Romano-British for Dux Britanniarum

I’ve been working on some terrain recently. In the terrain generation rules for Dux Britanniarum you frequently need some farm buildings, so building those has been my first objective. I decided to go for a collection consisting of a farmhouse, storage barn, orchard and pig sty.

The pig sty was tackled first. I’ve posted this image before and there are more details in that earlier entry, but briefly, this is the Warbases Dark Age barn enhanced with polyfilla covered walls, coffee stirrer wooden planking and thatch made from green stuff.

The daub walls were painted with a base coat of VMC Light Grey, followed by a second coat of 50% Light Grey mixed with  50% Off White. Finally, I did a dry brushed highlight of pure Off White.

The thatch was give a base coat of 80% Beige Brown with 20% Cavalry Brown. It was then given a dry brushed highlight of 70% Tan Yellow mixed with 30% of the base coat mix. This was then washed all over with Army Painter Strong Tone ink.

After the ink had dried, l repeated the drybrushed first highlight. I then drybrushed a second highlight made up of 70% Tan Yellow mixed with 30% of the first highlight. The third highlight was 100% Tan Yellow, but this wasn’t quite light enough, so I gave a fourth highlight of 100% Buff.  The overall effect is one of fairly recently laid thatch. If you wanted older thatch that’s been on for some years, then you would need to go for a much greyer look.

The wattle fence was painted Light Grey and then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone Ink. It was then give a first highlight of drybrushed Tan Yellow followed by a second highlight of drybrushed Buff.

The wooden planking was base coated in Neutral Grey and then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone ink before being drybrushed with Tan Yellow.

As this is a pig sty, I wanted the ground inside the enclosure to look muddier than my usual base colouring. I painted the base with a mix of 80% Chocolate Brown and 20% Black. I the. Added pure Chocolate Brown in selected areas to add some interest. The whole interior was then washed with a mix of 90% Chocolate Brown and 10% Black. I then added a drybrushed highlight of Beige Brown.

Finally, any pig sty needs pigs. I purchased some Iron Age pigs from Warbases. A bit of internet research revealed that the Iron Age pig has been recreated by breeding a Wild Boar with a Tamworth sow. This produces piglets with their mother’s ginger-orange colouring that goes much darker as the mature.

So the piglets were base coated with Orange Brown before getting a wash of Army Painter Soft Tone ink. They were then drybrushed with Light Brown before getting a final drybrushed highlight of 50%Light Brown and 50% Tan Yellow.

The adults were base coated in German Grey. This was drybrushed in London Grey for a first highlight, followed by a second highlight of Neutral Grey. This made them look a little bit blue, which wasn’t what I wanted, so a final drybrush of Beige Brown toned them down to where they needed to be and also gave a hint of their piglet colouring which you can often see in reference pictures.