Rome wasn't built in a day, but we've come close

 

Not quite Rome, but getting close.

Click on all pictures to enlarge the view

I finally finished the Roman temple that is shown in the picture above and I am quite pleased with the results. It even has a lift off roof, a feature that I rarely use in my buildings. The height of the model almost makes it a requirement to make the roof a "lift off" type.

My Roman town continues to grow. I have made and modeled eleven structures since the beginning of 2025 as well as nearly six feet in length of aqueduct sections.

The view of the city from the other side of the river.

The temple was a fun project, but it took me awhile to figure out how to do the roof. I finally decided to make it a removable roof for two reasons: the height of the model and the ability to place figures inside the model. All of my previous buildings had fixed roofs.

So now I am up to eleven buildings and six feet of aqueduct models that I have constructed so far in 2025.

Three of the Patrician class discuss the day's events on the temple steps.

The front view of the temple. Note the use of coins attached to the front pediment
to similute carvings. They are (from Left to Right) a US Lincoln penny, a British 2 new pence coin, 
and a US Roosevelt dime on the right. I wish that I could use a "Mercury Dime" instead
of the Roosevelt dime, but the former are hard to find in circulation.

The removable roof of the temple

The new Roman temple in situ

Two of the '"swells" are discussing the day's events in front of the entrance.
This is what the floor looked like before the paper tiles were added.

I searched the internet for a nice looking downloadable image of stone flooring and finally found one that fit the bill. The exterior temple floors represent large stone blocks. The interior tiles were sourced at Michael's Stores and are sheets of wrapping paper that the store sells. The columns are from a wedding cake tier set.

Paper floor tiles that I found on-line. The guard is made by John Jenkins Designs.
the fellow in the blue toga is a King & Country figure, and the senator with the red striped
toga is from First Legion. I don't recall the origin of the fellow with his back to the camera.
These are all 1/30 scale figures.

My next building project is to make some forum style buildings with columns that will line one edge of my Roman forum area. The table mat is made by Cigar Box Battle Mats and it looks like I will have to order another mat if I want to expand the size of the town (currently at 5ft wide by 6ft long). I also want to make a smaller version of the temple.

The Little Wars game convention is coming up on April 24 through 27th in Lisle, Illinois and so I need to get more focused on preparing for the game rather than building construction. My game will have three 6ft by 15ft tables and there is probably only enough room to place two small Roman farms in the corners. One of the back tables will have a Roman camp too. The Carthaginian side of the tables may have only one farmstead in one of the corners.

The Roman Camp

Here are some pictures of the Roman camp that will be placed on one of the back tables in my Little Wars convention game. The camp pieces are made by Toy Soldiers of San Diego ("TSSD").

cc

Vox Populi

"Carthago Delenda Est!

An early version of a Flash Mob perhaps? All of these figures are 1/30 scale (~60mm) metal figures made by a company called King & Country, located in Hong Kong.

The cobblestone mat is made by Cigar Box Battle Mats and I made the buildings from scratch. It is kind of fun to move the various citizens around the game table and set up new vignettes.

cc 

More Roman 1/32 Scale Buildings

The Roman town is growing!

With Little Wars coming up soon (April 24-27, 2025 in Lisle, Illinois) it is time to put the metal to the peddle and really focus on getting my Hannibal terrain finished. I also have one 32-figure unit of Italian allies to paint.

A number of my Roman houses were only partly finished. They needed painting and the attaching of their roof and I had been putting off this task over the past month. The building shown below is probably the most complicated structure that I have built so far. The deck/balcony requires extra work and precision fitting of its components. At the last minute I also decided to add the little structure tacked onto the second floor of the building (shown on the left side of the below picture). It took me two hours just to make this small add-on piece. Yikes!

My favorite and most difficult building, so far.

The unfinished version of the building model.

The finished version of the model. This is the local Taberna. The innkeeper
is standing on the balcony overseeing events going on in the town. I still 
need to glue the balcony rails to the deck. I will do these last after attaching the 
roof to the model.

One of the citizens walking down one of the narrow streets of the city.
The aqueduct arches are shown on the right hand side.

I like this picture of the citizen walking down the narrow street.
I should have done some editing with the light in the photo.

The two buildings on the left and middle were finished yesterday. The third building
in the distance on the right is actually a facade of a building. I added a 
rectangular structure behind the facade to give it 3D depth.

Here are some pictures of the various buildings in their partially constructed and yet-to-be-finished mode.

Lady Hagatha suspects that her hubby is up to no good.
What could she be looking at?

Marcus is going to have some explaining to do!
A small Roman bath.

I hope to find the time to start on the local temple this weekend. I bought a lot of wedding cake Roman columns to use on this model.

