Roman Outpost Fort - Part 1

I should be painting more lovely Aventine Romans for the next War & Conquest gaming day but after watching "The Eagle" recently I was inspired to build something for my Romans... a small "outpost" fort.

If I may digress slightly; we have very recently put our house on the market, so my affirmation that I needed to build some Roman scenery was greeted less than enthusiastically by the Chief Exec. However, I promised not to make too much mess and to tidy up when I was done.

Anyway, I'd like to build a "proper" fortress but since I usually game on a 6' x 4' table I thought a more modest option would be best.

Here are the wooden walls.

I opted for the 'planked' look as (a) the materials were free and (b) I made a log pallisade style fortification years ago and trimming all those twigs was a lot of effort. These are made from coffee stirring sticks liberated from my favourite coffee shop, along with large match-sticks for the posts.

The wooden walls will be mounted on earthern ramparts; made from polystyrene sheets (recycled from furniture packing).

Tip here is to cut both sides of the sheet rather than trying to cut all the way through from one side. It gives a cleaner finish and makes less "polystyrene shrapnel".

Here they are trimmed up and ready for the walls to be added.

The fort will (initially, as it's an outpost) be made from four corner sections.

Again, from the other side.

These two sections will be mounted on an 'L' shaped piece of hardboard for extra durability. Any gaps can easily be covered with some polyfilla.

Here's the rest of the sections.

Note that a gap has been left for the gate section. Initially this will be a simple gateway, but later I may build a gate with towers, etc.

A closer shot

Hope you found that interesting. One of the best things about this is that most of the materials were free or very low cost. By making it in a modular form with the same shape at each end of the sections I can easily build more sections later

I plan to build a small tower and a barracks block for the century of Auxilia that might man this type of fort. More to follow soon I hope.