300k Page Views

It's good fun to acknowledge little achievements like these. Whilst the high-flying hobby gurus are racking up 500k or even a million page views, my little blog continues its consistent plod, recently passing 300k page views – very exciting indeed.

Thanks to everyone who has visited the blog over the past five years, it's quite a buzz to know that people are actually reading what I have to say and even commenting. Things have slowed on the hobby front as my time is taken up with other things, but my hobby enthusiasm is overflowing in spite (or because) of this.

The coming month is going to be an odd time as our baby son is due imminently. My hope is that the blog will continue to be my hobby outlet, although I may struggle even more for genuine content during this initial 'newborn' period. Whilst surrounded by all things baby-related it will be nice to have a hobby harbour to shelter in.

But what blog stuff is on the horizon…?

On the top of the list is to continue coverage of my Castle exploits. I hope to finish building the kit and have some images of the whole thing together, with miniatures to give people an idea of scale.

It would be my ultimate goal to get my gaming board done and find a permanent home for the castle – and paint it all – but I think this will remain a long term goal for now. This may actually be a blessing as TW have hinted at their castle gatehouse release in the new year. What an addition that would be. Very exciting!

I also intend to finish my Rulebook Design series with a look at some rulebooks that I think got it right, as well as a couple of classic examples to examine.

I'm hoping to introduce some videos into the mix and expand the YouTube channel. Obviously this will require quite some input so another long-term goal.

Needless to say there's no end in sight for the blog!

TW Plastic Castle – Wall Gate

So, having already looked at the Tower and Fortified Wall kits, we come to the last piece of the TW Castle puzzle – the Wall Gate. I was very much looking forward to seeing this!

The box contains four sprues of two different designs and another instruction sheet. I was very keen on not messing this one up so read the sheet carefully before I started.

The kit follows a similar theme to the Fortified Wall. The ground floor is a little different as when complete it's made up of two pieces with the doors attached.

MISTAKE #1
I did make a mistake here and stuck the end pieces (that the doors clip into) the wrong way around. It's not very clear on the sheet which way round these go but if you remember that the doors go at the flared wall side (rather than the flat inner wall side) you will be fine.

You may find TW's Wall Gate video of help.

The first floor is not dissimilar to the wall – except you have an arch piece that goes in the middle. All pretty straightforward it has to be said. The top of the Wall Gate is identical to the Wall crenulated piece so you've got no excuses for getting that wrong.

When stacked together they look pretty amazing. The one thing to note is that the ground floor (as it's made up of two pieces) was rather loose, so the gate will only be at its best when part of a combined kit. You can't really game on the interior as there isn't enough space, but it's not missed.

The models look very cool when next to the completed kit, and I cannot wait for TW to complete their gatehouse kit.

Both this kit and the Wall kit have connector pieces that allow you to slide walls/gates together, and I couldn't help but give them a try before I packed up for the evening.

The only thing left is to put the whole castle together…!!

To be continued…

TW Plastic Castle – Fortified Wall

For those of you who missed my fun and games with the TW Tower you need to watch the Tabletop Workshop castle videos before you get started and it will save a lot of the issues I had. I didn't watch them in my haste to get stuck in and promptly had all kinds of mishaps. Not a problem though as I will use my first Tower model separately from the castle as an independent watchtower of some kind.


Unlike the Tower kit, the Fortified Wall is unlikely to ever be used on its own.

Opening the box there are four sprues of two different designs – there are also instructions!

Starting with the ground floor, you stick the arches onto the base, followed by the one-piece inner wall.

The outer wall is made up of four pieces of 'flared' wall and checking the illustration on the instructions will ensure you put the right piece in the right place. That was easy.

The first floor is even easier as it's exactly the same procedure except both walls are single piece – the outside wall has windows in it.

The top of the wall is a simple case of sticking crenulations onto a floor piece then adding some pegs underneath. That is it!

The only thing to note is that you will have to shave/file off any excess where the parts were attached to the sprues. If you don't the pieces may not join up snugly.

Once stacked, the joins are virtually invisible.

