Town House from Stronghold Terrain

The Town House is the second Stronghold Terrain building after the Guild House out of the lot I bought at the Tactica convention earlier this year.

What you get (the kit)

Let's start with a photo of the contents of the kit:

The contents of the box

The set consists of resin parts - two roof pieces, a window, two chimney pieces and a base - and plaster walls for the house itself. The plaster is good enough with few air bubbles. The walls of the ground floor fit together nicely; I used a bit of modelling putty to fill a few gaps (after painting the walls first, though!).

Note the modelled shingles and
matchstick panel

The window and chimney which are both glued on the roof looked a bit too "stacked on" for my taste, so I used modelling putty (ProCreate, to be precise) to fill the gaps between them and the roof. You can see the same on the sample photos of the Stronghold Terrain website. This was easy enough for the chimney but for the window I modelled extra shingles and hid the gap with matchsticks - an extra twenty minutes well spent I believe.

Painting & Extras

I wasn't quite happy with how the stonework of the Guild House turned out so I had to try something different this time. Using a tutorial by Elmar Fischer at elladan I used pigments this time: A mix of MIG Concrete, MIG Dry Mud and water applied on the black undercoat. After drying the pigments' colour was removed from the raised surfaces of the stones with a wet tissue. Then I applied the usual mix of drybrushing various greys and browns and watered down greys, browns and green. I am very satisfied with the result as I like the realistic look.

For the rust on the doors and windows I also used pigments by MIG Productions, following the Rust and Soot/Dust tutorial at Senji Studios*. Basically it's just three layers of first Vietnam Earth, followed by Standard Rust and finally some Light Rust. However, since I misplaced my MIG Pigment Fixer which I had bought years ago I had to mix the pigments with water and apply that.

This is also the first time I used Revell's Color Stop medium to achieve the effect of paint that is peeling off of the door. I will have to do some more experiments with it but for now I think it turned out okay. It's definately something that you need to get used to working with as it's a thick rubbery compound that is applied on top of the painted area. Then you paint everything with another colour (green in this case) and afterwards you can peel the compound off to show the underlying layer (brown/greyish wood in this case).

One of the things I like most about the house is the main entrance. With the arch and what looks like a window counter this house has a lot of character. I decided to emphasis on the shop appearance and make it a proper old shoppe. Finally I could put one of the etched brass signs to use that I bought as Dolls House supplies. I put the sign on an over-sized matchstick and glued it to a resin bag which I got for free from the nice guys of Strongold Terrain when I purchased the building at the Tactica. Thus I have a signpost that can stand on its own with no need to glue it on the base.

The signpost made of a matchstick and an etched brass sign

The fish crate is from Ainsty Castings (the exact product is 'Trade Goods D Boxed Products'). I wanted to make this 'Ye Olde Fishe Shoppe', home of Hazel, the Fishwife.

Photos

Now for some photos of the finished piece:

Update: Three more pictures in better quality:

Resumé

The Town House is a very nice small building which should be a great addition to any medieval city board. Granted, it won't be the centrepiece of your gaming table, but it will definately be a great addition that fits in well with your other high quality buildings. The only disadvantage is the lack of interior detail (for the windows most notably). While it does have a first floor to place your skirmishers on you may want to get a trapdoor and ladder to make it fully useable on the inside.
All in all it gets a high recommendation from me.


*[April14/2013: It seems that the Senji Studios website has fallen victim to some malware virus attack. Norton and Google report the site as dangerous. Therefore the links to Senji Studios have been removed to prevent the reader]