one that James Morris knocked up a few years back and so I bought a large piece of green teddy bear fur for this purpose.  However, it looked like a lot of work to convert the rather wiry teddy bear fur, you have to paint it and treat it and comb it and brush it and do all sorts of things and processes.  You can find details about how he made it on his blog https://mogsymakes.net/blog/

And then I found Tobruk models and Terrain on You Tube and he uses Faux Fur which needs less preparation you can see how he does it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnU_zG4Er2kS

so I decided to buy faux fur instead. This is very much like a fine fur already, so I thought, less effort. I couldn’t get any in a suitable green colours I bought a 3 metre by 1.5 metre piece of orangey brown from Fabric land for £15. And cut it down to a more manageable size.

I bought a 500ml pot of green acrylic paint from the independent hobby and craft shop Craft and More in Bristol for about £8. I didn’t realise when I bought it that it is actually fabric paint. 

The mat was quite resistant to taking the paint. It has to be well worked in. Initially I mixed some brown into it, but the fur itself lent a brown tone and it looked too muddy so I stopped and just used the neat green. 

I realised I couldn’t do it all in one session as it was soaked with paint. I hung it to dry and regularly returned to it to comb it through and remove the clumps.

then the weather changed. I could not finish the painting so I had look at how the finished mat might look. A folded blanket is taking the place of the second as yet unbuilt hill and there is surrogate piece of paper standing in for the as yet uncreated Bastle House.

I used this picture to map the road and potential stream.

 Red =road

 Yellow =tracks

 Green hatching =forest

 Blue = stream

and then the sun came out again! I finished the mat with the green and hung it to dry

I kept popping back to see how it was doing and each time I gave it a vigorous combing to stop the paint from drying in clumps.

I practiced highlighting the grass on an off cut. I thought it looked pretty effective.

I am quite pleased with the result. 

Also from Craft and More. I found that a little goes a long way.

The best way was to use a very small amount and wipe most of that off before lightly applying it and immediately combing it through. 

The Road Goes Ever On

The You Tube video I watched used an electric razor to shave the mat for the road, nice and easy , quick too.

However, the faux fur was way to fine for that, it didn’t touch it. Neither did any other shaving device that I tried.

My wife suggested these. They were cheap so it was worth a try but struggled to cut the fur and holed it in several places. Luckily , I was testing them on the practice piece. 

I tried painting the mix of caulk and paint and sand directly onto the fur but as it dried I could see it did not look good. It did not look like a road. It looked like faux fur that is matted with paint and caulk and sand.

The only thing that worked was nail scissors. Larger scissors just didn’t have the control. It was hard, laborious, monotonous work that I could only do for an hour or so at a time. 

After half a day of this I had made some progress but I was not sure which direction to take the road. I decided to paint the road in so that I would have a reference.

This seemed like a good idea. I took it into the garden to dry.

Oh dear! That is the brand new wooden floor! Ooops! I hadn’t thought that the paint would soak through!

Luckily it will come off with a bit of alcohol. 

Oh DEAR!!! That is the door curtain which I brushed against carrying out the mat and unfortunately I did not spot so it was very dry by the time my wife saw it later that evening! 

 

  She was ok about it, in fact she laughed! Lets face it if this kind of thing was a problem for her we would never have married.

I used the mix of Burnt Umbre acrylic paint and cheap builders caulk and spread it liberally with an artisty spready tool thing. I hope I cut the fluff back far enough, it still looks a little spikey. 

I spread some ballast and small rocks and patted it into the gunk with my spatula.

It looks ok, I hope it doesn’t flake

I am happy with this. Right, tick that off the list, on to the Pele Tower