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Monday 17 March 2008

Potato field artillery: Part five (update)

Because it was so much wor.... erm "fun" to build my trebuchet, I decided to make it a double feature.

Please put your eyeballs on the twins Arty and Larry (Arty + Larry = "Artillery"... get it? Hihihi).

There will be a last part (number 6) with the full painted crew. But that will take a while since I will wait to get home so I can make better conversions for my crew (I have more bits at home).


I just can't help imagining those firing flaming projectiles across a night sky towards a besieged Jerusalem in 1099


Let the siege begin!


Sunday 16 March 2008

Potato field artillery: Part five


Trebuchet painted! Now all that is missing is the crew :)

I chose a "teutonic" heraldry. Bretonnians are usually portrayed as "french"-ish knights. I wanted germanic looking knights, to break with that Games Workshopesque cliché.

(I have actually started painting some bretonnian knight miniatures, but I won't reveal those until the full regiment is painted :P )

Enjoy!







Saturday 15 March 2008

Potato field artillery: Part four

There is a wonderful thing called "modular movement tray".

I bought a pack of it and used it to make the base for my trebuchet. Oh and I also found someone at the local GW who agreed to share a box of Bretonnian Men-at-arms with me! So I was able to build the crew! Wohooo! :)

See you soon!




Thursday 6 March 2008

Potato field artillery: Part three

Added sling and cranking mechanism. NOW it starts to look like a trebuchet :)
I am currently desperately looking for a way of getting hold of just 8 bretonnian men-at-arms to build the crew, so if any of you have some left they are willing to trade/sell, give me a sign ;)
Enjoy!

The wood elf model is just for scale. That is what I call a proper sized warmachine ;)




Wednesday 5 March 2008

Potato field artillery: Part two





The coutnerweight is done. I scultped it from putty and built a little suspension mechanism to attach it to the throwing arm.

Sunday 2 March 2008

Potato field artillery: Part one

Isn't the Games Workshop Trebuchet ridiculously small?


Yes it is. And too expensive for my taste too.

I always wanted to build a warmachine from scratch, and trebuchets have a charme that is undeniable. Trebuchets (from the french verb "trebucher", to "fall over") appeared in both Christian and Muslim armies around the Mediterranean in the 1200s. It could throw 140 kg projectiles at high speeds into enemy fortifications. Nasty things such as "greek fire" and disease-infected corpses were flung into cities.

Anyway, here's the first part (of 2 or 3) that follows my progress through the construction of such an awesome device... at a 1:35 scale, that is.

(My trebuchet is just a model that is aiming at looking more realistic than the GW version, but it won't actually fire chewing gum balls across the room.)


Concept sketch.

The base. A 1m stick of balsa wood costs around €0.30. With 2 pieces (and a little effort) you have enough to make a whole trebuchet. That comes A LOT cheaper than buying the GW model at €30!

I figured gluing the beams in place would not be solid enough. So I made a little "hole and pin" system to allow for more solidity. After all it is a wargaming miniature, and will be touched/moved around quite a lot.


The 2 first beams and the throwing arm are in place. The arms moves around a "toothpick" axis.


I added some green-stuff details (such as shields). In order to make nails, I just made green stuff "sausages" which I cut into thin slices. The slices can be glued onto the model to simulate the nails used by bretonnian engineers to build their trebuchet. I also cut out streks of cardboard, which will serve as the metal braces that hold the beams in place.



This is as much as I got so far. Now i will have to add the couterweight, the sling and the cranking mechanism. Stay tuned ;)