The Gallowswood Inn: Terrain Project
Scratch built terrain fascinates me. You start with raw materials that could be anything; Combine them, shape them, paint them and you are left with something so realistic that you cannot determine what the component pieces originally were. This fascination kept me at arms distance from building terrain, as if some kind of magic would be required. I changed my mind after finding a Privateer Press Hobby Article about the Khadoran Inn. Looking at the completed piece it seems like an impossible task, but looking at each step it seemed manageable. Here are some pictures and thoughts of my completed Inn.
I followed the hobby article very closely for the general structure and materials of the Inn. The most notable exceptions are the windows and the large red Khador anvil. In the article the author uses scratch built windows that he had made a cast of and poured his own windows. I went with pre-made O-scale windows. I can definitely see where having a mold and being able to make your own would be very cost effective, especially with large structures like this that contain 18 windows. The front of the building in the article is adorned with a Khadoran symbol cut from a tournament medal. I definitely don’t have any of those kicking around waiting to be sliced up, so I built the basic anvil out of wood.
The stone work is all built from insulating styrofoam board. The walls (as well as interior support structure that can’t be seen) are composed of foam core. The wooden beams are 1/4″ square basswood, with the door and part of the sign being built from 1/4″ thin basswood strips. The curved roof is made of styrene card and the flat strips and angle pieces are also styrene pieces. The flag, door handle and three smoke stacks are all Warmachine model pieces ordered from the online parts store.
Most of the painting is down with cheap acrylic craft store paint. I wanted to keep my color selection basic both for ease of re-use and not wanting to purchase a ton of specialized colors. The rusted-red in Burnt Sienna, the walls are a mixture of a light tan called Sand and Brown. The stonework is Neutral Gray and Slate Gray. Drybrushing was done with White and Metallic Silver. The copper shield under the flag and the door handle were done with a metallic paint called Worn Penny. The smoke and some of the washing was done with Black. For the flag I did use regular P3 Khador Red Base and Khador Red Highlight as well as Sanguine Base. The yellow is GW Iyanden Darksun. The rusty washes on the roof are also done with Khador Red Highlight.
Taking a look around back you can see an additional stovepipe chimney which is composed of a few flexible drinking straws. Thin styrene strips are used for brackets around the stovepipe and attaching the chimney to the building. The original plan didn’t call for windows on the back wall, which would have saved four windows and I wished I had done so, but I didn’t notice that until I had already cut them out. Since the windows themselves are see not solid pieces (the spaces where the glass panes should be are empty), I came up with a nice solution. I only cut out the top layer of card paper from the foam-core, then pressed the foam in a bit. This allowed the windows to “snap” into place, though I glued them as well they are secure very nicely. I painted the exposed foam black which gives a nice texture behind the windows, almost as if there are blackout curtains drawn.
Here is a close-up of the sign. Using the Khadoran alphabet I hand-painted “The Gallowswood Inn” onto both sides. I started by painting the whole thing brown, then using a sharp modeling tool to gently etch in the letters I needed. This gave me a nice guide to paint over. I chose the Gallowswood as I’m mainly a Cygnar player it seemed like this was close enough to the border of Ord and Cygnar that it might see a battle now and again. (Plus who knows, there could be Trolls lurking in those woods).
This is the scratch-built anvil I made from 1/4″ square basswood. As with the rest of the Inn, I wanted to give it an older, weathered look. I painted it a wood brown color first, then washed some red over the top of it until I got a worn in red. I then painted some darker spots of red as if the paint had held up better in places. I then dry brushed with white paint to catch the edges.
Here at the top is the Khadoran flag just as in the hobby article. I gave it a fairly quick paint job, but did add a layer of highlight and shadow to the red to make the dimension of the flag pop a bit more. Below it I gave a copper color to the shield holding it up.
The Inn is quite tall for a piece of terrain, but it maintains a small footprint. For a sense of scale here are the painted members of my Khador Journeyman’s league next to the completed inn:
