Warhammer Townscape challenge part 1: getting inspiration from real castle ruins

 I recently got an invite through my contact page to join Chris from The Periodic Painting Table blog and Stuart from The War Crow blog in the First International Townscape Challenge. The rules (more like guidelines) are simple: 

• The building must be based on one of the Warhammer Townscape models.  
• You can alter it, e.g. extend the model, choose a different finish (timber, stone etc.)
• You have until the end of August to complete the model.
• Blog your progress however often you feel appropriate and link to each other’s blogs.
• The challenge is designed to inspire and encourage.  There is no prize apart from the congratulations of your peers, both in the challenge and on our blogs.

Oh no, my Townscape prison failed to hold Glam!

Now the last rule (no prize) is a heinous lie! I have it in black and white (or white and black if I invert the colors of my screen) that the prize is two self-applied pats on the back (not three as that would be over the top). With that much at stake I wanted to leap into action immediately. Unfortunately I was off on summer vacation first. With the great Covid plague still raging we (my wife and I, not Stuart, Chris and I (that would be rather weird)) decided to stay reasonably close to home and revisited Luxembourg. With a population of around 400.000 its one of the smallest countries in the EU. I suspect it used to serve as a real life castle catalogue in Y'olden Times. "My good Count, just drive your gilded carriage through Luxembourg and tell us what kind of castle you'd like. We have one of every kind there." This offered me an opportunity as my claim of finishing the entire Townscape is based on a lie. I never completed building 35 (Tower) so that will serve as the basis of my entry to this challenge. 

As you can see, my cutting mat is utterly devoid of anything related to the new building. That should change presently. 

The Tower in Townscape is basically a rather boring grey box with a flat roof and some lackluster ramparts. Sharp readers may notice my lack of enthusiasm about this particular structure. I consider it the least interesting building in the book. On the other hand I remember it rather fondly. It was one of the first buildings built using the old book. I played on a lot of tables with this boxy tower at its center. I shot a necromancer from its ramparts once. Now for my entry I want to avoid building a simple box and calling it quits. After all The Periodic Painting Table is building one of the most spectacular buildings in the book (The tavern (25)) and The War Crow is going for the Tower House (13) with its platform just begging for an overtly dramatic wizard. The plan: my tower is going to be ruined, old and maybe occupied by something or someone. It should still have a bit of a flat roof to shoot Necromancers from. Now being in 'castle country' did provide me with a chance to shoot some real life ruins and check out colors and other interesting details. Curious what I found? Keep reading! 

Château de Bourscheid looks quite impressive from the parking lot. 

We tried to visit three castles in one day. Unfortunately the second castle turned out to be a palace. It was also inhabited by the countries' arch-duke (I think). For some reason random visitors weren't allowed and it was impossible to take pretty pictures over the high and blinded fences. So scratch that one and go for visiting two castle ruins. The first one, pictured above, is Château de Bourscheid that was started around the year 1000 (most likely on older Roman fortifications). It towers about 150 meters above a river and was pretty much unassailable. Not all that useful for a one on one build for on the tabletop (on the other hand...nah lets get that big plan going later). It was pretty fun walk around the walls. 

I've spend quite some time both making wargaming terrain and playing on it. One important lesson I've learned  is that huge buildings don't really work well while crumbling ruins work all the better. Reason enough to gather reference material. 

This castle most closely resembles the rather boring grey colors most Warhammer and other wargaming painters go for when painting castle walls (I'm looking sternly at myself here). One important takeaway for older walls is the presence of moss on the stonework and the occasional wildly different colored stone in the mass of stones. I recently experimented covering patches of classic train table flock with Athonian Camoshade and that might work to simulate this. It also encourages me to add full tufts to proper bits of wall. Another interesting detail when scratchbuilding is to just incorporate full bits of 'raw' rock into the masonry.

I recommend Green Stuff World texture rollers if you want to capture the essence of this wall without going insane (and they're not even sponsors of this blog). 

