A few simple Warhammer/AoS terrain pieces: crumbling earthworks and a rickety tower

Testing the Linden Way scenario, the third skirmish that leads up to Bloodbath at Orruk's Drift, is in my foreseeable future. As I had to speedily rearrange my table the last two test games I decided to actually check if I could feature the Linden Way hamlet on a modern table. It took a bit of shuffling with buildings, but it worked. One thing was missing: some crumbling earthworks to cap off the entrance. No worries, I took some coffee stirrers and polystyrene and went to work. Here's the result.

Karl-Franz junior (no relation) was about to empty the 'morning ablutions' bucket when the silent Skaven killer struck...

Just as a bit of random background rambling, the most basic defense in any war consists of earthworks. If you have the time to mount a defense you take shovels, dig a ditch and throw the earth in a heap on one side. This forces the enemy to deal with two obstacles while simultaneously giving you something to hide behind (and in the bad old days the criminal brutes doubling as 'your men' something to distract them from murdering each other (and you)). This requires some very basic engineering. If you heap up too much sand it will slide down in shallow slopes. So right up until sand bags where mass produced most armies would carry wicker enclosures to toss the sand in (gabions). They fold without sand for easy transport and they hold your earthworks together. Of course in a pinch anything will do. Including driftwood and spare planks. And this effect is easily achieved with coffee stirrers.

I forgot to ramble about the tower in the background. It's basically a lot of coffee stirrers and a few bigger bits of balsa wood glued togethter with PVA. I should neaten up the tower come to think of it.

My idea behind this little crumbling redoubt was to represent an ageing wooden wall around the town (or hamlet). I was inspired by reading Jonathan Sumption's The Hundred Years War. One of the interesting tidbits (I think) is that the town walls at the start of this conflict (I'm in book #2, so can't comment beyond that) are almost invariably in a state of disrepair. Amongst other reasons because building and maintaining walls is expensive and hinders the growth of town. The only thing motivating wall construction seems to be an army marching towards the town. From a gaming perspective crumbling low walls work better too. They don't really require special rules as they serve as obstacles for cover purposes, reduce movement (in AoS) according to their height and (quite important) you don't accidentally move them with your sleeves or knock them over when you reach for one of your models. From a story perspective there are plus sides too. It's a lot more logical to fight over a breach in the wall or a crumbling section of walls as opposed to storming the highest point while getting murdered by the defenders (I refrained from inserting some very silly decisions by generals over the centuries here). 

Linden Way will soon be the scene of a horrendous invasion (and a template representing fleeing citizens).

Having said that, here's the test setup of Linden Way. I've picked four Townscape buildings to represent the hamlet (it will be in the center of the table for the battle). I found the stakes in the grond on leftover Bretonnian sprues, the earthworks will be placed slightly to the front at the entrance to town. Using stakes in the ground is another nice way to avoid high walls on the table. They also make all the terrain useable. Archers can shoot through the stakes, they grant cover and when an enemy charges you can apply the deadly terrain rule. This still restricts movement, without completely blocking off a section of the table from the game.

While gluing wood to the polystyrene I accidentally dropped the piece. Everything got unstuck. After a bit of cursing, I sort off pushed it all back in place. It got on crooked. In other words: it just made the project better. This, to my mind, proves once again that there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents. 

Construction of the earthworks is so easy, I'm considering making another eight or nine bases. It will take a single evening's worth of work and I'll have a nice blob of extra terrain to represent crumbling fortresses, fallen city walls or ancient defiled ruins. Hell, add some scatter markers and they can be easily turned into a Chaos or Destruction themed warcamp. On the other hand, I have no clue where to stash my current overload of terrain, so making more is a bit of a questionable activity. For those of you interested you can easily make your own earthworks. Cut a small base from 4mm MDF and bevel the edges. Then, using a box cutter, shape three pieces of polystyrene to define the rise. Break some coffee stirrers into bits and glue them on the sides of the polystyrene to represent the crumbling wood holding the earth in place. Add a few stray cocktail sticks and bits of slightly thicker balsa wood to taste. This provides some variance to the construction. With this in place cover everything not decked in wood with PVA and appy a mix of small stones and coarse (beach) sand. Add a second patchy layer of shell sand in places to smooth the coarse sand out.

I know there should actually be a ditch in front of this wall. But so far I've never seen a ditch done right on a tabletop setting. 

I painted the earthworks mixing a lot of VGA Stonewall Grey with slightly less VMA Burnt Umber. Old wood tends to be grey. I'm still looking for the 'perfect' recipe to paint ancient looking wood. I'll get there eventually. With the basic color in place I added patches of thinned down pure Burnt Umber to make the wood more interesting. On top of that I sprayed different patches of thinned down VMA Duck Egg Green (a very interesting color) to get a bit of a moldy look going. I painted the ground VMA 6K Russian Brown. I applied a patchy wash of Athonian Camoshade to make the wood more interesting and finally drybrushed everything with Tyrant Skull to tie the piece together. I added a bit of static flock to the base to tie it in with the Townscape. Painting the earthworks (and the watchtower) took less than an hour (using a hair dryer to speed up drying times). 

Welcome to a painted state my High Elf Lumineth friend. Did I mention I'm listening to their audio book (Realm-Lords)? It's a blast and succeeds fabulously at capturing the mix of arrogance and skill that defines High Elfs Lumineth...

I've also been working on slightly more difficult models. I finally managed to paint my first Lumineth Realm Lord to a level I'm satisfied with. Four friends wielding insanely long spears are about to join him in a finished state. I've also taken this as an opportunity to dip a number of failed attempts at painting Lumineth. My Realm Lords will most definitely get classic High Elf reinforcements (and certain other models in the Lumineth range beg for a creative re-interpretation as they don't quite match my taste). To get there I've been dipping other stalled project in Biostrip. They will get a reimagining as part of my new army. Perhaps those extra earthworks will have to wait after all...I have a cow daemon to replace!

Once more into the dip, once more!