I painted a ruined church (sorry “cathedral”, la dee dah) and some walls while I was painting other St. Craniums and EXACTAMUNDO pieces a while back. The ruined church is a surprisingly bucket list item for me.
Ruined Cathedral from scotiagrendel.com
I picked this ruined “cathedral” and some other resin walls up from Scotia Grendel at some point over the last few years. The church is quite an old model design: I’m pretty sure that I remember seeing it in the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, London in around 1991.
A ruined church in Edinburgh, vaguely like this resin model.
When I started gaming with Just John back in 2013 or so he had one of these “cathedral” sets painted.
Just Johns “cathedral” sees wholesale miniature bloodshed at a convention in 2017.
Sending my tiny warriors to their doom across that tiny ruin kicked off a nostalgic interest in the set, so I bought it and added it to the St Craniums to do list.
The rear sides of the walls – not visible in this shot – are flat and featureless, due to the single piece mould casting method. I took the texture spray to those sides, just like I did with the complete Church that I worked on for the set.
I faded the colours on the walls from dark at the bottom to light at the top to give them some visual interest. And then I didnt photograph them.
The walls in the foreground are a little too modern. No biggie.
The other walls (which I suspect are a similar vintage to the cathedral) were added to the job as I had the rest of the terrain stuff out to work on. It’s never any harm to have more ground cover for toy soldiers anyway, although I suspect that those pieces are intended for WWII era gaming.
Also visible in that shot are some second edition WH40k ruins from 1993 and some LotR ruins from the turn of the century that I repainted alongside the cathedral to get them to fit into EXACTAMUNDO and St. Craniums terrain.
Stormcast of the Justified Ancients take cover in the partly ruinous St. Craniums cemetery.
The multi-part nature of the kit means that it can be set up in a variety of ways. It also crucially helps with storage, which has become a serious issue in Chateau Sho3box.
Paulo Ringseeker – Knight Questor of the Justified Ancients – is the target of an assassination attempt at camp. The pesky Nighthaunt forces of Lord Helior the Buoyant fear to not-tread in the ruined church (bottom left).
That’s all I have for the reformation of St. Craniums for now. Hopefully I will get around to taking a picture of how much table space it covers in the not too distant future, hopefully when I play some Malign Portents games over the next few months.
Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: 2017, Fantasy, St Craniums |
sho3box 
It’s a nice set of ruins, despite it’s age. They look great. That ragged cork basing you use works so well. A nice stable base AND it sits on the table fairly seamlessly. Puyfec.
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Thanks Mr S. It *is* a nice set, functional without being dull, interesting without being showy, versatile without being generic.
As mentioned elsewhere, that style of basing is a hidden in plain sight sort of thing. People tend to comment positively on it, and its pretty easy to do, so I plan to stick with it.
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I have the same set. It is quite nice. You have done a good job on these mate.
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It’s a set that sits at the bottom of a lot of terrain boxes I expect, possibly not getting the respect that it deserves.
Thanks for the feedback Johnny!
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We had this set painted at out old club! I’m getting serious flashbacks and a dull yearning seeing it, like when Armorcast futuristic terrain comes into view.
I really like the shot of all the different styled walls alongside each other. It looks very authentic. Are you planning on any of the Azyrite Ruins they’ve released recently for AoS?
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It’s a surprisingly common set. I certainly saw it at an old college game club back in the mid 90s. I acted on my dull yearning, although I have never managed to get around to getting the Armorcast ruins etc.
I’m definitely interested in adding the Azyrite ruins to EXACTAMUNDO. I plan to paint them alongside the Warscryer Citadel (AKA Skullvane Manse).
As you mention, the different architectural styles are actually a benefit to terrain like this, although I like having them tied together in the same paint colours. I suppose it gives a feeling of being tied to the same environment.
Thanks for the feedback Curis!
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Really nice pieces. Good job my friend
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Thanks imperialrebelork.
A straightforward but rewarding little project.
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Tidy mate – great to have such a flexible piece to hand, and this comes with some bonus nostalgia to boot!
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Nostalgia is a risky thing to embrace too heavily, it goes wrong at least as often as it goes right.
This was one of the happy revisits though, it’s a nice little set.
Thanks Alex!
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Fun project, with great planning. Kudos and thanks for sharing it!
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I’m glad that you are getting some fun out of it Mark 🙂
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Very nice terrain set. I like the idea of using the texture paint on the flat side.
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Thanks Sean.
I’ll snap a quick photo of the reverse sides to illustrate at some point. It’s a fairly basic bit of set dressing, but it improves the look of the set on the table I think. It’s also so fast to do in the context of the work involved in prepping the set, that it’s negligible in terms of time taken really.
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