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<td>Steve was inspired to make this farmstead by the terrain
options in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle rulebook. </td>
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He used a
resin building for the cottage, and this article described the
building of the farmstead to go with it.
Materials
# A resin building
# Plasticard
# Balsawood
# Aquarium rocks
# Flock and paints
I purchased a resin building and some plastic-card to serve as a
base. The rectangular shape of the plastic-card gave me some more room
to play with, and made my original idea of stone walls surrounding the
base somewhat impractical. After discussing my project with some of
the scenery buffs at the local store, the suggestion was made to make
removable fences. Lengths of balsa wood were purchased for the fence,
and several pieces of plastic-card were cut to form the perimeter of
the base. The plan was to have the cottage in one corner, with a stone
wall on each side, and then picket fences to complete the circuit. The
picket fence sections were an L-shaped piece, and two straight pieces
for the other long section of the base.
I made a short length of stone wall on each side where the house
was to be placed. This was done with aquarium rocks set together with
tacky craft glue, and given a wash of Woodlands Scenics Scenic Cement.
The base and walls were primed black, and the resin building was
assembled, primed, and spray-painted a light brown.
At this point, the project sat for several months, as other things
took up my hobby time. When I finally got back to the project, I
started cutting out lengths of balsa wood, gluing them to the strips
of plastic card to form posts, and then using balsa strips to form the
fence. The problem came when I tried to put the fence sections
together, only to realise that I had run the fences all the way to the
end of both strips, instead of stopping a bit short to form a corner!
My attempts to fix the problem compounded the error, as I shortened
the wrong piece of plastic-card, leaving an ugly gap in the corner.
The "Measure Twice, Cut Once" concept was never proven more
true.
More stones didn't look right, and neither did a shortened fence
section. Frustrated, I tried to think of what might cause a gap in a
picket fence, and hit upon the concept of a stump. Perhaps the peasant
farmer, faced with a gnarly stump of a tree, would just build the
fence around it and not go through the effort of digging the stump up.
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<td>A bit of digging around in the bits box revealed a bit of
plastic that was an extra part from my computer desk. The part
was originally a receptacle for a hinge-post, and was just the
right size for a stump! I cut up a round 40K base to serve as a
guide to where the stump would be on the separate sections, and
glued the hinge post thingie to the base. .</td>
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<td>A large wad of green-stuff later, the stump had roots, and it
all fit together in the corner of the fence row</td>
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The rest of the project was straight-forward. I laid out the
building and fence-rows, and painted the base to match what would
become the path and grassy sections. The picket fences were primed
black, then painted a dark brown, and given two dry-brushed
highlights. The stone fences were drybrushed up from black primer
through several shades of grey, with a final touch of white.
The cottage was drybrushed from light brown to ivory to white, then
detailed to match the other buildings in my collection. The roof was
painted to look like cedar shingles, using a medium brown paint, a
chestnut ink wash, and a drybrushed highlight.
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<td>The field was made from a diorama earth product, mixed
together, spread out into shape, and given rows by pressing a
paintbrush stem into it when still wet. A light dusting of soil-colored
flock was added to give color variation. After the earth dried,
a stripe of white glue was placed on the top of each row, and
green flock was sprinkled over it. In order to make it look more
like sprouting crops, I used a different shade of green flock
than my standard.</td>
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<td>The path from the gate to the cottage door was made with
earth-toned flock, and the rest of the base was covered in green
flock. The rain barrel was part of the extra bits in the
Warhammer boxed set. I filled it part way with white glue, then
added a few drops of blue ink. The result is a tad bright for a
rain barrel, but it worked reasonably well.</td>
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Updated: March 2002