New Year - some sorting out.

 

I decided that if I really am going to crack on with the Dendermonde scenery I need to have it setup so I can tinker when I feel like it.

This is the city half of the board setup on a 4' x 6' at the end of the games room.  I decided in the end to go with 6' wide and not compromise the size of the city walls.

I still have space for a 6'x 4' table for games when I need it.

I spent some time yesterday cutting 11 more hex board to complete the base board and I can start to spray the city boards grey and the ditch boards brown (they will eventually be textured) to give a better feel of how the areas split up.

I spent some time drawing up plans for the glacis and laying big bits of paper to get a feel for size and shape - a couple more revisions should have the base areas of the Glacis worked out.

I have also planned where the citadel and the ditch surrounding it will go and settled on a 75mm x 95mm footprint for the basic houses.  I will also be adding a set of 1/4 depth houses along the back of the board to give the illusion of more housing, etc.

I printed out some Gabions I had downloaded and resized them to 75% to get what seems to be about the right size.  These will be combined with laser cut trench sides and either plaster or DAS to create siege lines.

Finally I started sorting through the Minifigs French and British Grenadiers that I picked up on Facebook before Christmas for less then £1 each.  I'll be adding French Grenadiers and some extra officers to bring the units up to 24 strength.  The painter has picked units with all the same facing colours, so it will be easy to mix them, and I'll probably repaint some stockings, etc to distinguish the units.

Still lots to get on with....

Basics of Dendermonde finished

 

Finished cutting and then assembling the Bastions and an extra piece of city wall.  It is all starting to look quite big now!  The city will eventually cover 4' x 5'.

I need to replace the longer piece of wall with one with a gate in it.

Next up will the demi-lunes, one with a road through it...

Bastion for Dendermonde

 

Back to working on the Dendermonde project. 

Finally had time to return to the Bastion model and refine it and test cut some pieces - took a couple of iterations of one of the pieces to get it right, but the basic pieces are cut and fit together.

The next picture shows how it fits together with the city wall.

Finally, with wall and a ravelin guarding it.

The figures are 25mm Minifigs French exploring their new structure.

Next steps are to cut the interior supports and the back walls out of 3mm MDF then to cut the sloping wall parts from 2mm MDF.

Marlburian French

 Finally got back to painting some figures and finished off a 25mm Minifigs battalion of French Marlburians for the Dendermonde project.

 

 

25mm WSS French

 

Test paint of one painting strip of Minifigs 25mm French Marlburians - trying to get a colour I like.  Happy with them so on to the other 19 in the unit..

Sample City Wall

 Not feeling that great today - cold/virus so doodled away on Sketchup and laser cut some bits to produce a sample piece of city wall.  

I've decided to put 2" of city wall on each side of the bastions to make it easier to get the join right, so this 6" section will sit between 2 bastions.  

Also decided it is better to have the pieces free standing rather than on a hex tile.  I'll leave the ravelins as they are (probably) but build the rest to sit on the ditch, etc hex tiles rather than being built onto them.

 

Ravelin Finished

 

Finished the protoype Ravelin which I think came out okay. Need to adjust a couple of things.

 

I have gone for a slope at the back but might replace that with some steps at some point.

 

Now just need to make 2 more, 3 bastions, 2 Demi-Lunes, 4 city walls, a citadel and a load of houses and I am done!

 

 

More Ravelin(ing)

 

Spent some time today working out how to measure the walls on the 3d model and reproduce them as flat objects I could laser cut.

All the walls now cut and rested on the model to try it out.

I have also cut some pillar supports for inside to support each floor.

Next up is gluing it together and then experimenting with texturing with tissue as I've seen used but never tried myself....

 

Playing with Ravelins

 I made a start of designing the Ravelins for the Siege of Dendermonde project quite a while ago but got stuck trying to visualise exactly how they were going to fit together, how the walls would work and exactly what internal supports I would need.

So, I cut some samples pieces this morning.  The base out of 4mm MDF and the floors and structure out of 3mm MDF.

The individual pieces are shown above.  The base is designed to fit in with my hex terrain system.

These pictures show the initial assembly and how the the pieces fit together.  I glued the wooden pieces together and used bits of card to support them.

Then I cut some very rough pieces of card to get a feel for how it would look with walls.

The walls are very rough and I need to work out the joining angles before designing them - they will then be cut from 2mm MDF.

The back of the ravelin with have a set of 3d printed stairs to the top platform.

The next picture shows some British troops manning the Ravelin while Austrian grenadiers march along the outside ridge to get to a bridge to the Glacis.

The final picture shows how the base tile will fit in with the hex terrain.  In the finished piece it will be surrounded by ditch tiles, which will be brown and then there will be other ditch tiles that fit over them showing the flooded ditch.

WSS Austrians

 First Austrian WSS unit for the Dendermonde project - 25mm Minifgs. Just need flag adding and bases tidying. (Figures from a very generous Alan Gruber).

First Marlburian battalion finished

 

I finished the first battalion of 24 British this morning.  Block painted, some shading on face, black lined and then glossed.  All unbased as they will be used for siege games.

I am planning on starting the laser cutting of Dendermonde later this month and have 2 Austrian battalions on hand to paint (thanks for Alan Gruber's generosity) and need to order a few extra figures for another British unit.

After that, I will move onto the French.  Iam still hoping to find someone who has some 25mm Minifigs Marlburians they no longer want for a cheaper price than from Minifigs themselves...