Oporto Table Build

So with just the last four units to complete to have both forces for Oporto ready, I thought I had better turn my attention to a bit of Terra genesis and so last week with the help of my eldest son Tom and his mate who owns a large van, I popped off down to the hardware store and purchased a lot of styrene boards.

This morning the postman delivered about a dozen 15mm Spanish buildings from Magister Militum, that will help form the outskirts of Oporto. The chapel and vintners house are my favourites together with the bell tower I posted on last October .

Having just finished off some 28mm Roman Auxiliary Cavalry from my Hail Caesar prchase, pictures to follow, I decided to get stuck into the terrain build, this afternoon. At 6.30pm I called it a day and thought I would post on progress and the plan.

The map above is the table plan with a grid of one foot squares, with a scale of one inch to fifty paces using Carnage & Glory we have a table scale of four feet equating to about a mile.

Last week I got hold of some floor tiles that will form the River Douro, an idea I have shamelessly adopted from Shed Wars and his terrain building ideas, see link to the blog in my blogs followed list. The picture above is my laying out the tiles and boat plus 50mm of styrene to get an idea of the look of the plan in 3D. The cliffs will be 100mm high to give an impression of the gorge that is the key terrain feature of the battle.

The picture below gives an impression of how formidable a barrier the cliffs along the Douro appear to any would be attacker, and must have provided a huge false sense of security to Soult. I want to try and capture that aspect in my set up.

Ok so after a Monday afternoon of sawing through 50mm styrene boards, this is the result of the first days efforts. As you can see over half the table is just raised ground which will form the area the French forces will need to exit across as the Anglo Portuguese move in from various parts of the board.

The other half of the table is taken up by the river gorge where the allies will be desperately trying to support their bridgehead in the Seminary by keeping up a ferrying service of allied infantry whilst using the opposite cliff tops to fire their artillery from in support.

The bark placed along the front edge of the first cliff section is another idea "pinched" from the ever resourceful Shed Wars (they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery) and, when the rest of it turns up, will help to shape the styrene section of the table.

This was the table build finished this evening with the styene left to stick to the hard board bases. Updates on progress to follow.