Siege Towers

I had posted a blog entry about my Skaven Siege equipment back in 2014 (which you can see here), but I just came across an old disk containing the WIP pictures of the siege towers, so this is a good opportunity to show them off.

 

 

Way back in White Dwarf 292 and 293, GW put together special siege rules with castle upgrades, and unique siege towers. I built two towers for the articles, one for my Vampire Counts army, and one for my Skaven army.

Vampire Counts Siege Tower

The siege tower has an imposing, winged skull on the top, with burning skeletons in gibbets. White Dwarf 293 had special rules for the grizzly trophies that penalized enemy leadership, and gave a casting bonus to wizards near the tower.

 

 

 

 

 

Even though I know there are shots of the gibbet construction (you can see them in White Dwarf), I couldn't find them. The gibbets were essentially built out of brass rods for the bars, and a plastic disc for the base, with sculpted fire and chain. The skull was sculpted using Aves Apoxie Sculpt over a pink foam armature. The wings are plastic dragon wings.

 

 

 

 

 

The tower itself is built from basswood strips and decorated with chains and spikes from the chaos vehicle sprue.

 

 

I also built a skeleton battering ram. This piece uses the old skull from a Man O' War black ark, mounted on a dowel over some wheels. The skeletons are built into the piece, mounted on regimental bases.

 

 

The ram is intended to fit into my skeleton coffin lid regiment:

 

Skaven Siege Tower Construction

The siege tower had special rules for the poison gas generators, jezzail snipers, and being self-propelled. Unlike the vampire tower, I took plenty of pictures of the assembly process, not all of which went into the article.

 

 

 

 

 

The sides and floors are constructed out of basswood strips, and the wheels are taken from the old metal doom wheel.

 

I used a fortress wall as a guide to make sure the tower's drawbridge would be at the correct height.

 

On the back, I built a smaller deck and added metal siege ladders.

 

 

On the front, I added a hinge for the door. It's essentially a narrow dowel pinned through a set of metal screaming bell wheels.

 

Some Skaven models were added, jezzail snipers on perches inside the door, and the engineer from the warp lightning cannon.

 

 

The exterior of the tower was covered with all manner of shields and armor plates.

 

The drawbridge was attached to the hinge, and I built the top of the tower as a part that I could paint separately, allowing me to get to the snipers inside.

 

 

The bells were all taken from old screaming bell kits, including some Warmaster screaming bells.

 

The poison gas generators were made from some barrels and poison wind globadier backpacks, with plastic tubes for the pipes that will stick out of the front of the tower.

 

 

This is the only painting shot I have– The wood was all drybrushed, and then the metal bits and details are just waiting to be picked out.

 

The Skaven siege tower remains one of my favorite custom pieces. Take a look back at my Skaven Siege post to see the other siege equipment.

 

 

 

'Til next time!