A Rough Month in the Warhammer Cottage

One of the example cottages from White Dwarf 130. It is well worth tracking down these old mags if you are just using pdfs like I once did. There is nothing like the original article for inspiration. 

"So you got it then," the older lad asked. He towered over me, rucksack slung over his shirted shoulder while his blazered buddy lingered alongside. These were older boys, from the Upper School and the speaker was the brother of one of my classmates. Normally, such lofty beings wouldn't have deemed to talk to an underling such as myself. Year 8s didn't exist to lofty highschoolers. Even when we walked carefully past their bedrooms when visiting our contemporaries' own rooms. They listened to music we didn't know, read Q magazine and talked to girls. 

Now one was addressing me directly and was pretty impatient about it too. 

The reason was simple. My mum was matron at the local hospital and had access to something pretty distant for a youth in the dawn of the '90s. 

A photocopier.

It was September 1990 and we hadn't long been back at school. White Dwarf had just been published and everyone was talking about it. The Warhammer Cottage. The trouble was that the plans needed enlarging unless you fancied adding an additional 33% to the measurements which seemed too fiddly for most. Even the two Upper School boys I now stood in front of. I only knew the speaker. His name was Daniel and he was the brother of my classmate Moley. Daniel was an avid WFRPer, a system that I was then largely unfamiliar with, preferring to play endless games of Blood Bowl with his brother. 

My Dad had taught me to build the Warhammer Cottage the previous weekend, though instead of foamboard we had used plasticard. I'd learnt how to measure, cut and apply balsa wood, to cut out the tiles for the roof, to rough up the flat surfaces with Polyfilla and attempted to paint the thing with enamels, my father's preferred paint. This act had made me a god amongst boys when I'd taken it to school the following Monday and word quickly spread. 

It is hard to explain the impact of the Warhammer Cottage if you weren't there. It was the first time White Dwarf showed you how to do something (at least while I had been reading it) in a step by step fashion. These days we all know of the terrain guides that were published, the suggestions in later editions of WHFB and 40k and the Youtube videos of today. Making scenery has never been easier, even if most of it consists of identikit plastic sprues and lasercut kits. Not so in 1990. We were all fascinated by what we had seen and read and with a little luck, we even had all of the materials at home to begin work. 

You know, I can still feel the awe when looking at this page. The thrill is still there and the need to build my own version of this simple, little model. A great choice of build to inspire thousands of young gamers back in the day. Top work Dave and Phil! 

In my school bag were multiple copies of page 58 of White Dwarf 130, enlarged by 133%. This was the holy grail as we had been taught to lay the plan over foamboard and use pins to create holes. The magazine even included handy blue spots to guide our hands. These holes could then be joined up with a ruler and then cut out. Once the basic shape was there it was really easy to stick the embryonic building together with Copydex, PVA or Cowgum. Then an old box of Frosties could become the roof and matchsticks the woodwork. Sand or cat litter (unused I hope) would give texture and then it was a case of breaking out the Citadel Colour (RIP by the way 1986-2026) or Monster Paint Sets and bringing it to life. 

Daniel and his mate took his copy and swiftly departed. My relevance extinguished. A bit later, he would return the favour and hand me a battered paperback copy of WHRP, which I still own to this day. He'd upgraded to the hardback. The other copies went to eager friends, desperate to ape my build and produce something for their own games at home.

I've never forgotten the excitement of those early builds. The Warhammer Cottage has stayed with me ever since. Perhaps only the Mighty Fortress or Warhammer Townscape hold similar significance. Both of those needed to be paid for mind you, the Warhammer Cottage gave us the opportunity to create something for our games without spending any real money. Always a boon for a '80s kid making his way through this new decade. I was too young to remember the 1970s but I'd completed the '80s and now the 1990s beckoned. Zzap64, the Amiga 500, Monkey Island, Resident Evil, Britpop was all ahead of us. They've all faded somewhat now, but the Warhammer Cottage has stayed with me. I've built many versions through the years, often from memory. I've used the plans with school children for the Great Fire of London, for DT club and so on. From me spread forth numerous Warhammer Cottages even if those doing the building might not have realised. 

My sorry collection of models. Unloved but not forgotten. After months lounging in my workshop it was time to bring them back to life. 

It had been a bittersweet moment and few months back when I received a few surviving models back. Mistreated and ill stored, they were in a sorry state but I was loathed to dispose of them. These were the Warhammer Cottage after all. The pinnacle of boyhood crafting, though sadly none of them were that old. The earliest build is the model front left with the grey roof. This was made from memory before I got my hands on another copy of WD130. The dimensions were slightly off, and the beam placement rather unusual but it is the Cottage through and through, though you can see that I got the window, door and chimney the wrong way around. Like that first model, this one was made from plasticard and cereal box cardbaord. I even took the trouble to glue sand to the walls to create texture and individually placed stones into Milliput to create the cobbles which surround it. The next model to be built was the postcard perfect example front right. Made from the plans in WD130 for this blog many moons ago. The building behind with the blue roof was also constructed shortly after and both cottages saw action at Foundry over the years. The larger one never got further than being undercoated in black. 

What is probably harder to see here is the dust, cobwebs, mould and damage that only having been dumped in a shed for some years could inflict. In cleaning the models up, further damage was dealt, especially on that grey roof. 

Another example piece from White Dwarf 130. This was the one that encouraged me to do different coloured titles. I seem to have gone a bit OTT with the look but I think it adds character. 

