Warmaster Keep Part 1

Foss Keep

Quick shots of castle bits for scale

Campaign season has started in the warmaster world, with one of my gaming groups. As territories can be invaded during this campaign, I started looking to defense. What I found was the IMEX Avalon castle; this is a 1/72nd scale plastic model kit, which runs about $25. The castle is a standard structure with bastions and 4 corner towers, and a gate with drawbridge, and measures about 15 inches square and 6 inches tall. http://www.modelhobbies.co.uk/shop/images/soldiers72/IMEX7250.jpg
The whole castle seemed a bit much for me, so I sent off 3 of the towers to my opponents/friends, (so I’ll have something to siege) and have decided to do a smaller walled keep type set up. Here are some shots of the pieces against my 10mm troops, for scale reference.

Here on the top view of the walls you can see where I added a piece of wood to raise up the floor hright so that troops can see through the crenellations. When the walls are built, the wooden "riser" will be covered over with either epoxy or styrene, to create a stone effect.
In this shot you can see plans traced from a siege tower, taken from one of the G.W. models, now out of circulation.

The gatehouse is perfect for cavalry and pike to march through!

It is always tricky when building fortifications to strike the right balance of a strong defense mixed with game play-ability, dominated, of course by aesthetics. Again, in this side view, you can see the wood riser to bring the troops up to a "fighting" level. The depth of the bastion walls will hold two stands of warmaster troops, which is really great.
My next steps are to put all the keep pieces together, and build up the base for the fortification using dense foam and particle board.  I may lower the keep walls by an inch or two, but keep the drawbridge section the same height.
What do you think?