Sunday, 22 September 2013

Construction Boom




We have reached a stage in the PBEM campaign when everything is running smoothly, and I start looking for something new to do.  

Usually this would be a new area map, or perhaps fiddle with the campaign rules, but this time it is buildings and scenery.

We have quite a good collection of commercial buildings, mostly Hovels.   But we bought them many years ago, long before we designed our current wargames table and reorganised our armies to create more corps with less model soldiers.

Our current terrain consists of odd shaped squares of felt.   Each one represents a village.   Towns are two squares and cities four squares.  I want to replace them with standard 6x6" squares of felt. This size allows each one to be garrisoned by one of our 8 figure brigades, without looking too silly.   The problem is that most of our buildings are too large to fit more than one on each square.

Some years ago Jan made some card buildings, roughly the same scale as Hovels 15mm buildings.   These fit well, but we need quite a few more.   So her project for the next month or so is to make more buildings.

My task is to cut our hedges and walls to fit the same 6x6” felt tiles.   All the scenery we have seems to be either too long or too short.

The final task is to make some new bridges.   I am torn between making them wide enough for the artillery stands, or more in proportion to look right, but the too wide for the artillery. 

All of that should keep us busy enough until there is another problem with the campaign.

5 comments:

  1. Those Hovels are lovely buildings aren't they? I'm sure that Jan's card versions will look fabulous too and look forward to a few piccies in due course.

    James

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  2. Hi James

    Jan made the buildings and church in the photo. They are about 12 years old, and still going strong

    regards

    Paul

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  3. I wondered if they were, but then your post did not seem to suggest it; apologies to Jan, they look fabulous, particularly the church!
    Please post photos of the new ones once they are completed!

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  4. I need to make some bridges and face the same challenge. My current thinking is to make them for a one inch wide road which will allow my infantry and cavalry stands to be positioned on the bridge. Artillery will have to perch, spanning the bridge walls. But it is still in the grey matter stage. My other thought was to use bridge models, but have a felt base for when the troops get into action and the bridge model can be just be temporarily removed to aid play.

    I am thinking of making the bridges out of wood off cuts, suitably detailed and painted up.

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  5. The felt is a good idea, I use it all the time for my towns and farms to allow fighting within the build up area. Not sure why it didn't occur to me to do the same for the rivers!

    We previously used the balancing idea for artillery. But as we were making new buildings we decided to try the larger bridges to see what they looked like.

    Still not sure which method I prefer.

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