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| The Guard Tower in the Village of Hommlet |
Over the years I’ve created a number of terrain pieces, many of them focusing on castles and forts, many featured here on the blog.
In that vein, for my Greyhawk Campaign I’m running I decided to make the Guard Tower from T1 - The The Village of Hommlet. The natural question is why not create the Moathouse, since that’s where the adventurers will mostly be plying their trade? The answer is simple: way back in 2006, Paul Stormberg commissioned a scale model version for a wargame of Chainmail which Gary Gygax himself participated in.
So rather than create another one, I settled on the Guard Tower (area #31) and have been working events in my Greyhawk campaign in which the tower will feature. But that is very much in the future, so I will just focus on the construction of the tower itself for this post.
The first step in construction was making a copy of the tower floor plans and taping it to the shelving in front of me on the painting table for reference through the whole thing. This was very helpful as I didn’t have to keep looking over to the module itself.
On that subject the floor plans of the tower were helpful. The illustration on page 7 and the back cover were less so. At least the illustration on page 7 did give me a good idea of the stairs if nothing else for later. The back cover really doesn’t tell much for this nor does the original cover art. This isn’t a criticism per se, it’s just noting for what I needed they would not be used as my guides.
To start the Material List:
- Cardboard
- Thinner cardboard (the types from cereal, snack, or cracker boxes)
- Toothpicks (for the arrow loops and trap door on the middle tower)
- Popsicle sticks (for the drawbridge and flooring of the 2nd floor)
- A round container of oatmeal (serves as the middle tower)
- Small finishing nails (for the studs on the door to the middle tower)
- R4 residential foam (the base)
- Pressboard (for the base of the 2nd floor)
- Posterboard (for the battlements)
- Paint
- Superglue
- White glue
- Glue gun
- Xacto knife
- Stone gravel and green flock for the base
- Coping saw
- Dremel tool
- Small electric drill
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| Very, very early WIP |
The second challenge is that the interior was going to be a chore to even get remotely passable in terms of usability. For a while I debated on the wisdom of doing so. In the end I knew I’d have to create the interior and made peace with it. At the same time, looking at the floor plans I knew it would be impossible to do exactly as is. It was also at this stage that I decided to omit the lowest level as that was going to add another level of complexity and to the overall height.
The third and final challenge was using flat surfaces in a round structure. Trust me, it’s much more difficult than it sounds. Cardboard can be bent and cut, yes, but some shapes are not easy to do.
The first big task was to get the shape the right size for the tower proper along with the two flanking towers to be circular. I was ideally looking for a circle the size of a bucket but none fit what I was roughly measuring out. Through some trial and error I got it right after the second try.
Once that was done, creating the vertical walls was somewhat easier. The glue gun was invaluable here, keeping everything set while I added the next piece and the next. In short order the basic form was set and I went over the glue gun joints with white glue to reinforce them all. Then the tower sat for a number of months.
When I picked this back up about a month ago, I remembered the interiors would be a chore, but so too would the stone work for the outside. As you can see from the work in progress photos it was a LOT of cutting and gluing with the glue gun.
For the materials to make the stone I fortunately saved snack boxes over the years for construction. The excellent How to Make Wargames Terrain book from Games Workshop is invaluable for this. I have a copy but it has been out of print for decades (the 1996 version is the best in my opinion).
The attaching of the stone to the outer surface was a long process over about two weeks. As you can see it became something quite garish from all the clashing colors as I went! (see the photo to the right). The primary challenge here was containing/corralling the glue from the glue gun. The glue sets quickly and speed is needed to get the part in question into place before it sets without excess glue or wispy strings. The good thing is after doing it so many times it got to be second nature.The first interior work was the hardest: the ramps. While it works fine for an adventure in role-playing
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| Color explosion! |
games it does not work well for a modeling project, nor for lining up arrow slits. Hearkening back to my Nippon castle from several years ago I was eventually able to get the ramps passable and removable from the interior. Not perfect, just passable. I really, really wish Gary would have done something different here… The interior stones? As said it wasn’t easy, but I did get into a rhythm in some spots and listened to several podcasts to while away the time as I toiled.
The battlements were the next stop after the interior. Once again, a previous project helped here. I have not posted it yet, but I have created an entire Empire castle (see the very end of the post for more on this) roughly based on the Warhammer Mighty Fortress. In that castle project I figured out how to make battlements from poster board and to do it in such a way to expedite the process. Basically the key breakthrough was to lightly score the flat section that forms “in between” each battlement and fold it down. Coupled with a slightly higher battlement section behind, the two were glued together leaving only the sides of each battlement “tooth” to be completed.
The big roadblock here? As you guessed it, doing this on a round surface made it tougher. I had to account for the circumference being smaller on the interior than the exterior. Through trial and error I worked it out and then started attaching sections to the upper tower base.
The next big challenge was the roof and machicolations on the removable tower top. The machicolations took quite a while to get right as the spacing was at best an inexact science. Several times I needed to cut already glued sections off to get the whole to fit right. But after a while—with a lot of putting the top on, marking the under-hang, and popping it off—I was able to add them one by one.
Another point of note was the central tower itself. I’m fairly sure oatmeal containers are not designed with hobby terrain in mind despite being the perfect size and shape (let alone being sawed through). Because of that, getting it to set level took some time and some shims. In the end it worked perfectly with the right shape and diameter.
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| Removable top and catapults |
Once the base construction was done and I repeated the method for the battlements on the upper level, it was also time to repeat the steps for the machicolations on the middle tower to finish it off. The final push of the “stones” commenced, wrapping the middle tower surface all the way to the top and adding the trap door.
