From StuartL - Arts and Crafts House - Arthouse (60 points)

Hello again,

So, after blitzing through two studio sections, it is time to hit my fourth, thereby clearing the way for a run at the Director's Chair.

Of all the sections of the studio, the Arthouse was the one that gave me the most pause, so I decided to take it literally and paint a house. Luckily, I had one to hand that I had built prior to the previous challenge, but that had sat on my shelf for the past year. The plan is to use it for Saga: Age of Crusades as I have some Arabs and Crusaders on the go for that.

Like a lot of folks, my finances took a hit during Covid and things like terrain have become a bigger financial burden to sort out than I would like. As a way of getting round that, I tried my hand at putting some terrain of my own together. I started with two wooden boxes I got at the local dollar store, and cut some foam board to match their size, cutting holes for doors and windows. Gluing everything together gave me a basic structure. The boxes are upside down, the base of each forming the roof of the building. This means that the interior isn't accessible, but I don't need to worry about it collapsing if anything heavy is put on it.

I then cut up some coffee stirrers to make the doors and some bamboo skewers to add some beams to 'support' the roof. I used an old pen to score some brick work into the foam and covered it all in textured paint to provide a harder wearing surface. (The bricks got a layer of PVA instead). Everything got painted in dark brown and then I went over it with a beige using a cut up piece of sponge to dab the colour on. The base is foam covered with Vallejo White Stone and some sand sprinkled on top.

One of the problems with terrain is scoring it, especially when it is not a regular shape.

The main building is about 5" high, by 4.5" wide and 4.5" deep.

The smaller section is roughly 3" by 3" by 3.5".

Overall, this should be 132.75 cubic inches.

That's great, but I kind of need more terrain to fill up a table, so...

This building is from Renedra. I got it cheap off a friend who had tried building it and got fed up with it. The kit doesn't fit together all that well, even with some Vallejo plastic putty, there are a LOT of gaps between the panels. It is nicely detailed though.

Size wise, it is roughly 5" by 3.5" by 2.5", or 43.75 cubic inches.

That's probably enough buildings for now, but how about some natural features?

I had a large piece of blue foam left over from a previous project, so I cut it into a rough shape, added some smaller ridges on top and glued down some tree bark to be used as rocks. Then I decided to add the same texture that I used on my buildings and minis. This thing took half of the tub of Vallejo White Stone, making it quite expensive given that the rest of it is just scrap material.

This should fill up a large chunk of the table and block some lines of sight. It is 7" wide at it's narrowest point, roughly 16" long and 1" high (2" on the two ridges). At a rough calculation it is 7"x16"x1" or 112 cubic inches.

Ok, nearly done, just a few bits of greenery to brighten up the table. 

I found these palm trees at the dollar store and bought out their entire stock. I then went back the following week and bought out their restock and then again a few weeks later. The clerks must have thought I was mad. This lot represent about a third of the trees I bought. The bases were done with the same method as the building above. I drybrushed and washed the trunks to make them look less like cheap plastic, but the leaves just wouldn't take any paint at all. I don't know what they are made from, but they are essentially paint-proof.

The whole lot measures roughly 6" square, but there are some gaps between bases that I couldn't fill up.

The trees stand between 3 and 4 inches tall, plus a bit of extra height where the leaves stick up. Going at 6"x6"x3", that gives the trees a total of 108 cubic inches.

So, all told that comes to: 396.5, or 1.83 challenge terrain cubes. That is roughly 36 points plus 20 for the studio, though I suppose I should take some deductions for the dead space between the trees. I'll leave it up to my fair-minded and all knowing Minion to decide. As he just finished off some terrain himself, I am sure he can appreciate the way points and volume are calculated.

Final score ??? 56 points???

Hopefully, I score over 25 for the terrain, which will then qualify for a Squirrel Point. Too late I have realised that I should have stuck a skull somewhere on one of the bases to get a point for the Skullz duel too. Drat.

My side duels

Squirrels +1 = 28

Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Dwarves, Fire Giants, WW2 Polish, Daemons, Viridians, Vasa, Junkers, Turnips, Necrons, Tau, Genestealers, WW2 Japanese, Teutonics, Lizardmen, Gnolls, Arabs, Space Marines, Kung Fu Chinese, Wolf's Dragoons, Merfolk, Fishmen, Fish, Mummies, Greek Myth, Peasants, Desert Terrain

Skullz - 200

Turnips - 115 Points

And that means I have finished the minimum to qualify for the Directors Chair! See you all next week.

Love the building, terrain can be a pain to score or a positive bounty of points. You fit in the middle. I'm doing to score it a 2 cubes so you don't get trippy decimal points on your score