Another fun detail here is a smaller hole in the base of the wall. I suspect this is a firing slot for crossbows (that had a grate added later). Not at all visible on my 'expert' photo is the slope on the other side. You can basically shoot anyone traipsing up on that side of the castle at leisure. More interesting from a modelling perspective is the green moss on the wall and the ivy coming through. Maybe I should try one of those 'make your own ivy' tutorials this month. 

As opposed to most modern day buildings castles aren't planned from scratch, they grow over the centuries. If you build a large castle, try to mix styles.

Another interesting thing about crumbling ruins (aside from the hard to miss museum shop (mental note: don't model that one ;)) are the imprints of structures long gone. Aside from that you notice different building styles and types of stone. The picture above has a subtly hidden bricked up door. You also see different (colors at least) of stone. This castle changed from a modest motte and baily to a full on bastion over a period of about 550 years. Burg Eltz in Germany is another awesome example of change over time (I visited a few years back and you'd almost suspect it of infringing on Old World copyrights). 

I admit: this tower lacks the proper amount of skulls to feature prominently on a Warhammer table.

This wrecked tower might be slightly more pertinent to my tower plans. A lot of castles have roofed towers. It almost makes the good old LEGO castle's flat topped, square towers with battlement a bit suspect. Then again that does make for a good place to stack a small unit of models (or one soon to be killed necromancer). 

Don't look to closely to the right of the center gate, I've rather clumsily removed two other tourists using the power of Photoshop.

Lets finish up my rambling about Bourscheid with a snapshot of the intact building containing a modest museum (and a wedding location). You can see the larger side view of the tower above. Between the tower and the building is an open gate that on closer examination looks like it used to be taller. Sketching in an old arch above the arch of a newer gate might just make a building look interesting (and it may give a smart tool to recover from mistakes while building). 

Château de Beaufort shows that adding trees and bushes to your crumbling ruin is absolutely no sin.

Next up (after the not quite open for visitors Schloss Berg) we visited Château de Beaufort pictured above. This is what happens when an 11th century medieval fortress gets mixed up with a Renaissance château and then crumbles to ruins. The first thing (from a Warhammer perspective) to notice is the color. The advice on painting natural looking rocks is to always mix in some yellows with your browns. Seeing this I say: go wild. I also rather like the streaking pattern of the greys and yellows on the walls. As we visited there was a bit of a mixed blessing situation going on. Lets borrow a Wikimedia Commons picture from 2008 for this one. 

Château de Beaufort in 2008, not mine, picture by Kristina D.C. Hoeppner from Wellington, New Zealand, used under Creative Commons license. 

This was the side of the castle in 2008. Just before we visited in 2021 there was a deluge in our region followed by flash floods in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Some roads in our region where under repair and this castle (we think) was also hit as this was what the above wall looked like during our visit. 

Château de Beaufort in 2021, never mind the destroyed coffee corner, take note of the crumbled wall.

Most likely the flooding caused a rather impressively large part of the ancient wall to tumble down. On the one hand a shame to see an ancient ruin ruined (now there's a complicated sentence), but it is also a chance to see what a breached wall would have look like. 

Close-up of the crumbled wall with some 'weathered' clumps of stone drifting in a sea of yellow interior stones. 

Slightly wider shot of the breach, amazing how big a clump of stone on the top left corner has managed to hold on. 

Apparently yellow (sandstone?) was used to build the castle and the grey and black streaks are the signs of wear and tear over the ages. Another interesting aspect here is that the 'weathering' both happened top-down and bottom-up. The tops of the walls and towers as well as the bottom of the buttress are a very dark grey, while the center walls lean more towards yellow. I think I would've kicked myself for messing up my weathering if I'd had done this on a piece of scenery before seeing it here. 

A wooden bridge pathway leading up from the marshes to Château de Beaufort is a photo just begging to be turned into an interesting Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay scenario...

Lets finish up this rambling post with a 'too much green' shot from the marshy ground at the back of Beaufort castle. May this serve as a reminder that I need to make some extra forest and random lower bits of greenery themed terrain soon. Now on to actually planning and then making the tower before August is over...