The City of Altheim: Part One - Plans and Machinations.

So, Altheim. As I wrote in my last post, I've decided to finally take on my biggest project ever, the City of Altheim. To that end, I've decided to go in depth with it and try to plan it out as best as I can.

Here, however, is an overview showing just how damn big it's going to be...

Anyway, on to the planning (after the cut!)





Firstly, I needed a plan of the actual build. The table I'm currently building in my games room will be roughly 8'x4', so I'm aiming for the city board to fill all of it.

Here's the rough city plan I've gone for in the end (North is left, south is right, etc etc):

Geographically, the river is the Salz, flowing northwards with the city on the eastern bank.

As you can see from the plan, one of the major defining features of the table will be the city wall, enclosing it on two sides. These are something I picked up a very long time ago from a now sadly defunct company called Tabletop Workshop, who made a great range of injection moulded buildings and a large modular castle, which is what the walls come from.

The gaming boards themselves are going to be made up of five 0.5m x 1.2m XPS foam boards, with another roughly 15-20cm of river at the end. Each section nominally represents a different area of the city, as follows:

Farmland - This is the area just outside the city gates, I plan on having a small farm with some fields, potentially a watermill, as well as the monastery/graveyard I built years ago.

Residential - Just inside the walls, but farthest away from the river, this is where most of the population actually lives. Housing will vary from the high class Southeastern Corner to the lower class area around the river, where it starts to become walled in and dirtier. The houses themselves will all be separate, and placeable anywhere on the board to make the table more replayable.

Commerce Area - This is where most of the businesses are located, along the main North-South Salzenmund road and around the main market square. The more industrial trades will be located around the river, now enclosed by walls. Like the residential area, the buislings etc will all be placeable to allow for multiple layouts.

Docks and Warehouses - Most of the buildings around the docks are old, dilapidated and some are even partially collapsed, and even the wall at this end of the city is in a semi-ruinous condition. As well as warehouses, the city's fishing industry is based on the docks here, utilising small boats. Apart from the assorted industries in this area, it also houses some of the shanties belonging to the city's beggars and other most poverty-stricken inhabitants. I plan on making the area look grimy, run-down and poor-looking.

River - The river itself is a hive of activity, with ships arriving, being unloaded and reloaded at the docks before departing again. Construction-wise, one thing I haven't decided on yet is whether to build at least part of the toll bridge that crosses the Salz, or whether to locate that further into the town in the unbuilt part to the south.


The Build

A few shots of the table:

As you can see from these first photos, that's going to be a big space to fill! These are just the four city boards, I'll do the farmland board outside the city at a later date, as it'll really only be useful in a siege style game. As you can also see, my measurements were a bit off in the plan, and the wall doesn't *quite* reach to the sea. I'll probably cut the end off the last board so the final tower is in the sea and the docks fit in the last board as well, rather than being an add-on piece.

The Wall - As mentioned earlier, the wall encloses the board on two sides. At the North-western end near the river it's in a ruinous condition, although, on the whole, the wall is well maintained. There are three gates into the city on the board; the eastern gate is the main gate into the city and is the most heavily defended. It has taller defensive towers, along with a roofed gatehouse above the entrance. There is a second large gate in the northern wall, although this doesn't accommodate as much traffic as the East gate. There is also a third, smaller pedestrian gate located in the northwestern end near the docks, though it is rarely used.

This is the northern gate, and is standard as the kit(s) came, The doors are able to be fitted anywhere, I'll add the rest later when I sork out where they need to be.

This, however is the main, eastern gate. I've used some of the leftover wall kit parts to build an extra layer to the towers and a gatehouse building above the door. At some point I'll add some detailing to the outer face, maybe a city coat of arms or a name plate to make the main entrance a bit more showy, as befits such an important city!

From the inside you can see a lesser defended, half-timbered rear wall, that I've added a GW statue to:

As you can see, the wall is a large thing for a poor watchman to guard all on his own!

The Roads - Now the walls have all been located on the board, I need to work out where to do the roads. It'll be slightly different to my original plan due to the wall location etc being slightly out, but as regards to the construction, I've decided to be utterly ridiculous and build them properly. By that I mean I'm going to cast every brick individually.

I got pointed to a site called Diorama Debris who do a selection of 1:35 moulds for cobblestones. Although nominally too large for 28mm 'scale', a couple of test casts gives me these and I think they'll be fine:

I've decided to go with the top design as it involves slightly fewer bricks overall, and the varying sizes mean I won't have to cut any bricks to fit. There will also be curb stones along the edges to make everything look properly realistic. It'll be a lot of work, but I think (hope!) it'll be worth it in the end. The ground areas that aren't road I'll use a textured wallpaper a friend showed me that looks almost exactly like paving slabs that I'll show later.

So anyway, there you go, hopefully I'll make some progress soon and have a bit more to show you!