Home-made battlefield terrain! Watchtower 1.0

To start off, I measured a handfull infantry models, to know how big these buildings have to be. I also started toying around with a software I got introduced to in school (studying electric/electronic/medical engineering), mainly used for designing both indoor and outdoor lighting for buildings, called DIALux. A simple enough 3D-modelling software, in which I could design my buildings somewhat easily, and see exactly how large something must be, etc. etc. etc...

...speaking of unit-measurements, have you ever heard of a rule, saying "Measure twice, cut once"? Yea, so have I... Though I still measured only once, it bit me in the arse quite heavily (which will become obvious at the end).


The image-layout didn't want to work, so the top two pictures are placed awkwardly. Live with it.

Watchtower 1.0

I found an image online, and decided I want to create something similar. BEHOLD! A WATCHTOWER! ...now only to make my own...

Crude concept-drawing.

Planning-phase: 10 cm from ground to tower-floor, 9 cm width to house 3x3 units (9 units max), and still be within 6 inches for squad coherency with ground-floor units. The base-pillars would be supported by cross-beams, all made of plastic. Base-pillars would reach all the way up to the roof of the cabin to support the roof. Cross-beams would have one of the beams cut in half to fit into eachother, and glued on a small cardboard-tile.

A word about concept-drawings, by the way... If you want to build something, don't just start building. Planning is half the work, and concent-drawings or sketches give you a good idea of what you're doing, and thoughts on how it'll be easiest to achieve.

DIALux 3D-model. Took me a couple hours to
figure out the software, and make something
I could be satisfied with.

The cabin would be 5 cm high to support the full height of units, and then some, for back-mounted banners or sword-waving lunatics. Walls would be made out of styro-foam, ceiling out of corrugated cardboard.

Building-phase: So, styro-foam is a no-no: it requires pre-handling or shite-tonnes of paint, which I don’t have. So, going to use cardboard for this, then! Double-layered corrugated cardboard again, filling the gaps with filler. Using the plastic frames from the model-material-frames for the posts.

The cabin-base, 3x3 units wide, with some Blood Claws to stand as models.

Cardboard for the walls around the base, had to make it double-layered to be thick enough. Again some top layer dents here and there for battle-damage.

Filler almost in place, we’re getting there! The sharp-eyed will notice holes in the floor, in the corners of the cabin. That's where the base-poles will come through!

Walls filled in, the units fit in there all good and proper. Next day's agenda: the base-poles.

Base-posts almost done! Turns out they’re a bitch to glue together, without glueing them to the table. Also, ladder is in progress… Don’t know how that’ll turn out, or even how to glue the pegs to the posts... Also: the cabin got its basecoat of black spray, painting it in the dark grey as the wall last time. Maybe going with a lighter sort of drybrush to have the blackness come through, don’t know yet...

The legs and the ladder are made from the unit-model-bases, right? The ladder was pure hell, because I decided to glue the steps inbetween the legs, instead of ontop or drilled in. Had to hold them there for quite a while until they dried, but it looks a lot nicer like this, in my opinion.

Ladder’s done, and the legs are in place. Got the cabin sprayed as well.

The Blood Claws are modelling ontop of the cabin. Need to make that hatch out of something, don’t know what yet, though...

Drybrushed dark grey on the cabin, and realized it made a LOT of a sweeter finish, than the ruined wall –bit I did on my first project, using only a thick layer of grey paint on black basecoat. The details, dents and cuts in the walls come out a lot clearer like this and it actually looks worn-out, rather than brand new! I don’t know yet if I’ll leave the white bits in the legs as they are, or if I’ll patch it up with grey... In other news, the roof-tiles are in a pile on the left side as well. Thinking of stripping the top-layer off to get a corrugated top (rain pouring straight downwards). Just need to figure out how to make a rust-coloring for it...

After browsing the net a bit again, I found something. How to create rusted sheet-metal! Awesome! So, for rust-effect: red – brown – metal, corrugated cardboard, ripping off the top-layer for the sheet-metal effect. First layer of red (Mephiston Red) looks good, no undercoat, and bottom-side got sprayed black because I can’t be bothered doing anything proper about it.

Then, the brown (Dryad Bark)...

And finally, the metallic grey (random acryllic dark grey)! Turned out alright! Too much grey was easily done over with a brown drybrushing. Fitting the roof ontop of the cabin was easy as one-two-three.

Only problem I ran into was the question of height. I first had the idea that it would only be a slit to shoot through; mounting wall to the roof, but after cutting the tower down to size it became apparent it wouldn’t really be possible... unless I wanted to heighten the roof by a couple centimeters...

As of right now, I’ll stick with this. One downside I noticed straight away that sword-waving lunatics are having a VERY hard time being inside the tower, due to the height (remember the "Measure twice, cut once" -rule? Yeah...). No-one carrying a banner can enter it either. OR I’ll just have the roof for dramatic reasons, and while in gameplay use it as an open-top, whilst saying “the roof is there”!

Finished product:

To raise the roof (and produce a slit to shoot through) I could easily just glue a piece of wall to the roof, and have said wall to rest on the base pegs, where the roof is now resting. Make the wall just so thick so it reaches the pegs and is safely an extension, but not going all through as to leave a ceiling for banners to get stuck on...

THOUGHTS:

• Only drybrushing the walls make them seem older, more worn, compared to slapping on a thick layer of paint
• Going open-topped allows units to actually be placed into a structure (or removed as casualties) during gameplay
• Plan for way more space. Model-base is 3 cm wide, I planned for character-width (arms and all) to be 4 cm, and it's TIGHT! Same goes for height. Model height is 4 cm, planned height was 5 cm. A little bit was taken off for thickness of the floor, and the banners/idols/sword-waving is way higher than 5 cm. "Measure twice, cut once" really shines here...

AFTER EVERYTHING WAS DONE:

...so, I tried fitting in a terminator in the tower... Terminators have the Bulky -special rule, sure (Bulky models count as two models for the purposes of transport capacity), BUT COME ON!!! ONLY 3 FIT IN THERE?!