Blast from the past

so we had a friend that was a photographer. came by and setup for a portfolio. I will post more when the pics are turned to digital. guess i should say this picture of me is when i was 17 years of age. I am now a crusty 50. still playing with toys.

what is it made of you ask? well all the main parts are plywood cut to size with power tools. there is some balsawood for doors and beams. also lots of putty for filler and brick. we only have finished pics of this, as a teen we never thought to document anything. the entire castle took three of us( friend, brother and myself) about 3 days to do.

another question is the why did we build it? we had our eye on GW’s Mighty fortress for years and never could afford it. I think i saw that when i was about 13 and at the time it cost around 150 which was a hard no from my parents to purchase. It sat at that comic shop for years with no one buying, until one day it was priced at 50 bucks, my brother and i scraped together the cash for the purchase. We got home super excited to start playing with it, then we opened it, saw what it was made of and thought “what a jip”. That night my brother got home from his girlfriends with a shitty rough castle and said “look at what i made”. it was shit but it started from that and over the next week we started to brain storm on what to use. I think at the time I had no girl friend so I had all the time in the world.

so why three towers? well each tower has a different design aspect to show what we could do. the tower on the right we call the “steak and ale” tower  because of the portion that stuck out. there was a chain of restaurants in the states at the time that had the same design. the main tower was the 1st built so it was fairly basic. the tower on the left we added lots of curves, stairs and the balcony for the lord to speak to his vassels. the walls are a foot high, which is double the size of the mighty fortress, and yes I think we may have pics of that next to the castle.  we did build and sell I think at least 10 forts for 100 dollars but we had to really wait for that. no one wanted our stuff as wargaming wasnt that big here in texas. For years here in houston the three of us were known as the castle guys. I hope to get my pics posted of this project in the weeks to come.  the entire thing is a boys doll house, each tower has 3 floors to play in. we designed the play area with the gamer in mind. lots of hand clearance and a sturdy build so that there was no danger of breaking. when you see the stairs and the walls, all were tested with the GW square bases, so that on the stairs a mini could stood on each step and on the walls you could rank your army I think 3 deep.

As the castle is a concept piece the back had a walled dungeon and a sewer system. I am sure we have pics of this. As nice as the front looks the back of the castle is where all the action is.

Put a picture in from this year to show what a bastard time is.