Thursday 16 February 2023

On the Workbench: Iron Age Hillfort

There has been a lull in my gaming allowing me to concentrate on terrain in preparation for forthcoming tabletop action. An additional reason being my holiday abroad for a couple of weeks from this weekend and did not want to leave a half-completed game on the table for this duration. 

With regard to terrain. I have completed a batch of buildings for Gettysburg and I am cautiously optimistic that I have enough. All being well that will be good to go this year.

Another long overdue item is the iron-age hillfort for the next action in my Roman invasion of Britannia campaign:

I normally shy away from scratch-building terrain unless there is no other option. Mainly because of the time it takes and my limited ability in producing good looking pieces. 

The walkway behind the palisade is 15mm wide allowing for the accommodation of my 15mm deep bases. So far it is shaping up ok and miraculously without warping of the softwood base. It is being built in slow time alongside the painting of Japanese warships (in the background) to keep my sanity intact with the gluing of numerous toothpicks. It is actually quite therapeutic doing it this way!

Another priority for terrain on my return will be to add to my desert collection for both my WW2 North Africa campaign and Pony Wars. All this has meant figure painting has come to a standstill following the completion of ECW units for Edgehill. It will be a miracle if I manage to complete my target for the year! 


8 comments:

  1. First of all I hope you have a lovely holiday away Jon!

    The hill fort looks great already and I must admit that I love scratch building stuff, more so than painting to be honest. There are the remains of quite a few hill forts around here (Bristol), ranging from rather small to quite large and some with their ramparts still relatively intact. I hope to visit some more this year all being well.

    Gettysburg and WWII Western Desert certainly tick all the boxes for me and look forward to seeing what you come up with. You have a good few projects on the go, like myself, but most of mine are paused... :(.

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    1. Many thanks Steve. I do like occasionally wandering hillforts letting my imagination run away with me. We certainly are in hillfort territory here in the west which is why I felt I could not really skip building one!

      I am sure I have said it before, but I probably have too many projects on the go with the result that some are fairly static for a period of time. On the plus side I can switch when the mood takes me.

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  2. What scale is the hillfort? If the walk way is 15mm wide the palisade looks a bit tall for 6mm figures or is the extra height an allowance for the figure bases?
    Don't worry about meeting targets, their purpose is only for motivation not to exclude diverting excursions.

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    1. It is for 6mm. The external height of the palisade will diminish when I have added filler to the slopes. They will resemble more like the internal height of around 6 - 8mm (bearing in mind Baccus minis average 8mm).

      I agree about targets. I tend to treat them more as a motivator and to keep me at least partially forcused.

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  3. It's looking really goos already, Jon!

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