After interviewing Wayne last post, I've been thinking about that impossible dream... the spectacular gaming table and of his remarkable scenery. Surely I could do something similar? I've been busy restoring old figures and models from yesteryear so why not the classic Cottage? They would be the first step in creating a decent set up for the models I hope one day to have. Of course, I'm keen to explore this 'Citadelesque' aesthetic I've been waffling about in greater depth and any gaming table I produce would need to be in keeping with the source material. Like something from the back page of White Dwarf in our era or, dare I say it, the first few pages of WFB3. 

So I have been busy over the last few weeks repairing and restoring my surviving models and I feel like I have learnt a great deal, especially about drybrushing and colour harmony. The roofs are now secure, walls patched and woodwork joined. I've added new details, and save the grey-roofed model all of these pieces have been totally repainted. 

Shall we have a look?

And here they are completed. After the refurbishment, MFM even said she'd have one on display in the lounge with her other ornaments - the ultimate praise any enthusiast can receive, surely!?

I hope you like what you see. And that the models are worthy of gracing a gaming table that hopes to replicate Wayne's classic. Starting with the bottom left, you can see that the original Warhammer Cottage boasts a new colour scheme. I am not sure that the blue look works with a pure '80s approach. Searching the internet for other people's attempts (go on, try it is wonderful to see our enthusiasts' attempts) it seemed to me that blue was the go-to colour, perhaps because that ghastly GW house released about 15 years ago sported the same shade. Who knows! I switched that out and played around with some different looks to see what worked for me. 

So from the bottom left, the first cottage's roof was based in Terracotta and drybrushed with Bleached Bone. Getting the angle and amount of painted loaded on the brush took time to acquire so I repainted the basecoat more than once. I picked out the edges of the tiles with Skull White too. Bottom right looks a bit Lilliput Lane now but I'm rather taken by the hotch-potch of shades here. It has a fantasy look about it without being to over the top. This was achieved again with a terracotta base followed by a heavy Hobgoblin Orange drybrush and a tickle or two of Bleached Bone and White. I went back and mixed up various greys and browns and added plenty of water to them. I washed these tones over the bricks and tiles to create subtle differences in colour to try and stop the models looking to uniform. The 'Citadelesque' Warhammer World is a lived-in place, and its inhabitants know nothing of Chaos, or Ratman or the dark dangers of the warp. The people's lived are based on rural reality and I wanted that to show in the colour choices. The final one, back right, was actually the easiest. Ghoul Grey mixed with a little black, followed with a Bleached Bone drybrush and a tickle of Skull White. Roofs are everything on these models and it is worth the time investing in them. 

Let's have a closer look at each model. 

Up close and personal with the Warhammer Cottage. I kept the windows black. I've seen some with handpainted leaded glass which look fantastic. Something to try when I build new models from scratch. 

The walls are painted Skull White, washed over with Orc Brown and then repainted white. I blobbed on the paint in a fairly liberal way as the limewash often is on the old buildings of Essex where I live. The woodwork was just Chaos Black drybrushed over with white. This aged the wood more than using Bleached Bone and added to the tumbledown but someone-still -lives-here feel. I was hesitant about using washes but dotted a few green glazes here and there on this model along with adding the flock and foliage clumps around the base. Less is more with this, obviously.

The window here has a sculpted rag curtain. This was just greenstuff painted brown. I added a little doormat back in the day, so I gave that detail some fresh paint. Just needs an empty milk bottle. 

This second model needed a roof replacement. I originally used the same technique on the roof as the previous model but the colours didn't gel. I went for slate grey instead like some of the other models in WD130. It is my preferred colour out of all of the examples I've tried out so far, but variety is the spice of life and all of that. I did little else to this model save a light white drybrush over the walls and the woodwork. Obviously, I added some fresh flock to the roof as well. 

You can see I've got a lot more adventurous with my colour choices now. The chimney pots are all made from the tubes that cover paint brushes when you buy them. I simply snipped them with a pair of kitchen scissors and painted them Terracotta, drybrushed them with Hobgoblin Orange and highlighted with Bleached Bone. 

I was in my stride by the time I started work on this third model. You'll see the original Warhammer Cottage is here and I just added an extension of my own devising. With hindsight, I should have made the roof slope down a little more but we can live with such imperfections. Perhaps the citizen of the Empire who built it was a shoddy builder? You might notice that I sculpted some greenstuff flagstones years ago and I kept them in place as a little bit of character detail. 

In my haste, I forgot to paint the edge of the plasticard black, sorry!

Finally, the big boy is finished. I think it was well over ten years in the making. But the double extended Warhammer Cottage is as of today finished. I'm most pleased with this one as my skills at painting houses has improved considerably. I am also really pleased with the tones on the wooden extension. This was really simple to achieve too. Bestial Brown, drybrushed over with Orc Brown, then Bleached Bone and a tickle of Skull White. The metalwork on all of the doors was just Mithril Silver washed over with a dark brown wash. 

Looking back, I've had some wonderful evenings bringing these models back to life. I hope you like them as much as I do. I'm certainly keen to try some of the other articles that Dave Andrews and Phil Lewis put out around this time. I am sure that many of you will be familiar with those projects. I wonder how many of you dear readers created your own Warhhamer Cottages back in 1990. Anyone have any fond memories of their own endeavours? 

I plan plenty more scenery pieces (they are much easier to build and paint than tiny 28mm minis) so if you are an expert in these matters and see any glaring mistakes that will only dawn on me in the months to come, please let me know. Any old scenery tips gratefully received. 

Those of you who love WHFRP first edition should have got the little joke I had with the title too. 

Until we next meet, 

Orlygg