When I’d finished preparing the Jenga-block walls and painted the original Leven castle pieces I realised I was a bit short of what I was planning on. So I whizzed off an order to Mr Leven for some more, including a few bits I thought might work for a ‘Vauban fortress’. Sadly the latter didn’t entirely work out but the pieces are still useful for their original design purpose.
Here are the bits and bobs, together with the previous walls. Hopefully I’ll get to paint them at the weekend.
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| A couple of railway tunnel entrances will be handy for a fortress gateway. |
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| Some very fine harbour walls, in the role they were built for. |
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| Castle keep, some curved walls, a couple more towers, and a nee gatehouse |
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| Another view of the same with the harbour walls in the guise of a Demi-lune. I was hoping these would be useful for making a bastion, but the footprint (about 70mm) is too big for my 6mm ground scale but OK for the 10mils. |
The quality of the Leven pieces is rather good, and they came very well protected. Just a bit of filing of edges required to get some of them to fit smoothly together.
One final phase of the castle will be to make some round towers for the outer wall. Just waiting for the kitchen foil to be used up.
I do like the tunnel entrances, a one off buy or the road to model railways? Your set up looks most atmospheric and I look forward to seeing it in a game situation.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a one-off. I can barely keep up with one hobby.
DeleteThat harbour wall works a treat as a demi-lune!
ReplyDeleteIt does doesn’t it!
DeleteThat is really a very nice collection of fortifications ...will be good to see them when you have slapped a bit of paint on them!
ReplyDeleteYes. This is causing a slight delay in getting started.
DeleteAll terrain is a compromise, but I've found the Vauban fort to be the hardest to puzzle out. I think it's the angles; if you stick to the acute ones they actually used then everything just takes up so much space.
ReplyDeleteI think you’re right. To my mind the problem is groundscale. If you stick to the normal tactical groundscale you have lots of tiny bastions, Demilunes etc which look daft with the toy soldiers. Go for fewer, larger bastions then they project a long way into the country. If you go with obtuse angles to avoid this then the arc of fire is wrong. But you knew all this!
DeleteI wonder if the answer to the field of fire issue is to somehow mark areas on the table which are in the arc, which will be different from the actual angle of the model.
My God mate that’s quite a collection. What scale were those harbour walls by the way - I’m looking for something like that to go with my PP ships.
ReplyDeleteThey’re Leven, so they’re notionally 6mm but those guns are 10mm ships guns.
DeleteSplendid looking demi lune,relative scales a toughie,even worse when you're planning a star fort for 28mm!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Yes, you must need a huge amount of space. Being into the Italian Wars, you must be tempted to do a bastioned enceinte, or at least a modified castle. After all its where it all started. Those curved bastion 'lobes'* and retired flanks, a la Lucca, would look splendid on the table.
Delete* I can't remember the proper term.
Fantastic fortifications there!
ReplyDeleteMr Leven and the printer of the paper walls did the heavy lifting.
DeleteGosh, that is brilliant!
ReplyDeleteRegards, James