A Moat for the Castle

A couple of posts back when I was showing off the finished castle it was suggested that I should build a moat...

Using the same principle as my rivers I sourced the Oxford Blue Vinyl floor tiles from Homebase

If you are interested in the full river build head here...

River Build

The basic premise - still awaiting static grass

The almost finished moat - still needs a drawbridge

Of course these sections can also double up as canals...

Whilst the paint brush was out I finished off this nice celtic cross (stands about 6cm tall) - I think it was sourced from Magnetic Displays/Coritani at Colours

http://www.magneticdisplays.co.uk/TH65-Celtic-Cross-Painted-or-unpainted?filter_name=Cross

I have mounted it on my own base but for £3 it was a bargain - great for those saga games

Celtic Cross - 28mm

Until next time...

Nottingham - Tales of Shedwood - part 1

When I last set out the potential for the city of Nottingham it looked at bit like this...

With Keep completed and the walls all painted you can see from the following pictures things have progressed somewhat..

Still not decided on the base material yet but am working on it

Thanks for dropping by...

The Keep ; Tales of Shedwood part 3 .

Finally managed to put work aside and crack on with the Keep build. Delighted to report that I finished it this evening...

When I left you last the castle ha just received its coat of black paint...we'll pick up from here...

BUT if you missed the start of this build head over to this link The Keep Part 1

Dont worry there is a link to bring you all the way back here...

So the Keep has now been coated in mars black acrylic (for those of you starting out terrain building buy good acrylic paint from artshops - it last forever and is so much cheaper than small pots from the likes of GW)

The base has been given a coat of burned umber (brown)  

First dry coat of grey goes on...cat not interested this time !

second coat of grey 

third coat of grey - don't worry there are not 50 shades of grey ...or should I say 50 sheds of grey...

Final dry brush coat of titanium white

At this point I forgot to take any more pictures but I treated the base with a couple of dry brushes and then liberally added the static grass. Finally the Keep moved into the Shed..

From the front...

From the side

The Keep entrances including stairway - the doors are from the GW fortress range

From the rear

This weekend I intend to reset Nottingham and work out how to do the base found for the city - please do come back and see the keep in in its proper context

Thanks for reading

Eric

Shed Wars TV: A Woking Tea Party

As mentioned in a previous post we had the fortune to attend Matakishi's tea party in Woking last weekend.

My teenage son was in tow and thanks to him we can bring the tea party into glorious HD, technicolour, special affects...thingy

Hope you enjoy


Just click the link below the Shed Wars TV logo...










Matakishi Tea Party 2013

Matakashi's Tea Party

A few weeks back Mr Matakashi himself asked if I would be willing to host a game at his forthcoming tea party on Saturday 21st in Woking. Having known Paul for more years than I care to remember I gladly accepted.

Saturday morning arrived. My son and I packed up the car and headed off on the 30 minute drive. The journey was uneventful upto the last two minutes when we discovered that the school location where the party was being hosted was beset with traffic problems...the diversion signs had been cunningly moved to ensure we returned to our starting point. Despiote this set back we arrived to find a rather forlorn Matakashi...

...his car had broken down...well things did get better from here on and in the end we had a great time - lots of banter, dice rolling and of course chocolate cake..

I for my sins ran three games of M&T - photos follow plus a few of the other games.

A video (with special effects) will be on Shed Wars TV very soon

come back here for the links

The Matakashi Gold Cat

And of course there was Matakashi's Conan Game...

And in the the afternoon the Galadiators arrived...are you ready...

Mamalute, Jim Bibbly and Dr Death play with their Ludii

The Keep - Tales of Shedwood part 2

For those of you interested part 1 of this series can be found here...The Keep part 1

Dont worry there is a link at the end of part 1 which will bring you back to this point...

So we continue with the build of the Castle Keep of Nottingham.

In my last post I illustrated start of my construction of the castle keep and the gatehouse. Last weekend things progressed in the shed and I am delighted to report that the Castle for Tales of Shedwood is now taking shape.

The first photo illustrates experiments in the basic layout...as you will see later on the the walls somewhat change.

This is the final layout. (below)

As many of you will know my table in the shed is covered with 9mm Mdf squares (50cm x 50cm). The standard table is 1.5 metres x 3metres so this has 18 squares. Each square is currently covered in the green battlemat from Games Workshop. The Layout has been extremely practical and hardwearing for almost 8 years. The squares can be stored easily and removed either to reveal a blue vinyl covered surface for seas, rivers etc or just removed so I can use the table as a work bench.

I decided on Saturday that the Castle would sit in the footprint of one of the these squares, this would ensure that it wasn’t so big as to dominate the entire table but to also allow for the base to be moved around as the game fits. With the size determined I then decided that the main tower would be fixed to this base and liked with both battlements and towers to the rest of the fortification.

 Having marked out the best fit with the other towers and gatehouse I set about the construction of the walls. These were built using an inner structure of foam core and then clad in blue foam. Once again the stone work was embossed on the blue foam.

The final layout withe new blue walls.

As you see the Castle can be moved around the board and sits flush with rest of my boards.

Over the next 24 hours the walls were finished and on Sunday night I fixed all the components to the board. 

The next job will be to fill all the joins between the walls and the towers and to give the whole thing a lick of paint.

My cat then decided that this would make a suitable resting place...

Part 3 is now complete and can be found here...

Part 3 here...

Cheers