Woodmen Buildings

When looking at the pictures in the GW army books, there's a lot of stone. Only the Rohirrim seem to build with wood, but that's due to the reliance on the movies. The books suggest a lot less stone, mostly ruins from earlier ages of the world. Gondor means "land of stones", which suggests that using stone to build is not that common.

For my first human buildings, I therefore took inspiration from Dark Ages buildings, adding some elements from later periods of the Early Medieval times. They would be built from wood, the roof covered with reeds.

We'll start out with cutting front, back and sides from foam. Additionally, we'll cut very thin riders for the roof. With a ballpen, we carve planks and woodgrain into the foam. On the riders, I drew carvings.

The next step is to paint everything up. Paint it brown, add a darker wash, than brush it up with lighter colours, up to a light grey to make it look like weathered wood.
The door is sculpted out of FIMO, which is actually easier than building it from foam or coffee stirrers.

Now, the whole thing is assembled and glued with PVA, adding a roof from cardboard, as we need a base for the reed.

There are several methods to du reed or straw roofs, the most popular seemingly being using teddy-fur. Now, I couldn't get my hands on that, so I chose foam again.
We cut thin pieces of foam, using a wire brush to do the texture of reeds.

These pieces are painted and glued onto the roofs. Some static grass adds a realistic touch to them.

After all, these houses are really easy to build and look really nice on the table. With palisades and a watchtower, those make a nice basis for a woodmen village...