Spanish Village

Almarez was too far away from the bridge to actually be represented on the table, but I wanted to add some more character to the battlefield. I also view designing the table much in the same way I would view a composition of a painting, so I didn't want my abbey to be the only structure on the board. Having a few more red roofs will pull a viewer's eye around the 'canvas' and make for a better display!

I've wanted to add some simple Spanish buildings to my collection for a long time and building the table for Historicon finally gave me the push to get it done. All you really need to represent a small village are a couple of buildings and maybe a few walls and/or a field. That's large enough to shelter a model battalion and when we consider the unit is supposed to be around 600 men, we actually have a decent sized settlement. There is a lot of discussion in REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE about ground scale and terrain so that's really all I'm going to go into here.

I prefer to make my buildings from scratch, with foamcore, plasti-card, mat board, and balsa wood, though I'm not above scavenging windows from model rail-road houses and other details, such as the ready-made tile roof from Plastruct! Here are before and after shots of the three buildings I made for this game...

The models have been designed without bases so I can place them edge to edge as seen here or scattered. I have plans for another three or four buildings, but that will have to wait until after Historicon! The bridge construction is finished and awaiting paint, but I've still got a dozen Voltiguers to paint, several units to finish the bases on, and some projects to do that involve BENEATH THE LILY BANNERS!