Blackstone Buildings #2 - Village Pub

Fancy a drink?

"Welcome to the Lord Castellan's Head!"

Once the focal point of the limited social lives of the residents of Blackstone (and those wandering through), the traditional greeting of the publican can no longer be heard. This public house is now just a shell of its former self. No laughter can be heard within the blackened walls, and the once-admired floor paneling now lies dirty, stained and rubble strewn...

Following part #1 of the Blackstone building series, where I looked at the simple hovel, in this post we will look at a more grandiose structure, the village pub. This was actually the first building I made, but as it was more challenging than the hovel I've decided to put it as the second post in this series. It is distinguished from the hovel by having 2 storeys, ornate windows and doors, more floor space and...actual floors! 

For this building, the standard equipment is required (black polystyrene board, box cutter, PVA glue) as well as a roll of floor repair/ covering tape (or any tape that looks like wooden flooring). I got all these things from the dollar store.

Here are some more photos. Bear in mind that the goal was to have buildings to put on a gaming table at very low cost, in a short period of time, and with little to no painting!

Side wall, showing damaged window frames, rubble, and cracked plaster.

Front door, with brickwork.

Making your village pub.

++Before we start, the traditional important public service message++

Please note that these buildings are not "true" scale or carefully designed to match the scale of GW or other 28mm games systems building. True to this being "quick and dirty terrain" I put them together by just literally "eyeballing" a 28mm model and taking it from there! They are going to look bigger and rougher!"

++Thanks for your attention++

Step 1: Marking out and cutting

The pub walls are 15cm in length, 12.0cm in height total. You need to:

• Gently score and cut out a rectangle 45cm x 12.0cm high in your polystrene.
• Score a solid vertical line every 15cm, so the rectangle is divided into three.
• Cut out a doorspace on the left wall (4cm wide x 5cm tall).
• Cut out a window 3.0 cm wide x 2 cm tall on both sides of the door. 
• Cut out x4, 3.0 x2.0 windows in the center panel (2 on each storey) equidistant apart.
• Cut out x1 or x2 windows on the right panel (see image below)
• Cut away part of the far right wall so it looks like it has been destroyed or collapsed.
• Cut out a base, either to fit exactly under the walls, or that extends slightly beyond each wall.
• Glue the walls to the base.
• I don't add an extensive ceiling, as I want the inside to be accessible.

Although not drawn to scale, this will hopefully give you the general idea if looking from the front:

Step 2: Interior

Once you have your basic pub shape on the base, you need to think about the interior and second floor. As I want to keep things simple, I'm not going to worry about stairs. I just want a fairly solid place to put models or treasure. 

Mine ended up looking like this:

You can see a support pillar holding up the second floor, but what you can't see is the supports I glue horizontally around the walls at the 2nd storey levels. These supports make the second floor sturdier so I can place more models or treasure on there.

Here is a drawing showing these supports from an internal perspective.

For the flooring, I found some sticky-backed wood pattern tape. This is used to cover damage to wood panels in your home (at least in Japan). It comes in various patterns, colours and sizes. The roll I found in my local dollar store was 2 cm wide and comes in a roll several meters long.

Wood pattern tape (not sure what the official name is!)

Measure this out into the number of strips you need to cover the floors, and then stick it down. It looks bright, but I think that I can later glue piles of rubble and fallen beams onto the floor to break it up, or possible dull the colour down through paints or washes.

Step 3: Detailing.

After you have the walls on the base, and a second floor, you have a structure that you can already throw on the table, but adding some details not only looks good but is also satisfying.
This is very easy to do and literally only takes a few minutes for each wall. As a general rule, you are trying to avoid having too many straight edges or flat areas.
This can be adding rubble, showing plaster damage, or having simple cracks coming out of key areas.

Rubble: Strew the same bricks that you made previously for windows or doors around the base.

Plaster damage: Starting from an accessible wall edge, with a box cutter mark out the area you want as damage, cutting no further than 1/3 to 1/2 way though the wall. The carefully cut behind this, and lift off the damaged area. Keep the surface layer that you just cut away, and glue this to the base below the damaged area where it would fall to the ground (not shown above)

Cracks: Starting from a point where a crack might naturally occur, such as a joint around a window, score a lightning pattern extending away from the join.

Wall damage: Using a box cutter, carefully dig into the wall, and using a circular motion, gouge out some polystyrene.

Optional steps:
Depending on what you have in your Bitz box, you could glue shields to the internal walls, add a pub sign hanging outside over the main door, or add wooden beams to the exterior walls all the way around where the first and second storeys meet. For me though, I'll leave it there!

In part #3, I'll look at the three storey watchtower with battlements.

Cheers,