Modelling Workshop 1: Town House. White Dwarf 137

Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazines from circa late 80's into the early 90's, really captured my teenage imagination and inspired me to immerse myself in the hobby then, almost as they still do now. I was a particular fan of the Modelling Workshop articles, where for the first time in my life, I was given instruction on how to scratchbuild, which was a step forward from the model Airfix kits I had previously been working with. All of a sudden my pocket money wasn't just to be spent on trips to Reading GW to just buy lead miniatures, but I now tried to get my hands on some foamcard and balsa wood; both of which transformed my modelmaking repertoire. They are still at the core of my scrathcbuilding/modelmaking I've just added extruded foam to the equation.

So armed with the experience I had gained some 25 years ago, I delved back into my old White Dwarfs and re-examined the Modelling Workshop articles. I soon decided that I wanted to tackle all of the fantasy articles from the period (another project to work towards..)! It just so happens that I still own the original Townhouse that I made back then (it's remarkably well made) and I wanted to do an adults version to see if I had improved or not over the past quarter of a decade. It also acted as a demonstration model for my modelmaking club at school, where the students are working on these same designs as well as various Airfix/AoS/40k models.

So for my modern version, I wanted to create a tavern using the townhouse structure. It just meant putting a patio out the front (eventually I'll make some benches and tables), creating a name; The Spotted Dog which is stolen from Fighting Fantasy's City of Thieves and a brazier and barrel for decoration:

Here's my original one, with a few later additions, namely the base, tree and fleur-de-lis. Only the chimney pots are damaged from the original build:

Which version is the better? The green moss looks a bit flat on the new (right hand side) version and the door looks tiny! I think I stuck to the plans much more carefully in my youth and probably spent about three times as much time on it; which is especially apparent on the painting. The new version was painted in about 30minutes (wet in wet and dry brushing - from memory the original took a long while longer). Anyway, I'll let you decide!

A few more angles:

And the original article with all the plans and instructions, as hopefully some of you readers may be tempted to re-visit the making of these classic buildings from our youth:

And finally a few images that I used for research and inspiration. I meant to add some hanging baskets but forgot - they'll go on my next build.