Flames of War Terrain: Gate Tower from Kibri

I have always enjoyed playing miniature wargames, from Epic Space Marine over Warhammer 40K to Warhammer Panzer Battles. So, ever since Flames of War came out, I wanted to try it. A friend and I have been planning on playing for some years now, and most of the miniatures are now bought.

But while we wait for our armies to be completed, I began to build the first piece of terrain for our games.

I have been building models in HO scale for many years and many of the kits available in that scale are rather small, often too small for the 1:87 of HO. Therefore they are just the right size for Flames of War, where the miniatures are in 1:100 scale.

I found the very nice kit of a German medieval gate tower on eBay at a good price. The original of the Kibri set, which has #8917, comes from a series of city walls from the town of Weil der Stadt in Baden-Württemberg, but in my opinion it could be located in several parts of Europe.

The kit is pretty straightforward to work with and has a very nice fit. I used a dark brown wash on most of the parts before assembling them and drybrushed many parts as well.

Here the staircase leading into the tower is almost complete. Notice the nice texture of the stone, which is very easy to work with.

After a couple of nights of assembly and painting, I mounted the tower on a wooden base, cut to fit. I then covered parts of the building in vines to give an impression of old age. The building on its base measures 44 cm, or 17½”.

Note the Flames of War M3 Lee in the gate. It fits just perfectly, and I think even a Tiger might be able to squeeze through.

I plan to make several similar pieces to simulate an old, broken city wall encircling an ancient town. That will look great on a FoW battlefield!

I left the roof of the tower unglued, so troops could be placed inside. Much to my pleasant surprise, two regular Flames of War bases fit inside just perfectly. 8-10 soldiers seems like a fitting number to occupy and defend the tower in a skirmish.

And the best part is that even though the roof is loose, it doesn’t show on the model. The old tower has a certain air of dignity, in my opinion, although the closeup shot reveals that some more washing might be needed in order to hide the last traces of glue…

A more modern shack was included in the kit, and might date from between the wars, thus underlining the newer usage of the old ruins.

The flowers comes from Noch, and are very handy to spice up the otherwise monotonous green.

The stairs leading to the battlements are covered with a tiled roof and underneath lots of firewood are waiting for the wintertime.

I am quite fond of my first terrain piece and am looking forward to the tanks of the coming battles thundering through the medieval gate. What do you think?