Your models have plenty of room to fight across the battlements.

The bonus is that the walls are as detailed inside as they are out. If you don't glue your floors together you can lift them off and take the battle indoors (although the model bases I've used won't fit through the doorways).

Another fantastic piece of kit from TW. Only one more element of the castle to go – The Gate – and then I hope to have some images of the kits together.


To be continued…

TW Plastic Castle – Tower

After storing the rather large parcel in the garage for a couple of days, I managed to find a spare hour last night so thought I would dive in and start building my plastic castle by Tabletop Workshop.

Given that their other buildings were so intuitive to put together, how much more difficult could the castle be?

The castle consists of 4 Towers, 3 Walls, a Wall Gate and connectors for the whole lot. I decided to start with one of the Towers…

It all looked very straightforward and upon opening the box I found six sprues of two different types. It's a very cleverly designed kit and, just like the other buildings, TW have managed to keep things very streamlined and production costs low by repeating elements.

The instructions (on the back of the box) suggested that I start with the base so I duly obliged.

Unlike the instructions on the previous building kits, the one for the Tower was more like an exploded diagram, so after a quick look I figured I had the measure of it… err, not really.

The three pieces that make up the starting point were found and stuck together. "This is easy" I thought, but my lack of preparation would bite me in the backside before I was done.

MISTAKE #1

What was not obvious (to me) in my rush to get started was that the three wall sections that appear on all six Tower sprues are slightly different. The one to the right of the image (above) flares out slightly at the bottom and (I was to find out) has different fixings underneath. I began clipping and sticking random wall sections to my base before I realised my mistake.

What I should have done was clip out all the flared sections and use them on my base, as above. Not a problem. With the base piece done I moved onto the first floor.

MISTAKE #2

Again, I began sticking random wall sections, this time to my first floor before realising that, unless I want several window sections on my second floor, there should be three window and three blank walls to each floor. In the photo above you can see I'd stuck two blank wall section next to each other, leaving me with an abundance of windows.

Not a problem. This was fixed and with the experienced gained my (identical) second floor was completed in minutes.

Next came the top of the tower. Being very cautious I managed to get this right first time. You start off by sticking the three outer and three inner wall sections to your floor.

Then you stick the top of the crenulations (again, three pieces) in place to seal it all in. Job done. I would suggest having the joints in the top at a different place from the joints in the walls.

With all my sticking done I had my four floors ready to go. A simple stacking job was required and voila…a tower in an hour. There is a door and step that can be added to the ground floor, but I left things plain for now.

Let's not mess around here – this kit is simply awesome. It doesn't have the detailed elements that, say, the chapel has – but that's good. It's a blank canvas for you to tailor to suit you. All the important bits (like the brickwork) are very detailed, but it's not cluttered with random stuff… books on the floor or drapes on the walls, that you'd have to cut out if you didn't want them. If you do want them, you can add them yourself later.

I'm very excited to move onto to other elements. It'll be great to see the castle slowly come to life.

The models look great in the top of the tower and because I didn't glue the floors together, I can remove floors and have models take their adventures inside.

MISTAKE #3

This morning I realised that I had made a third mistake. The building method above is all good, but only if you intend to build your model as an independent tower.

I, however, wanted mine to be a part of my castle and in my excitement had completely forgotten above the connector sprue (above) which was in a separate bag in the large parcel. Though there are no instructions for how to use these (that I can see) it looks like they replace wall sections on the three lower floors so that they can clip into the (as yet unbuilt) wall and gate sections – notice the bottom piece on the sprue is flared.

This is going to mean either purchasing another tower kit to do properly, or hack up my lovely tower to replace wall sections. Neither option particularly appealing.

Learn from my mistakes…plan your build before you start!

To be continued…

A Rather Large Parcel…

A rather large parcel arrived at work today. Anyone who's been following my exploits with the Tabletop Workshop plastic buildings will guess what it is!

Not sure when I'm going to get to look at this in any detail, let alone build it, but I'm a very excited geek right now. Aside from buying entire armies, this has got to be one of the biggest parcels to grace the doorstep.

Watch this space…