Partizan- The Bastle and Barmkin

 

Partizan- The Bastle and Barmkin

Oh what a great name for a pub! The Bastle and Barmkin, I bet they serve a lovely brown pint of traditional bitter and chilli Hoglumps.

A Bastle-Illustration from the Reiver website

The characteristics of the classic bastle house are extremely thick stone walls (about one meter thick), with the ground floor devoted to stable space for the most valuable animals, and a vaulted stone or flat timber floor between it and the first floor with internal access such as a stairway or ladder. The family's living quarters were on the floor above the ground, and during the times before the suppression of the reivers, were only reachable by a ladder which was pulled up from the inside at night. The windows were small or even only arrow slits.

Bastle houses have many characteristics in common with military blockhouses, the main difference being that a bastle was intended primarily as a family dwelling, instead of a purely military fortification. They were often built in a compound with large wall, the Barmkin, encircling it

Chris Bailey the printing wizard found a bastle and printed it! It was excellent, it was realistic, it was impressive, it was…  massive! At two feet square and twenty inches high it would take up a quarter of a normal Ruckus board. It would certainly attract attention at Partizan. When I started putting it together however, I could see that it was possibly a little over scale. The steps were over two feet high! The wooden beams in the roof were a scale six foot across!

the Bastle dwarfs the 28mm Reiver next to it

It would not do, it was just too big. I told Chris who bless him did not mind at all and found and knocked out a new bastle and a Barmkin wall to go with it with a very grand gate 

 This time I chose not to spray and undercoated with a slate grey. I have found that painting these prints seems to require a lot more paint than I would expect, I did it twice before I achieved an adequate coverage.

I used the same paint scheme as the Tower but in lighter shades

I painted the roof grey although they are clearly pan tiles not the flat slate that I would have expected

The interiors of these buildings are excellent, with some great detail and are fun to paint. I used a similar scheme to the Tower. 

The walls received the same black/ brown undercoat only this time I used Army Painter Primer first. I found that priming the walls made a huge difference and that I used a lot less paint to get the same coverage after priming. 

I used increasingly lighter tones on the walls and picked out the occasional block in a mid-brown or a light brown. Then I dry brushed with Citadel Ushbati bone. 

Then I used Citadel washes, Seraphim Sepia, Agrax and Fleshtone on the odd block to introduce a variety of hues

The Gate 

I decided not to use the impressive gateway that came with the wall, it seemed a bit out of place for what I imagined the Bastle to represent

  So I made one using 3 layers of walnut veneer glued together and pressed to make the correct thickness. I used four strips of 3mm walnut strip glued together to make gate posts. (The wood came from Antics)

I made the gates to the height of the wall.

I scored the gates to represent planking and the used the 3mm strip as rails. I cut some small triangular blocks to mount the cross bar on. I fixed these with Evo-Stick

I mounted the walls on thick card and varnished them. 

I like the small details in these projects so despite being pressed for time I decided to create some hinges from plastic rod and whisky lead foil for the gates

I am pleased with this, they will paint up well enough, although something seems to be missing…some little detail…

I took some 1 mm plastic rod and shaved off some tiny discs…

the fiddly bit! I found it best to drip very small drops of super glue on to the hinges and pick up the discs on the tip of the knife. It really only needs a smear of glue for each as they are tiny so I would carefully dip each disc into a drop of glue before placing it on the hinge 

The finished gate. The hinges have been painted black with Citadel Dark Reaper highlights. Some of the clumps of vegetation are little bits of the test piece I used for the mat

The outer aspect of the gates. The yellow shrub Forsythia? came with a terrain pack that I bought from a German company many moons ago. 

A wall corner piece. The moss is simple flock.

I like the shooting slit idea

I used a lighter shade of flock here, on top of the flat green to give the moss some highlight.

I am considering using some moss on the house but really can’t decide. I have two days to go and still quite a bit to get finished, the house looks ok as is so probably won’t get mossed!

Wednesday! On to the Hills!