Siege of Adelheim, Game 2

As I mentioned last night, for the second game we backed up and started from the second parallel. Once again we had only two players, and filled in the fortress's defenders with ringers. In this case that was not inappropriate, as they were my sons, and they were therefore commanding their own troops for the most part. Artillery fire was an issue for the attackers in this game, and the attackers lost considerably more guns than the defenders (badly sited batteries, as revealed through the mechanism of die rolls, perhaps?). One hotly contested sortie resulted in the delay of the third parallel, but eventually the Northern Alliance had troops massed within range of the central ravelin. Most of its defenders had been evacuated under the threat of ricochet fire. Nevertheless, casualties among the Northern Alliance were high as they seized the ravelin in a bold escalade, seen here in the photo. A Wiegenburg ensign can be seen waving defiantly on the ravelin, just before the defenders were forced to fall back.

Siege of Adelheim, Game 1

Unlike our foray into the exotic a few years ago with the relief of Haddington, 1549, siege games do not appear to be popular. We had only two players for the first run of the game. nevertheless, we carried on. The picture here was taken around turn 8, after the third parallel was established. We called the game after four hours of play at turn 11; the atackers had esablished a thorough artillery superiority and had cleared the covered way along the front of one of the outlying ravelins; a breach within a few turns was inevitable. For the second game, we chose to reset back to the second parallel rather than play out the last few turns.

Siege Playtest

Here's a teaser shot from today's playtest game. It's fairly late in the game; the ravelin is about
to be abandoned as untenable due to ricochet fire from both directions. Meanwhile, the advancing sappers are having problems of their own, as heavy fire is inhibiting their construction efforts...

Constructing Adelheim, Part X -- The Calm Before the Storm

The walls of Adelheim, laid out on the 6 foot dimension of my table

It has been another busy week, but I was able to provide some assistance to Norman in the completion of the Adelheim works prior to the convention.  The game is scheduled for a 6x10 table, so the attackers will have plenty of depth, though it does appear that they will be somewhat constrained on width.

A slightly closer view, showing the approaching sap more clearly

We hope to get a game in tomorrow, but we'll see; there are other holiday festivities to be attended as well.

Wiegenburger artillery mans a forward battery position

It does look like we have enough trench material to lay out the attack.

Completed gatehouse with bridges in position

No visit by Ross would be complete without a work session, but it looks like we'll be able to calmly add a few guns and other flourishes; all of these are things that we now have workarounds for, if they remain uncompleted.

Constructing Adelheim, Part IX -- Fit test

Along the wall

Toward the walls; gate and bridges mockups in place

Since the weather is holding fair today, Norman and I decided that it was time to lay out the pieces we intend to use in a fit test.  The two pictures above give an idea of what the completed fortress (at least the Historicon version of it; we've got additional pieces not being used) might look like.

Norman takes a closeup of a sample sap we laid out. Yes, the sap head is enfiladed by the left face of the ravelin...

The Wicker Man surveys the scene.

I'm encouraged.  Now it's time to start in on painting the stonework, and we're headed back to the home improvement store for another half-gatehouse section.

Wall sections

We started off this morning with some work on the walls, gluing down gravel and grass. That's drying as I type this; we'll be starting the stone painting when this work is dry.

Constructing Adelheim, Part VIII -- trenches; painting the walls

As Historicon approaches, we had a work session with Duncan on Sunday.  I didn't get any pictures due to the nature of the work and a little technical glitch with my camera, but we finished the saw work on the trench sections, cut battery bases for the besiegers, and fired up the melting pot for some additional gun crews (another 40 or so gunners) and guns (four more Meisterzinn siege guns, for a total now of 12, and another mortar, just in case...).

A box of trench shapes

Fortress sections drying in the sun

Norman painting the retaining wall on a glacis section

Norman touches up the felt gluing

Wall sections sanded and ready for paint

Gabion dowels; ran out of spray paint before this job was finished

Yesterday being a holiday, we sanded the trench sections, cut the felt on the glacis, and painted the fortress stonework in a basic brown.

Constructing Adelheim, Part VII--Back to work on the glacis

It's been a hectic week, with a conference I was responsible for planning at work, Norman's graduation, and a visit from my mother. I was doubly pleased to get home tonight, as tomorrow is one of my scheduled off days, so I've got four days at home to get a few things done.

I sanded the edges of the luaun glacis support pieces after supper, and then enlisted Norman (the Prince Palatine) to assist me in gluing the foam sections on.  With this completed, we can start gluing down the covering felt, a process which will probably take a couple of days, as I usually stretch the felt and glue it a section at a time.

Gluing the glacis sections down

Many hands make light work

Norman fits a section

Applying glue; note re-purposed encyclopedias serving as weights.

With six weeks left to go until the convention, there is not a moment to lose...

