Wednesday, February 8, 2017

North American Blockhouse


The scene above is of a supply train trundling past a blockhouse bringing much needed supplies to a nearby frontier settlement.
 Since I'm American I wanted to enter something into the "home" bonus round for the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge here that gives an image of my home and thought a North American log style Blockhouse fits that bill rather nicely as it conjures up that colonial feel of the frontiers of North America.




A blockhouse is a small fort intended to protect against enemy that probably didn't have any serious siege equipment . If a blockhouse was upgraded to defeat siege equipment then it was more of a redoubt or fortress. Some were fitted with artillery, but all had some form loopholes or window ports to fire out of.
It could serve as a small fort, barracks, store house, place of refuge or a guard post on the frontier.



This particular blockhouse is a typical North American log cabin style constructed of logs and boarding supported by a stone block cut base with gravel coating and the door is of reinforced oak wood. The window ports a large enough for defenders to lean out if needed to both defend the base of blockhouse or pour water on it if attacked by fire.




The model itself is from Grand Manner terrain which I happen to huge fan of and is quite large model and is intended for 28mm. You can fit an artillery piece plus several figures in the model itself which is nice. It's a resin piece so some clean up is required, but wasn't too much. I painted the model in mostly craft paints with some Foundry colors for the moss and a bit of Vallejo on the gravel. I always used a healthy amount of Mig pigments to give some weathering effects.



Well it was a tough week as I'd been dealing with a nasty case of man flu, but I'm happy I crossed the finish line in time to get this in for the bonus round as it was a bit dicey. I'm still 100% over the flu but doing much better now thankfully.

Thanks for viewing!
Miniature Company- Grand Manner