Tuesday, September 12, 2017

A Great Deal Done on the Star Fort

     Having the luxury of two consecutive days off of work I allowed myself the pleasure of wasting most of one of them in the workshop. The Castillo has been occupying the game table like some invading Leviathan, virtually demanding attention. I finished the molding line that runs along the parapet on all of the walls and bastions, completed the stairway, made the hard decision to only card-clad the vulnerable corners and edges (the sheer volume of surface argued against cladding the entire thing as I had done with the first bastion) and started on applying a coating of wallboard compound to simulate the stucco that covered the original fort. All in all a good bit of work.

the stairway had been started earlier, a simple enough thing, built up layer-cake style,
 it took up a surprising amount of time to complete


it is slightly smaller than true scale so that it takes up less of he interior space

the card cladding makes it much sturdier




Lt Gutierrez leads his men up onto the wall

the stairway easily accommodates the full twenty-four figures



I am finally beginning to wrap my head around the size of this project
fortunately I didn't go with my first wish of building the El Morro castle in Havana harbor
it is easily five times the size of this model

the newly widened wall allows the good lieutenant to drill his men  without crowding

this gives a feeling for the size of things, that is one bastion, 
standing on a fraction of the wall are twenty three full-sized 28mm figures

this is the whole kit, seen from the defenders side
 laid out on my six foot by four foot wargaming table

and the attacker's view

and hidden in the middle is the 1/300 scale model I made years ago
 to go with my collection of the excellent Ros/Heroics 5mm figures


2 comments:

  1. What's better than excellent? I don't know but if pressed I would point to your model and say "There! There's more than excellent!!" The stairs really work well. I imagine that there will be a few more scattered around the walls.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for your kinds words, nothing out of the ordinary aside from the size of the thing. Unfortunately this will likely remain a convention or special game sort of thing. As cab be seen almost half can be on the table with a playable surface in front of it so assaults and sallies can be played.

    Oddly the original has but one stairway, I suppose that they were think that the courtyard is but a hundred yards across so there is little need for more.

    ReplyDelete