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Ruined manor house

by Lee Sheppard
After making a couple of smaller buildings for Mordheim, I soon wanted to have a go at something that was a little bit bigger and thus more challenging. This building represents a ruined former manor house, complete with a walled yard (with gates through which wagons and/or carriages could be brought). The modelled damage is meant to represent the building having been hit by a large chunk of debris when the comet struck the centre of the city.

The house is made of the standard foamcore, balsa wood, 3mm MDF (for the base), cardboard, sand and sprue rubble materials I use for all of my buildings. As can be seen from the photos, both the roof and first floor can be removed to allow access for the placing of figures. As with my other Mordheim constructions, all steps are built large enough to hold a miniature (useful for my Dwarf Warband, who seem to very rarely make it all the way up or down any building in less than 2 turns).

Each part was completed and painted separately, starting with the ground floor and walls for the yard, then the first floor, and finally the roof. After I had made the first floor I found that I could still see gaps between the base of the first floor and the top of the walls of the ground floor. To rectify this, I added strips of balsa wood to the base of the first floor, which then fitted snugly over the outside of the ground floor walls, hiding any gap.

Painting took some time, with lots of drybrushing of stone walls (the gritty stone effect is created by dabbing pre-mixed "polyfilla") and wooden floorboards and supports. I'm very pleased with how it turned out in the end.