GrahamB - Schloss Aquarium (terrain) (7 points)

 I have started this challenge with a refurb and tidy up of an eBay purchase to be used with my Italian Wars, Medieval and Renaissance collections.  The building started life as a fish tank model, hence the title.

The painting was completed by mainly dry brushing using various household paint match pots and some block painting to bring out the detail.  The castle is around 10 inches long by 6 inches wide by 8 inches tall and took around 2 hours to paint.

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This is a great use of stuff from other sources (meaning other than a game or terrain store) to spice up your wargame table.  While you say it is mainly dry brushing work and then some simple painting, it looks really good, and a great use of a few hours.  I like that you added some brighter colours for the awnings and shingles to give the model some colour.  Good work Graham, keep it coming!

- Byron

From Kerry T - Norman's home is his castle (300 points)

 Morning afternoon and evening all

First a big thank you to you Millsy for all your hard work in looking after us as our Friday minnion. Millsy's idea and coordination of a regular Tuesday chat for the Friday crew has also been a huge bonus and made this my third challenge even more pleasurable than the previous two. Thank you Millsy

I hope to produce one more post before next week's deadline which will be my final entry of Italian wars cavalry but this one is all about buildings.

I 've shown some of Norman's troops earlier in the challenge, well this is Norman's house!

Ever since starting to collect and paint the Baron's war figures from Footsore I've hankered after a castle. Last year I put one together from a mixture of Tabletop Workshop, Renedra and Ziterdes components and am pleased with it but since then I've taken the plunge and bought a 3D printer. 

I've always loved the range put out by Printable Scenery https://www.printablescenery.com/product-category/historic/middle-ages/. 

They produce a superb range of high quality STL files for a number of periods including Medieval Europe. I felt I also needed more 28mm buildings but the cost of postage to NZ for these is prohibitive. This seemed a no brainer option particularly when I was able to buy both their "King" range and "Country" as late kickstarters for only $US60 each. Each range contains a large number of buildings or castle components with each available as a ruined option as well.

I've quietly been printing components off since late October!

I'd always intended to submit a castle entry and made a start on painting these about 3 weeks ago when I had a week off and finished them off last week

Black spray undercoat and test pot paints from a DIY store 

Printed on a Elegoo Neptune 3PRO filament printer

Dry brushing starts

The garage is the only place to do this

I then dry brushed with a mixture of greys and brown using large brushes

Baron's war figures attack the main gate

One type of corner tower

The Royal gate and towers

The stone fort and stables

The back gate

view from the back

What I love about these various wall, tower and building sections is that they can be configured in multiple ways.

The various wall and tower components

The stone manor

The Square Keep

The King's gate

An idea of the round or Royal component variations

The second level allows for 90 degree or 180 degree angles

I'm not sure I like this roof variant

The stables

I'm the King of the castle - the Norman Stone Fort

It breaks down for storage

The Kings Quarters

Stone fort ruin variants, not yet properly painted so no points for this have been claimed

So many variants!

The Stone Fort ruin is the only ruin variant I've printed off but will likely print off a few broken walls in the long run. I think I might be printing forever especially as I can resize the houses in the Country range in 15mm as well. I'm looking forward to painting the cottage and farm buildings in the range next

As to the points value the following pictures should give an idea

Just about 8 inches high makes this 3 x 2.5 cubes = 7.5

Another 4 cubes and 2 cubes

Never mind the cubes, I think these STL files have to be the beat value wargaming purchase ever even though I've got through quite a bit of filament

I hope my maths are correct this time but my estimate is 13.5 cubes @ 20 points = 270 points

I now have to decide whether to sell off my other castle!

From Millsy: Oh. My. Word! This thing is absolutely spectacular Kerry and I am insanely jealous (apart from your storage requirements). Any game played on a table graced by this gorgeous structure would be an absolute pleasure to participate in. You've absolutely nailed the stonework and I think the blue/grey on the roof is a great choice. This is quite the effort to finish on mate if it does prove to be your last sub it's a cracking way to finish! I've rounded you up to 15 cubes, 13.5 just doesn't seem enough.

And thanks for your kind words. The paint and chat has been great fun and a wonderful way to get more stuff painted!

From NoelW: Building up to an ending: (30 points)

I've a couple of posts to make in the next 24 hours, before it's all over for me. That'll at least make life interesting for Kent, Miles and Byron...

So here's a castle - or parts of it.

I've had these pieces in a drawer for about ten years, from the days when I used to game heavily in 10mm (mainly Warmaster). As I've now returned to 15mm, I think it will do fine for the slightly larger scale, so time to paint it up. Although it's pretty clearly high medieval English, perhaps dating around the mid C15th, perhaps a bit earlier, I'm most likely to use it in the Middle East, and for any period up to Napoleonic, so I decided it should be a sand coloured stone, and look rather worn - perhaps a Crusader castle somewhat worse for wear over the years. I plan to get hold of a couple of more Eastern looking buildings, or perhaps a couple of domes, to change its character a little more.

The model is made from a light resin, which I think is pretty much ideal for gaming scenery, as it's light, robust and takes paint pretty well. I believe it came from Ian Weekley's terrain range, but that might not be the case.

There are 12 pieces which, unfortunately, can't be configured into a standalone castle using all the pieces, with or without the ruined wall piece, as there's no way to create a parallelogram from them. But I expect I'll mainly be using them as table-edge fortifications in any case - and I do have some other similar pieces, already painted, which I might repaint to match.

As for points? 

The large tower is 5 by 3 by 2.75 inches. The four small towers are 2 x 2 x 4. Two gateways are 2.5 x 2.5 x 1. Four unbroken walls are 5 x 2.5 x 1. The broken wall is 5 x 2.5 x 2.5. I could attempt the complex cubic calculation that others have suggested, but that seems a bit - er - pointless. If I bundle all the pieces together, they form one lump that's a little over 6 x 5 x 5 and another that's a fraction under 5 x 4 x 4. That suggests to me they can be compressed to about one and a half 6 inch cubes, though I'm not sufficiently adept at Tetris to make it happen. Of course, if I fixed them to a baseboard and called them a fort, the area/volume they'd occupy would be quite a bit more! So does 30 points seem about right?

From Byron:

I did the complex calculations and it comes out to 202.75 square inches and 216 square inches = 20 points.  However, These have a lot of surface area being thin and small compared to something like a simple 6x6x6 cube.  Therefore I am more than happy with your 30 point estimate, as I find terrain highly subjective anyway.  Sure the size matters (PHRASING!) but its also about what the model is and how much detail is there.  

This is a great little(ish) piece and you gave it a great paint job.  Awesome work Noel, keep it coming!