How To Build a Half Timber House for Warhammer or Black Powder Wargames

This tutorial will demonstrate a quick way to build a versatile half timber house for medieval and dark age games like Field of Glory and Hail Caesar, fantasy games like Warhammer or In Her Majesty's Name, Horse and Musket games like Black Powder or even WWI and WWII games like Bolt Action.

The half timber house is very adaptable for gaming and can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. This is a great basis for a sturdy house that can be easily expanded on. For this "How To" we'll go over the building of the main structure and go into extra details and finishing in future posts.

Our pieces are all cut out of foamcore but you could use cardboard or chipboard if you preferred. Our tools for this project were a metal straight edge, hobby knife, pencil and cutting surface. We have two side walls with the stepped out second story and steep peak for the roof. Some people will add a slight curve to the roof, but we chose not to keep it straight. There are two short front walls for the lower and upper levels, a large back wall and our roof which is cut from a heavy file folder.

For strong and clean corners measure the thickness of the foam on the back of the two front wall pieces and the back wall. The easiest way is to stand your wall on it's side, lay another along the back and draw a quick line.

Here we have all three pieces measured.

Next using your straight edge, cut down through the top layer and foam but not through the backing. Then carefully insert the hobby knife in horizontally along the backing and cut through to the foam part to the thickness of your previous cut.

You should be able to remove a nice square piece of foam. If you did not get the cut right, don't worry. Practice makes perfect. If you cut through the paper backing, later steps with glue will fill anything in.

If you have extra foam on the backing, lay your knife along it and scrape away the excess.

To put the building together, add glue onto the inside cut edges of your wall.

We did the back first, allowed some dry time and then glued the two front pieces at the same time.

Keep you building square as it dries.

For the roof, cut a rectangle from a sheet of card-stock or chipboard. Cracker and cereal boxes work great too. Measure the halfway point, mark a line across and with your straight edge on the line use the back of your hobby knife to scribe a line.

This will allow you to easily bend the roof and keep a neat clean peak.

Attach the roof by adding glue to the two side peaked wall tops and press it on. If you use just the right amount of glue it'll stay put as it dries. If it's to wet add some weight on the roof to hold it in place till the glue dries.

There you have the basic structure! Next we'll go over the timbers,roof and doors.

Have a Great Battle!
The Old Crow