Riddle-me-ri

Hello again.

What do you get if you cross a cardboard tube, some fake fur and a pot of cheap wood filler?

 

 

 

Some Iron or Dark Age roundhouses, of course!

 

I am a rare builder of terrain at best, preferring to spend my time acquiring and painting figures, but every now and then, the urge takes me or I am forced into it. This is a mix of both urge and coercion.

 

Sunday 4th December, marks the next "Wargamer" Show at the Leasowes Leisure Centre in Halesowen, near Birmingham, England, and the "Wyrley Retinue" will be there as usual with the first outing for our next demo game. This year's offering (i.e. 2017's) is a large-scale skirmish affair set in Dark Age Ireland, an idea borne of our collecting for and playing of "SAGA". All three founder members of the Retinue started with a Viking force, so we have figures already, and I took the plunge to branch out into something different to the usual Saxons/ Anglo-Danes by collecting Irish, amassing quite a few, to which I have busily been adding reinforcements over the past few weeks. Nephew Nick is building some bespoke boards for our outing and I, apart from figures, agreed to do some other items, a couple of which you can see here.

 

The other major item I have built for this project will be posted later, so watch this space. (CLUE: I have wanted one ever since I saw an article on building one in "Wargames World" magazine issue 5 about 30 years ago! And it is very Dark Age Irish!!!)

 

G

 

 



This is the four bed detached executive residence, complete with cardboard porch clad in coffee stirrer. I got to use my limited knowledge of Pi to work out circumferences and heights of cones and the like to do the roof, which is covered in a layer of the fur. I also added some air-drying clay to the card roof former for this one to bulk it up a little, but it was not really necessary. A skim of wood filler on the tube, after the tube had been scored, and a paint job and "job done". The fur is dirtied up with a gloop of PVA glue, dark green paint (a few drops only) and some black and brown wash.

I also made two of these smaller huts. Actually, they are only smaller because: a) I did not bulk out the roves with clay prior to adding the fur and b) I did not add a porch. All three huts are made from a section of tube surmounted by a cone of card and some fur. They are deliberately basic in their execution as I wanted a grungy look rather than something rather more civilised.