Blotz Dark Age Watchtower

After our first game of Ruckus, I wanted to use my other LOTR figures with the rules too. I own a small force of Rohirrim, but I needed some terrain pieces with verticality to fully utilise the potential of the rules.

The first thing that came to my mind was of course a Rohan style watchtower, which I have thought about scratch-building before. I googled for some ideas, and came across Blotz's Dark Age Watchtower.

The kit itself is not expensive, but shipping was a bit high, but a recent sale they had made me bite bullet.

The kit is built almost 'as is'. I beveled the edges of the base, and made some cuts on the MDF to give the timber a less regular appearance.

The genius of their design is that they made the distinctive horse-head finials a part of the roof piece (which lifts off) rather than the columns, which made it easier to access the cabin of the tower, as well as allow the gamer to perhaps build a different roof for a non-Rohan force.

Scatter Terrain

To improve the spectacle of our games, I have been making some scatter terrain pieces, chiefly using cork bits glued to a base, some sand and gravel, painting the bases to match my mats, and then adding tufts.

Recently I decided to make some bushes bases, and bought some ready-made tufts - the ones with yellow flowers in the photo above. On advice of Nowfel, I decided to make some more unruly shrubbery, but was unable to settle on a quick and simple method despite searching on Youtube, until I found this:

I had bought a pack of these new scouring pads to use, and while washing my dishes one day I realised that the colour of the pad meant I could use them as the 'branches' of my bushes without needing to paint them. So I tore one up, shaped and trimmed the pieces tot he shape I wanted, hot-glued them to a base, painted them with diluted PVA, and scattered fine foam on them. I am quite pleased with the results.

I also made some 'rough ground' terrain pieces for my arid mat, which will serve both as scatter terrain, as well as indicators for Rough Ground grids in the grid-based wargames.

Museum Miniatures 'ZSculpt' Normans and Anglo-Saxons

 I have a collection of 15mm Dark Age figures, mostly bought painted off ebay, which we used for a '1066' campaign based on an S&T magazine almost 20 years ago.

Since then these figures have seen little to no use, but the recent release of Midgard Heroic Battles has prompted me to try to put them on the table again. The figures are based on DBX convention, and while I could have used some of the bases as Heroes, I decided to paint up some dedicated bases for easier play.

After some browsing I decided on Museum Miniatures' ZSculpt figures, because I had a good experience with Cromarty's 3D sculpted resin figures. Museum Miniatures do not ship to where I live, but my old friend Steve in UK graciously agreed to make the order for me and ship them over. When the figures arrived, however, I found that they were metal castings, and that a few of them were bad casts.

With the few packs I purchased I was able to make a level 3 Hero base for each of the three contenders of 1066: William, Harold, and Harald, each with their iconic flag; four more generic level 2 Hero bases, and four generic Champion bases, which would give each side two of each, enough for a standard game.