Castles Made of Foam

I was hoping to get enough work done on my Stegadon and post a WIP picture, but I didn't make as much progress on him as I would have liked this week. I wanted to offer up some "real" hobby content as a break from the maniacal ramblings of my last few posts (although Brent and John over at the HOP seem to have enjoyed some of it, much to my delectation). Thus, I bring you a castle!



Obviously, it's not spectacular in terms of modeling, but it is by far my favorite piece of wargaming terrain in my possession, mostly for sentimental value. Back in '98, after coming back from a family vacation my first WFB mini's arrived via mail order (some of which are pictured above). Over the trip my dad bought one of those small Styrofoam ice-chests that you can buy at grocery and convenience stores:


My dad flipped the cooler upside down, cut down the height a few inches and stuck the lid on top and painted it gray.* The windows are ordinary vinyl molding you'd find in a generic office building cut to shape and detailed with a sharpie marker. Popsicle sticks make up the window shutters and the gate. The gate is detailed with some ordinary black twine. I don't think my dad had any idea at the time that he was supporting what would become at times a border-line obsession for me, but nevertheless I'm still appreciative of his efforts to this day.

For gaming purposes, it's kinda inconvenient due to the sheer size, but hell, I have a castle (OK, it's kinda more like a keep if you wanna get all historical). Although, now it might come in handy with the terrain generation table in the WFB BRB, with all the new wacky buildings rules, such as haunted mansions and wizard's towers. Maybe as a future project, I'll go get a new cooler and make a really pimped out castle.

If scratch built junk terrain is your thing, try Terrain from Junk. If you have any cool scratch built terrain, I'd love to know about it too. While GW has been producing some very nice terrain sets as of late, I'm still partial to home made terrain. It's what really sold me on this hobby in the first place and why I joke that Nigel Stillman is my hero (I named a ruined temple I built after him, the Chapel of St. Nigel, I'll share it here later).

Update - check out the Chapel of St. Nigel!

*He used brush on acrylic paint. If you don't already know, spray paint melts styrofoam. So you can use it to make some cool looking, melty effects, or completely and inadvertently ruin your terrain project. You done been warned.