It’s important to note that I did not make the middle tower removable like the lower. The interior sections of the lower tower showed me that actually getting my hands into an even smaller diameter was going to be a problem. On the lower sections it was barely possible, and I wasn’t looking forward to that again. At that point I made the executive decision to skip it.
Next up was the base. The base was nothing more than cut R4 residential foam (which can be found at a home improvement store) with a depression hollowed out for the tower to sit in. That got to be quite messy with cutting and sanding to get it to fit right. In the end, like the middle tower, it required a few shims here and there for it to set level. This did not matter too much as I knew they would be covered up when I added the gravel to the base. The base was set with copious amounts of white glue and left to dry overnight.
The next night I scored the base in several sections and used white glue to attach the stone gravel and let that sit overnight.
Painting
When it finally came time to start painting, the weather does what it always does around here: turns the humidity up to 11. We all know what that means — no spray paint. But as I was contemplating that, I knew it would have to be primed by hand anyway. Spray paint and cardboard don’t usually adhere well. As it was, a solid evening ended up being devoted to priming the tower black. I needed two coats in most places as the “shiny side” of the thin cardboard needed to be facing out (the inner side is too rough and too porous, which would cause warping).
Once primed, the first step was to dry brush the tower gray. Now it might seem like the more straightforward thing to do is simply coat the whole thing gray. While that can be done, it also wasn’t what I was going for. Painting structures like this uniformly gray makes castles/towers look "cartoonish" in my opinion. I wanted the dark shades to come through.
After the initial color, next up was lightly dry brushing straight white onto the surface. This was done very lightly for highlights and not to turn it white. After the white came something that might seem unusual for a color, but something I did with the Empire Castle: a dry brush of a lighter orange. This might seem odd, but what it does is make the rock seem more realistic, especially with what I knew I’d be doing in the final painting step. I went from the base on up to the removable tower top. Once done I did notice the upper level was too "orangish," but no matter.
Why I didn’t worry about “too much orange” was because of the last step in painting the tower: a light wash of black. To achieve this a mix of a very watery black wash was all that was needed. In most cases water and cardboard do not mix; warping can occur. But because I sealed it off with two undercoats I was fairly certain it would hold up well. Rather than simply dousing it with the watery paint, it was applied via brush with broad strokes to cover all the surface areas. I actually did three passes in total to get the coverage desired, letting it fully dry between passes. What this achieved was a surface that looked like natural field stone, the kind that was likely being used as a building component for the small keep being constructed in Hommlet, of which the Guard Tower is part.
The final part for the tower proper was the creation of the stone steps. Through some trial and error I got the foam “stones” to sit right for the most part and it was a simple matter of cutting, sanding, and gluing everything to get to its final shape. The painting process was the same as for the exterior of the tower itself.
Yet to Complete
At the time of posting this the second interior level is fully constructed, removable, and primed but not yet fully painted. I’ll add a followup post to this one when it’s complete. Also, the shield above the gatehouse likewise needs to be finished with the coat of arms of Hommlet.
Closing thoughts
In all I’m pleased with how it came out and it was a fun project to work on in the man cave. There are a few minor mistake areas, but not enough that people would notice unless looking really hard (one section of the battlements has a wider gap than I had anticipated and one arrow slit alignment issue).
One happy accident was the area of the placement for the catapults. I hadn’t set out with placing the engines there but imagine my surprise when the plastic ones from Wizkids just fit inside. Even better was the fact that I got four of them from the local gaming store reduction bin for something like a total of $10. I was originally going to create them out of balsa wood but this saved me time.
Another happy accident? Rufus the fighter who inhabits the tower? I was able to represent him with one of my Ral Partha miniatures which is actually one of the oldest minis I have in my collection. He was not mine originally but got passed down to me when my older brother stopped playing AD&D. There is something cool about the axe-wielding mini from the early 80s paired with the recently completed tower.
Overall, I hope when it’s needed in the campaign it will be a “big reveal” moment and the players will appreciate it. I’m not saying too much just yet as one of my players follows my blog. If nothing else
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| The finished Guardhouse! |
then at least I got to share it with the wider gaming community.
I’m also pleased that in the end I decided against recreating the Moathouse itself. Others have already done it and done it quite well; no need to revisit. In a way it adds to the overall story of folks creating terrain for T1 – The Village of Hommlet… Does this now mean I need to make the Church of Saint Cuthbert too, or the Inn of the Welcome Wench?
One final note: as I’ve done plenty of these projects, one thing that always surprises me every time is the amount of waste material these things generate from all the cutting and sawing. It behooves you, at minimum, if attempting a project like this to clean up at least every night or it gets messy fast. This build I was very disciplined — after finishing each major section I had the hand broom out sweeping and was using the shop vac regularly. The sanding and cutting of the base was even more so. Trust me, your hobby area will thank you for the diligence.
For reference as completed: the tower is about 19½ inches tall, 13 inches wide, and 13 inches in depth.
There you have it — the Guard Tower of Rufus and Burne from TSR’s T1 - The Village of Hommlet.
As I noted about the Empire Fortress project above, that project really was using leftover parts from my abortive attempt to create Castle Von Wittgenstein from the Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. I stopped that project because of the sheer size and scale along with the limited utility of it. The part I reused was what became the gatehouse. I’ll be posting about that in the not too distant future. It’s also ironic that project was inspired by the Moathouse too.
What are your thoughts on the project or the Village of Hommlet in general?
End note: as I noted about the Empire Fortress project above. The project really was using leftover parts from my abortive attempt to create Castle Von Wittgenstein from the Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. I stopped that project because of the sheer size and scale along with the limited utility of it. The part I reused was what became the gatehouse. I’ll be posting about that in the not too distant future. Its also ironic that project was inspired by the Moathouse too.
