On the contrary my friends, or should that be Integendeel, mijn vrienden! It takes focus to get a substantial project finished and I had run out of gas with changing short term priorities after completing three of the four corners of this table during the late summer.
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| Aerial view of layout to get a feel for how it might build. I completed various buildings before attempting the groundwork. |
The most intense section housing the Royal Dockyard and the northern environs of Chatham itself took a bit of planning not least - finding some images of the dockyard around the time of the 1667 attack. Not easy. I found images of the dockyard from the 18th century and a few long distance engravings from the later 1600s. I realized that due to building availability I would only be able to achieve an impression of the yard and not a historically accurate representation.
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| This looks finished but it is not - still a fair bit to do including putting various ships in the slipways. |
For all the land side detail, the battlefield in on the water! I will be varnishing the river but this will be done right at the very end of the process. I needed to plan and paint something to represent a Jacobean/Restoration town as at least a part of Chatham. That took quite a long time even though the area is relatively small.
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| 29 Brigade Models buildings and about 8 -10 hours work in this which is less than 100-100mm in size. |
Working in this scale presents all sorts of challenges but yet more opportunities. It is perhaps the most visually realistic wargaming scale as things can take on a perspective relative to each other. The image below reinforces that impression very strongly.
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| This is a nice view of the critical gaming zone from the left hand side to the first anchored ship beyond Whitewall Creek. |
I created some posed shots to provide encouragement for me to get to the end. That worked. I was setting up some of the situations which will come from the planned battle/campaign. I may even get this out on the show circuit at some point when I am ready.
I have gained oodles of experience building this project and when I tackle the next bit (yes there will be a next bit) which is likely to be the Upnor - Gillingham stretch down to the Chain, I think it would complete significantly quicker. Of course, I would not have to plan and build something as complex as the dockyard again. The other two stretches of the Medway I have in mind are the Chatham - Rochetser Bridge section which the Dutch never reached and the Sheerness to Musselbank Channel stretch.
The accompanying shots are a bit rough and I was shooting them quickly before I left for a work trip of a week so didn't dot the i's and cross the t's so to speak.
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| Some sense of the dockyard from this angle. |
Of course, I still have the ships on the slipways to finish and have been gathering ideas for how I'll represent those.
You will, I hope, get the flavour. I may also run the campaign on the blog with players taking the main roles. I think there would be a few visitors up for that.