An Englishman’s Home

Stephen guides us through a big build.

This building project is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while but never got around to it.

That’s mainly because I didn’t know what I wanted for this model, how much effort to put into it (in relation to how often it would be used), or how to go about building it with the above restrictions in mind.

But recently two events occurred that focussed my mind – I achieved painting backlog nirvana (I had nothing outstanding to paint!) plus, in our War of the Roses refights, we had the battle of Wakefield coming – the backdrop to which is Sandal castle.

With hobby time and motivation on my side, I decided now was the time to commit!

With any terrain building project the first thing to think about is storage. It’s easy to get carried away on a big build, but where are you going to store it? I made up my mind the model would have a footprint no bigger than A4 so I could store it in a box a ream of A4 paper came in (at this point I should add that it’s going to be used with 15mm miniatures!).

Right, decision made on that one.

Now for the actual build, and construction decisions that need to be made. I knew I didn’t want this to be just a tower, I wanted the bailey included. That’s going to be a potentially fiddly build, because I need to think about all that brick work. I thought about the Wills Scenics embossed sheets, but they’re really scaled for HO/OO railway models, so would be too big, plus the cost of buying all those sheets would make the model expensive for how often it would get used. I thought about a paper model, because all the other 15mm buildings I use are paper models so it would fit in stylistically. But the paper models I found on the internet were either too basic or too complicated.

However, after my recent build of lots of skyscrapers for a Stargrave game where I used simple boxes covered in printed textures, I thought that’s what I would do.

So, I scoured the internet for stone textures I liked the look of. I re-sized them, so the stones looked about right for 15mm miniatures and printed out loads of sheets. I also used MS Paint to put some arrow slits on them as well, and some sheets had doors, of various sizes printed as well.

First thing was to lay out the design of the castle. A piece of A4 modelling ply was cut and on that I drew the design of the castle – a keep on a mound, plus walls and towers. A classic (later) motte and bailey castle.

I cut a piece of expanded polystyrene for the motte and stuck that down. When that was dry (and PVA takes a while to set when gluing EPA) I carved the mound, keeping in mind that I had to leave enough space on top for the keep.

I started with the keep. I wanted to make it a round keep, but I couldn’t find a tube the right diameter. Oh well, this particular castle would have to have been originally built in the 12^th century – square it would be.

Construction proved remarkably simple and remarkably quick. The main structures were built from foamboard and then lagged with the printed sheets. Once that dried it was a matter of cutting out the battlements.

I was keen to get the first bit done so I could get an idea of how effective the printed textures would look on the model. It was hard to say when I saw it, and I think this was because it was just the tower in isolation with the rest of the model completed to give it context. When I looked up-close I was impressed with the effect, so I decided that once complete, en masse, it should look alright.

The rest went up a lot quicker than expected. This was mainly due to simple shapes and also because once up, they would be done – there would be no painting required (beyond the edges of the battlements where the foamboard and white cut edges of the paper showed).

To give the model some semblance of being an organic structure that would have been built over time with improvements and changes, I made the towers slightly different sizes. You will also notice that one of them is round (a toilet roll insert!) – perhaps early in the castle’s history it was attacked and a tower was brought down, only to be re-built in latest round style? (Ed: Shades of Rochester Castle?”

Yes, using printed textures was a good idea because, at scale, it looked like stone, but also because there would be no painting required which meant the model was finished much quicker than if I’d made other modelling decisions.

To finish the base was given a coat of khaki paint and then covered with model railway ballast. And when that was dry some static grass was added – I didn’t put so much in the castle yard since that’s where it would have been trammelled by feet.

And that was the model complete, ready for Wakefield, and ready for any other games to be a backdrop for a proper medieval setting.