Reader Built Trebuchet, Siege Tower and Battering Ram!

At Battleground Hobbies we enjoy sharing our love of designing, building and collecting scale models for table top war games. Sometimes we even get great feedback. Among our top posts are "How to Build a Siege Tower" and "Battering Ram" We recently received a comment on one of these. 

A reader from Moscow left this: "Thank you. It's great! My son used your ideas for historical school project. Something was difficult and I helped him. He did this nice siege tower and trebuchet".

We thanked her and asked for some finished photos to share with everyone. We received this reply along with some photos: "I've sent you some photos of our siege engines. We also did a battering ram. There are plastic knights from my childhood on the photos. They were made in the mid 1970s."  

Here they are!!

Her son shows perseverance and determination!!

And he built a very nice trebuchet!!

Here's our post they refer too: "How To Build A Trebuchet"

and his Ram!! Keep modelling mate!!

If you have completed a project inspired by one of our posts, please share it with us!!

Have A Great Battle!!

The Old Crow

How To Build Tents for a Historical or Warhammer Siege Encampment

Today we'll show you How to build tents for your besiegers encampment. You can't have soldiers and supplies standing about in the rain, so lets make them somewhere to stow their gear and have a respite.

To start you'll need a base, we used some 12 inch foam to carve our hill. You'll also need a piece of fabric, something natural looking, three round toothpicks and a stick you can cut down. We cut a 3" and two 1.25" segments.

Next we carved the hill into a rough shape that would hold a tent 3 inches long.

We then notched a point at the ends of our short sticks for the uprights.

After sanding the roughness off the hill, we measured the length of our support and placed the uprights into the foam. Once positioned we removed them, filled the hole with some glue and stuck them back in. Before it dried we glued the crossbar in place and pressed it together.

We added some areas of glue and attached small rocks and a mix of sand and medium ballast.

After it was set we painted the entire surface dark brown with sand in the paint for extra texture.

When it dries, you can dry-brush on some layers of lighter browns and greens if you want a grassy knoll.

Next make sure your material is the same length as your support, ours is 3", and trim the cloth to roughly a square. Fold it in half and crease it if you can. This will lie across the support.

Take your round toothpicks and insert them into one of the sides at the corners and then the center.

Clip off the extra length, leaving tent pegs behind.

Using the pieces clipped off, repeat these steps on the other side. Be sure to keep the material tight.

We added a few tufts of static grass for texture. and filled the supply tent with crates, barrels and sacks.

And that's how to build tents for your besiegers.

This one wound up being a siege supply tent.

Add more tents to a larger base for making bigger terrain pieces with additional scenery bits like trees and shrubs. We even have stumps from felled trees in this piece plus a campfire. The trebuchet is set up beside the camp for easier access to fire.

We'll leave you with a few additional photos and wish you a great battle!
The Old Crow

Warhammer Siege Log Battering Ram

Sorry for the lapse in our Siege Warfare articles. You have your siege tower, now lets continue with a log battering ram for extra muscle to bash in a  few castle doors!  Nothing like a good battering ram to do the job. This one will be for a Warhmmer Orcs and Goblins Army so historical accuracy won't matter. We'll give it an iron head to batter wooden doors even faster.

I had found a spare GamesWorkshop hound head in my bits box. Could have been a chaos hound, something from Necromunda or even GorkaMorka. Anyway it looked mean enough to take on some heavily barred doors! We took a 1/4" dowel cut to 4" in length, drilled three holes down the side and inserted round toothpicks. After they are glued in place, clip off the pointed ends. We attached the metal ram head before undercoating it.

Undercoat with black spray primer or give it a good base coat wash of black liquid acrylic.

The steel head was base coated with metallic gunmetal gray and dry brushed with metallic aluminium.

The "collar" on the ram head was detailed with Pure Bronze for a nice warm contrast to the head.

The log consisted of overlapping layers of browns dry brushed from dark to light.

The colors used were Burnt Umber, Coffee Bean, Territorial Beige and a final highlight of Mushroom

And here you see it is in action! Orcs bearing the Yellow Hand of Sourdough are using the ram to its fullest potential, attempting to take down the gate of a castle.

Enjoy!

How to Build a Warhammer Siege Tower

 If you have a rough game of Warhammer where the opposing force has a castle, a siege tower is a necessity. After starting our own castle it was apparent we’d need some good siege equipment to lead the attack. We thought a good battering ram would be handy, definitely a catapult or trebuchet and lastly a siege tower or two.

Cardboard was plentiful, so the siege tower began. We took several measurements, wall height, archer height and base width etc. The tower would need to be tall enough to drop invaders off on the wall and provide cover fire for a successful storming of the castle!

The side walls are 10 inches tall, 5.25 inches wide at the bottom and 3 inches wide at the top. It measures 4.25 inches across the front.

We cut the sides at an angle to provide a wider base and once the outer wall was in shape we cut 4 floor pieces. The first for the base, the second for the men attacking once the tower door dropped, third for the first level of archers and then the top for another supporting rank of archers. We cut out the door and one window the width of the tower for the arrow slits. Don't bother trying to cut out each arrow slot, we'll take care of that in the next step.

Remember to measure twice or even thrice and then cut. Once the floors were glued in, Elmers or craft glue will work, we could start the covering. Remember, always check your measurements before the glue gets applied.

We cut three successive levels of craft sticks to size with a hobby knife and cut chunks out of the sides to give it a less uniform appearance. We glued tall vertical craft sticks over the one window to form the arrow slits in the middle of the tower.

Cutting the angles can be difficult, be careful not to split the sticks, but if you do hang onto them for now. Use several light successive cuts to score the stick and eventually you’ll get through it.

Balsa wood can be used in place of the craft sticks and is easier to cut. Balsa will also cost you a bit more. Remember knives can cut through a finger pretty cleanly. Have a friend that knows first aid over just in case.

On to mobility. We planned three large wooden wheels shod in iron bands for each side. We found some 1.5 inch wooden disks in a bargain bin at a local craft store and decided they were the perfect size.

We took the craft stick pieces and cut some additional ones. Glue them side by side on the disks.

Using the hobby knife score the sticks from around the back of the disks to create the basic wooden wheel.

Measure the thickness and circumference and using a thin card-stock , we used a box from the Madagascar red tea we just finished, wrap it around your wheel and thoroughly glue it on.

Using a drill we cut holes in the center of each wheel for the axles which were cut to size from a long dowel.

Here they are primed and ready to be attached.

For the door to drop open, we glued on a coffee stirrer and pinned it in using round toothpicks so it would fall open. Screw a couple tiny eyelets onto the inside beam of the door for the “chain” to hold it in position. A couple more on the bottom of the floor above allow it to pull up to a closed position. I scored a great little piece of technology while recycling some old electronics which had two spindles with thin copper wire. We ran the copper wire through the top eyelets and attached them to the door. This allows us to crank the door up and down.

After everything was ready we primed it all black. Successive layers of browns were brushed on starting with burnt umber, then coffee bean and finally nutmeg.

Highlights were dry brushed with beige along the edges.

Now we load it up with attackers, deliver them safely onto the wall and storm the castle!!

As you can see in our cover shot, the orcs have brought along a giant to assist in moving the tower. Here is a nifty view of the back of the tower. The bottom two levels have the orc boyz loaded and ready for action. The top two levels have supporting ranks of archers.

Onto the walls!!

Drop us a comment and let us know how you liked this tutorial.

Until next time,
Have A Great Battle!
The Old Crow