EXT: St. Oubliette-in-the-Marsh

 The scratch build itch has hit me again. 

Some days it just grabs you, that fey mood when you have to build something out of scraps of card and lolly sticks. Last week, a loose set of plans coalesced in my mind, and I got stuck in to my stash of carefully hoarded waste. 

Here's the initial pile of supplies:

And here's what I started making from it:

It's probably all this Old World that's going around. Whilst I could concede that I already have too much scenery, I didn't have anything that looked like those old card buildings from early 90s White Dwarf. Once I had the shell of this barn up, I just kept going. 

Wooden frames on plastercard walls, the wood being lolly sticks or card cut depending on how many of the right size lolly sticks I had left. Not enough, clearly. Measure twice and cut once, I keep telling my kids when we're making stuff. My approach to building is entirely the opposite. Don't measure at all, and cut an almost infinite amount. I get there in the end, though. 

The texture is achieved by some high-precision texturing of the plastercard with a handy chunk of rock. By which I mean enthusiastic bashing.

Once the outside was done, I put a basic card roof on, then more plastercard to make the tower and the porch. The doors were leftover plastic from previous kits, a Dungeons and Lasers wall and a Mantic Dungeon Saga piece, glue-gunned in place with the Renedra graveyard stones along one wall and a barrel by the front door. There was also a bit of offcut brickwork plastic sheet from a previous project, just enough to make some broken plaster on one corner. 

Next was the slates, which were cut from strips of Crunchy Nut Cornflake packet. That's important, other cornflake packets just don't feel the same. I trimmed them to be uneven, and capped them with a row of bent tiles cut from the pre-folded bits that were the box corners - the ridge on the inside of the card gives a nice shape on top. 

The tower's wooden battlements are balsa matchsticks trimmed and held on with glue-gun. Two windows at each end, which were GW round bases glued into holes, then some side windows of plastercard cut-offs decorated with more cornflake packet. 

Painting - a quick and easy spray and lots of drybrushing, washes and toothbrush splatter as follows:

Painting Guide:

• Walls - Wraithbone, some very rough and sloppy Wraithbone plus White drybrush, then a variety of Biel-tan Green, Athonian Camoshade, Nuln Oil and Warpstone Green for the streaks. 
• Slate - German Grey drybrushed with Blue Grey, Russ Grey and Longbeard. Lichen done with Rotten Flesh and Desert Yellow spattered on with a toothbrush.
• Wood - Dryad Bark, greens as per the walls, Dryad Bark plus Rakarth Flesh and then Light Sand drybrush. Metalwork on the doors done with Black Templar and Russ Grey highlighting.
• Old Brick - Karak stone base coat, then the bricks picked out with Fur Brown/Karak Stone mix. Various green and brown washes slapped on over that. 

A couple more touches - the shields round the tower are mostly old Marauder kit with some Viking bits thrown in, the alarm horn is from the original Warriors of Chaos plastic and the bows and arrows are also Viking. 

The floor of the tower was done with a single offcut of wood textured paper, taken from some home deco store a few years back. I cut it to size, glued it in with PVA and stuck on a trapdoor improvised from a trimmed vehicle hatch and more matchsticks. Very pleased with the colour match, that's more chance than design, and it was a very quick shortcut too!

The tree is a single piece of root torn up by work in our local gardens, which was nice and bendy so I could wrap it round the tower. It's held on with glue-gun on the base and a few discreet dots on the branches here and there. 

Next, the windows - paper decorated with hand-drawn stained glass and clock decals, then PVAed to the inside of those round bases. A bit of dirty ink wash on the inside of some clear plastic cut broadly to fit and then superglued over the top. 

Finally, an old skeleton in a gibbet. I can't remember which GW kit it's from - Dreadstone Blight? The Giant? Dunno - he's detachable, held on by winding an old necklace chain round the corner of the tower. My kids don't like him, or I'd have glued him on, but this way he can be used to decorate other scenery as the whim takes me. 

And that's it finished! Itch scratched, and a very nice line of sight blocker or centrepiece for some Old World action at some point. Or, well, I say scratched, but as you know, scratching an itch tends to make it worse. 

I mean, the verger's got to live somewhere, right?