This weekend’s distractions were not limited to Heroes of Normandie (HoN).  My new Dirt Devil caused another problem.

I enjoy scratch building items.  Not that good at it, but I like doing it and find the cost of purchasing terrain and/buildings can be just too much.  After the winter holidays, I haunt stores look for drastically marked down buildings and trees that can be primed and repainted.  But, I’m always on the lookout for a piece of styrofoam, balsa, plastic, card, foam, etc. etc. etc. that might be used at some future date to build something.

Back  to the Dirt Devil.  While unpackaging it, I was intrigued by the two corrugated cardboard end caps.

The piece at the top had the general appearance of a castle or fort with a keep.  On further study, a part of the bottom piece looked like a fourth wall.  By cutting off the end of the second piece, and attaching it, the rough outline of this fortification(?) became clearer.

A decision had to be made; keep working with this or throw it away.  Oh…..why not?  Using left-over balsa bits and spackle, I built up the walls.

Then priming, and punching some holes in the towers to represent windows/firing positions.

Next step was an initial quick random spraying with dark brown, light brown and desert sand.  The corrugated cardboard really sucked up the paint.

The final steps were to figure out the dry brushing and flock the base.  The first few dry brush attempts seemed to be too dark.  So I lightened up the light sand shade even more, and wound up with something that was OK.  The flock with ballast, and dry  brushing the  small rocks was easier.

You’ll notice the base curling up.  Used thin card.  Mistake.

After all this work, the question is “What is It”?  When started, I thought it might be a deteriorating desert citadel.  It also looks like a cheap Sci-Fi special effect from the ’50s, or a crude (and discarded) mockup of a set for “Dune“.   Too big for DBA, too small for a siege scenario, but maybe a nice item to PUB my Irregular Wars battlefields.

Dunno. Whatever happens it was an interesting little project and it’s finished.