Constructing Adelheim, Part IV

It's been another busy week in the real world; my younger son had senior prom, and that on top of the usual round of lessons has left me little time to think about blogging.  Thanks to those who have designated this as a Stylish Blog; I'll deal with that at another time...


Chief fortress engineer Duncan and I had a work day on the Adelheim fortifications today.  We made good progress.  As seen in the earlier postings on this topic, the bastions have been cut, and we had three ravelins laid out.  Ross's report after the siege rules playtest came with a recommendation that we lay thing fort out across the 6 foot dimension of the table.

We started by marking off a 6 foot width in blue tape on Duncan's kitchen island, and playing around with the primary pieces.  We then cut the curtain wall sections and the ravelin to length.  I've got three interchangeable sections for the central curtain, which will allow us to build one with and one without gate, with the third in reserve for possible finishing as a breached section.

We concluded that we would end the trace in the six foot dimension by depicting half of each of the next ravelins, as seen here above laid out on the felt that we'll be using.

Duncan surveys the nearly completed trace.

I'll leave out the intermediate pictures, but once we had the main elements laid out, we used a three inch wide piece of pink foam as a straight edge and template to lay out the covered way.  That trace was transferred to three sheets of luaun plywood which will support the glacis.  The picture above shows the completed supports, with quick mockup of the glacis sections.  We expect to finish those by covering them in felt to match the table top.  The glacis sections still need to be cut (with a hot wire cutter) and glued to the luaun supports and covered in felt. (That's my homework.)  The embrasures are also awaiting completion.

Soldiers emplaced on the ravelin for a sense of the scale.

We had some time during the day to have a look at some mock-ups of the trench elements.  The two sides shown here are of different shapes, and the corners have been visually improved (to my mind) with gabion mock-ups.


More soon, I hope...