Sunday, January 31, 2016

'Defensive Terrain' from DavidL - 'A Mighty Fortress'

A few weeks ago, I scored a really good deal on one of my Oldhammer "bucket list" items: the old "Mighty Fortress" from Games Workshop. I remember drooling over ads for Warhammer Fantasy Battle featuring the venerable Fortress, but it was well outside my price range as a young lad, so I was quite happy to lay my hands on a copy now (even if my set came with an extra gate section, which may explain the good deal I got...).


My very own "nostalgia figure"--a Ral Partha barbarian who featured in an AD&D campaign of long ago--will provide a tour (and sense of scale).









January has been awful in terms of finding time to paint (and I'm sorry I haven't been able to keep up with everyone's marvelous posts--hoping to rectify that starting next week), but I still made an effort to get out to the painting room at least for a half-hour every night before bed. This involved hand-primering everything with black gesso, then airbrushing all the pieces in several shades, then coming in with inks and washes to add some weathering effects.








Behold! A pale horse.
The whole kit is a proper toy set, with doors that open and close. I was vaguely reminded of my beloved He-Man "Castle Greyskull" set of youthful days long past, but this of course is a whole order of magnitude more awesome.

One of the noteworthy elements of the set is that it comes with tons of extra parts and pieces. Way more trapdoors than I'll ever have need for, extra doors and gates, extra ladders...great stuff for the ol' bits box.



I'm contemplating picking up another set if I can find another good deal, just so I can set up larger city wall or citadel arrangements, as well as do some ruined wall conversions. But this will more than tide me over for now. ;)





All in all, I painted four towers, six wall sections, four gate inserts, 20 door inserts, 11 trap doors, and 17 ladders...

19 comments:

  1. This is a nice, big build and clearly an enormous amount of work went into it. You managed a great effect on the stone by using so many techniques as well.

    A superb entry!

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  2. That's a humungous piece of work for this round. Lovely stuff David :)

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  3. Like you I was in awe of it when I was younger. It looks really good. I like those old plastic skelly horsemen as well. Thank your Barbarian for the nice tour. cheers

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  4. I've often been tempted to get one of these but I've no idea where I'd store it. Nice brushwork David!

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  5. That is an awesome piece of kit David and you've done a wonderful job on it. I have one of these but not with the expanded wall sections - I'm quite jealous! ;)

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  6. What a piece, you did it proud

    Ian

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  7. I loved this kit too! My mate had one and the "Warhammer siege" book you bought alongside it for the rules was excellent.

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  8. Really cool - works for the nostalgia round too, if you ask me! How neat to see one of these done up.

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  9. I remember this coming out. Lovely job

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  10. Wonderful! I also remember the old Warhammer castle, and the rules that were associated to it. Never got one, but maybe something to put on my bucket list.. and hope to paint it this nicely!

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  11. That is a wonderful thing and beautifully rendered Sir.

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  12. I really like the effects you got on the castle stones, very nice work!

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  13. Wow...that's really excellent. I can't begin to think of how long this must have taken. Really top work. Great modelling and really nice painting on the walls!

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