Blackbarrow Farm

Farm with Inn on the right and Castle in the backdrop/.

Per my last post I was having issues whether to call that new building of mine a Farm or a Hunting Lodge for rich nobles or something. After landscaping its seem to work as a Farm and thats what the table needed, abet a nice rather large raftered farmhouse. Some of the trouble spots seemed to not bother me as much on this whole section of table was redone, the scale seemed to slide into place by sinking the building 1/4 " recessing the floors...the walls, garden , fields seem to soften the look quite a bit.                                                                                                                                                       

The Western road into town, 

The Cow and Cow Pen are new additions as well, the landscaping, and road are redone and painted, flowers and new flock added, Trees based and finished I'm using Woodland Scenics products for all my landscaping needs .    I'll sign off now with some photo captions, the table is really coming together, Some more landscaping on some of the more beat up sections (a ton of games have been played on this table which I finished about 3 years ago  ) there are some smaller older Armorcast buildings I need to figure out what to do with and a Church to redo, pretty close to moving onto finishing the Dungeon which will be some work....I plan on having it all done by the end of the year! I guess, we will see.                                                                                                                

View from the top of the Castle Gatehouse.

Side of Inn, overlooking Farm . you can see where the new landscaping meets the old,, that old section of road is next for touchup.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Rear and Field

This cow pen was fun afternoon build, Cow is by Reaper I have large hog and a goat as well. the straw is from some old scenery kit I have had forever its origin unknown.                                                                                                                       

Here is a good look at the garden and stonewalls, all pieces are from Hirst molds, Figure is Reaper, Wagon by Johnny Lauck.

Hirst Arts- Timber Frame Building

Its been awhile, Its seems more of struggle of to keep the blog updated these days than I remember even thou, I've painted close to a dozen figures , finished the castle and built this since the last update.
this from the "project files" on the Hirst Arts website, a Timber or "Half Timber" building depending on what molds you used, for this I used mainly molds #224 and #225, with #260 for the floors, a few 1/4 planks from the original wood panel mold #220 and the Chimney and Fireplace from the old small brick mold. 250

 I found numerous issues with this plan from the start. Since I used these molds for my upper story of my Inn, I felt like this building was too large and I was right, 3" for 1 story walls is just too high unless you are adding a second floor, I compounded the issue by placing the walls on top of the floor (and I go back and forth on this , something I inset the floor other times not, here and inset would have been better) so in the end I to my eye the building is out of scale for my 28-32mm purposes, I mean it works its just too large and too fancy to be the simple farmstead I envisioned for my fictional town of Blackbarrow .

 As result I decided to either sink the building into the table or build up the surrounding landscaping I am going to do to cover where the floor shows, this will help the scale issue I have slightly, and you can see I left bottom of the chimney off, so I can make it the building is rest properly on what height variation I end up going with..

Roof is plastic card #91533 from plasticstruct, that isnt cheap and I should spend the $29 on the Hirst slate single roof mold, however a bought a whole bunch of it years ago and still have enough for one  building this size of two smaller ones..might as well use it up. and I will adding some edging to that lip

 One I decided that it was no longer a simple farmstead, I envisioned it a grand hunting lodge, for towns leaders, I found this medieval picture of a hunting scene online, scaled it up in photoshop and printed it out on sticker paper, putting on a painted piece of balsa as a huge painting for largest section of empty wall..

 Speaking of walls, the original spec shows a layer of cast sections on both sides off a piece of cereal box, which I though was total overkill, so the interior black walls are just painted and stippled cereal box with mold #225 pieces glued over it directly.

 Pictures here show a good indication of size with both Reaper and Otherworld figures show in the photos, I am not going to add my furniture here just a table and some chairs, the upside being plenty of room to "play thru" this piece in any sort of skirmish game.

 As you can see with this rough set up here things are slowly coming together, I originally planned to replace all my old armorcast resin buildings, MS AUS mdf , and GW buildings with original hirst pieces as scalewise many of them are too small, but I just dont think I have the room on the table, I was thinking about the Mill and Blacksmith shoppe but we will see.

With the Inn and Castle in the background you can see how insetting the building in ground and          building up some surrounding landscaping with help put this building in proper perspective so thats     the next step, building the landscaping and cleaning the some of shoddy areas of table that need a refresher after year of play.

This overall took longer than I thought, since I had everything cast I was thinking I could build this is an afternoon and a couple evenings but with drying times assembly painting, the roof and other details I think is a solid 12 hours project.  next up,  already finished figures and more finished blackbarrow and hopefully some Frostgrave and sooner than another 6 weeks!