Not a GW kit for a change, today’s terrain piece is a ruined watchtower. I can’t tell you who produced it, though – as I picked it up quite a few years ago now in a job lot with a whole lot of other bits and pieces.

Speaking of pieces, it was in several until I finally assembled the thing earlier this month, with this month’s challenge and the good spraying weather finally motivating me to finally get the thing done!

It went together simply, if not easily – with some drilling and clipping needed to get the pieces together. The different segments don’t fit together perfectly, but they’re close enough so that it can be difficult to notice.

Once again, the sheen from several layers of varnish combined with a lot of lights belies the more matte appearance that it has in person. It looks almost like flowing mud here! What can I say? My lighting options for larger pieces are pretty shithouse! It’s kinda hard to see, but I’ve attempted to have the orientation of the grass on the tufts “flow” with he contours of the model, as the whole thing has a pretty windswept look to it.

That big section where it looks like it’s fit together extraordinarily badly is part of the sculpt – it’s intentional – rather than being the result of my terrible modelling skills. I’ve mounted it on an inexpensive wooden teapot stand to give it a nice sturdy base, and rather than trying to bevel it to the ground or try to paint the edges in an awkward (to me) brown so it “fits in better” with my table surfaces, I just went full fuggit and gave it a similar black rim as I do with many of my bases. I did roughly sculpt some simple flagstones in the ground, giving the indication of a small path that may or may not continue on the battlefield surface.

The scale of this model seems a bit smaller than most “heroic” scale models. Here we have it with a few Heroes of Men from the LotR range, with their slightly smaller scale showing the sizing. True historical models would be a touch smaller yet, so would fit in even more nicely with the tower. I also thought our friend The Imperfect Modeller would appreciate how close this almost gets to a proper diorama! I’d just need an appropriate figure to put in Gandalf’s place there, and a pin to hold them there on!

FInally, as a point of contrast, I thought a couple of more modern-scale AoS Bloodbound figures (ok, one is at least 50% Shieldwolf) would be a nice counter to the above – as you can see, it’s still very much usable for Fantasy of pretty much any stripe. And the number of times that Space Marines have fought their foes over terrain that resembles Terra’s ancient medieval castles must be beyond count!