Place this highly detailed tower in the center of your level and experience the thrills of Assassin's Creed!

Miniature Review

The Crows Nest is a massive piece of scenery for a board game. It's taken a lot of inspiration from St Mark's Clocktower with the roof of Giotto's Bell Tower. It's got a great amount of detail on it, from the tile roof, the flower like patterning, the status and other stonework, the door and windows and even the metal work.

I do wonder how much of an obstacle it would be in a game, but as a display piece it's fantastic. Oh, and the hay in the cart is a great addition and really reminds me of the hay bales in Assassin's Creed II.

Painting Techniques

Stone

For the lower darker brown stone sections I then applied a thinned down layer of Snakebite Leather.

Blue & Gold Pattern

I first painted the entire area gold, then applied the blue contrast paint over the top so only so much of the gold showed through. This helped create a smoother transition between the two colors. I then drybrushed back over very lightly with gold to bring back the color and shine. This required a number of very light layers to avoid covering the blue and to really bring out the gold.

Wood

Roof

Gold

Steel

I then added a few patches of dirty down rust.

Windows

Roundup

It took a bit of work to get the brickwork right and I did end up going back over some areas with the same colors just to get the shading right, not too clean but not too dirty either. Overall I'm really pleased with how this turned out and it's a great display piece that I've put on top of my Kalax that holds all my board games.