Constructing Adelheim, Part VI

Following our productive session on the fort and related projects on Saturday, we returned for additional work on Sunday.  I am developing additional confidence with the Hot Wire Foam Factory equipment; using the jigs provided by Duncan, I cut all the embrasures we need.  The fort walls and ravelins with embrasures can be seen set up in my rather cramped parlor.  The next step is to glue the glacis segments together, and then cover them in felt.

Here a Meisterzinn wagon is being used to check the dimensions of the cutaway entrance in the ravelin, leading to the gate.  For scenarios with the siege in full swing, I intend to block this with a plug in piece composed of gabions and possibly including other hasty barrier materials.

Here's a view from farther back, with the wall section cut to accept the gatehouse structure, and some Barzso cannons emplaced to check the embrasure size.

We acquired a 6 yard piece of olive felt for this project.  2 yards is earmarked for grass over the glacis, and the remainder will form the main groundcloth.  I like to start with some spray paint on the felt to break up the uniformity.

I enlisted William's artistic assistance in this project.  If you click on the picture above, you should be able to see the placement guidelines for the fortress elements drawn on to the felt.

Inspired by all of this effort, William has been working on adding another company to his army...

Constructing Adelheim, Part V

After a couple of weeks of things going on outside gaming, and weather too bad to take work outside, a nice day and a weekend finally lined up yesterday.  Unfortunately, it was the day that I was supposed to be cleaning the house in anticipation of a visit by my mother, whose sympathy for toy soldier clutter remains limited after forty years...but I'll deal with that today.

I was able to cut the glacis sections yesterday.

After marking and measuring I was able to freehand the cuts using a Hot Wire Foam Factory tool lent by Don Hogge, another of the HAWKs.  Some irregularity in the final product is acceptable on these glacis segments; everything will be covered in felt except the rear vertical side, to be painted as a retaining wall.

We got to the hardware store for supplies, glue and spray paint for the most part, and I had hoped to spray texture the felt.  However, the weather was holding, and I thought it prudent to see if we could make some of the siege artillery.

We cast several mortars, both from a Meisterzinn mold and a Prince August mold, and four large cannons from Meisterzinn.  I had a problem with that; there is a small metal key in the Meisterzinn mold, which separates the "dolphins" on top of the gun barrel...and plugs a hole in the side of the mold.  I managed to break it on the first casting, while extracting the sprue from the mold.  It was clearly brittle, snapping into three pieces.  We plugged the hole with a binder clip and continued casting, but those later gun barrels are going to need some extra file work.  In the long run, I suppose I could fabricate something from heavy sheet brass to replace it, but after this game is done, it's unlikely that I'd ever need more of them, so it may be file work for any future uses...

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...

Constructing Adelheim, Part III

nDuncan has been busy this past week, and decided to relax with some of the fortress work:

The ravelins are likely to end up smaller in the final trace.

Here's a view from the back:

Constructing Adelheim, Part II

It's been a long week here, so this entry has been somewhat delayed.  We had a work day on the Adelheim fortifications last Saturday.  After a planning session, Duncan and I went out to buy materials.  Duncan set up his saw, and we started ripping the large foam sheets into the raw materials for the curtain wall and parapet lengths.  Bastions will be built by gluing parapets to large solid bases. (See picture below.)

Here one of the bastion bases (we're building three) takes shape on the saw.

Two of the bastion bases laid out on the kitchen counter to start visualizing the final trace.  Multiple trace concepts can be seen on the plan sheet; the triangular section in the lower center is in my hands this week to use as a test for painting.

No engineering project is ever completed on schedule and under budget, and this wasn't an exception.  As the available time drew to a close, Duncan cut a curtain section to fit to the bastion bases as a test.  I think this is going to attract some attention at Historicon.

One of our shopping finds was this ceiling molding piece, which almost looks like it was intended to be the basis of the gate structure.  It's show here temporarily supported on plastic columns from the wedding cake decorating aisle of the arts and crafts store.  I hope to have some time to try some painting techniques on the test section this weekend...

Constructing Adelheim, Part I

I received some pictures from chief fortifications engineer Duncan Adams today.  On Ross's Battle Game of the Month blog, he's discussing rules development for our Historicon Charge!/Fire and Stone game.  The Maryland team, led by Duncan, will be building the fortress of Adelheim, the objective of our siege.

This view is a dimension check on our proposed fortress cross section.  The parapet and covered way are 1.5" in height; the fortress's gun platform area 2" off the table.  Looks good to me!

Here's a view with a field gun testing the look of the parapets and embrasures, the latter being cut into the foam pieces with a hot wire cutter.

I'm glad to have Duncan leading this operation; a hand waving description of why I thought we would need a hot wire cutter sent him to the workshop to create this cutting jig to ensure uniformity of the embrasures.

I'm looking forward to our work day on Saturday, and to getting some sections in my hands for the painting technique tests!

(Photos and foam work all by Duncan Adams.)