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Tutorial: Building a Roman Triumphal Arch

 

The 1/32 scale (54mm) Arch constructed by Fritzious Magnus

Every Roman city of repute must have its own triumphal arch located in the center of the city. It is an iconic Roman look and so I decided to build an arch for my growing 1/32 scale (for 54mm soldiers) city.

I based my arch somewhat on the Arch of Titus in Rome. See below:

The Arch of Titus

Materials Needed

1/2-inch foam core board (purchased from Blick's artist supplies store)

1/4-inch foam core board

Balsa wood of various sizes

Wood trim that I found at Home Depot

Coins (pennies and dimes) to use as images of leaders found on the sides of such structures

Sewing pins

1/2-inch wide masking tape

Circle Template (found in art supply stores or Michaels Stores)

Hot Glue Gun

Wood Glue

Box cutter knife

Exacto knife and Exacto mitre box and mitre saw set

Construction Details

The walls and roof are made from foam core board which at 1/2-inch thick is sufficiently strong to withstand any rough handling or storage/transport from my house to the game convention site.

Front walls: 9-inches wide by 8-inches high

Arch: 2-1/2 inches measured in from each edge of the foam core board and 5-1/2 inches to the high point in the arc of the arch.

Side walls: 4-inches wide by 8-inches high

Roof: a piece of 1/4-inch foam core board cut to dimensions that will give it a 1/2-inch over hang once the four walls are assemble. Another piece of 1/2-inch thick foam core board will later be attached to the top of the roof to provide structural support for the cornice trim on the top edges of the arch.

Trim for the cornice and columns: I found some really useful pieces of miniature wood trim at Home Depot. It is hard to describe what they are and how they look, but they provide a classical look to the arch. You can find these in the area where ceiling moulding and floor trim are found in the store.

Constructing the Arch

The first step is cutting out the wall pieces from the 1/2-inch foam core board. I recommend using a metal T-Square tool to ensure that you get straight cuts in the material. Once I pencil out the cutting lines, I remeasure everything to make sure that the dimensions are true and correct. Then I place the metal T-Square along one of the drawn lines and cut the board with your box cutter. Do not use any of the Exacto knives for this process. The box cutter provides a neatly cutting whereas the Exacto knife can result in a rough looking cut with chunks of foam cut out the board.

Next, I take some of my sewing pins and stick the four walls together to see how the structure will look. I then raise one of the walls a little bit so that the sewing pins are still sticking into the foam. I apply a liberal amount of hot glue and then push the pieces together. I do this for each edge of the walls that are being glued together. Next, I pry the sewing pins part way out of the foam core board and snip off the flat head of the pin with a wire cutter. Then I push the pin back into the board to provide support for the glue join.

Following this, I cut a piece of roof from 1/8-inch foam core board, making sure that this roof piece overlaps the edge of the walls by 1/2-inch.

Attaching the cornices and columns

Here are some close up pictures of the trim pieces. They are all 1/2-inch wide.

Close up view of the trim piece used for the vertical columns on the front and 
rear sections of the arch. Note the Lincoln penny that I glued to the board.

Here you can see the three different trim designs that I found at Home Depot. The beaded
trim is glued horizontally and abuts the 1/4-inch foam core board overhang.  Then the trim 
piece that resembles a vertical column is glued to the arch and abuts the beaded trim. Finally,
a piece of dental moulding is glued to the top of the foam core board to provide the crown of
the arch.

All of the wood trim pieces are attached to the walls of the arch using wood glue. Hot glue is messy and I have found that sometimes the glue doesn't stick and the piece eventually falls off. Wood glue will attach the pieces permanently and it sets in about five minutes.

The tedious part of the trim assembly occurs when the pieces of trim are cut. I used the mitre box and mitre saw for this and cut the pieces at a 45-degree angle so that they fit together seamlessly. Exacto makes a nice miniature mitre box and saw and I use it on many of my building construction projects.

Be sure to measure the trim pieces at the same length as of roof section. Anything less will result in a gap where the pieces should join together. I learned this the hard way and had to throw out several pieces of trim that I had cut. Also, double and triple check to make sure that you are cutting the mitre angles on the rear side of the trim rather than on the front side of the trim. I made this mistake several times. Doh!!!

The bead moulding under the roof overhang is easy to do as you have two surfaces to glue together ( the wall side and the over hang piece. I use wood glue for this.

The crown piece, or dentile moulding, is glued to the top of the roof. I begin by laying out the four pieces of wood together on the roof. Then I use some sewing pins as guides for the location of the pieces. I stick the pins into the inside edge of the wood moulding so that when I glue the wood to the foam core board, I have a guide for its placement. Once the guide pins are in place, I glue the crown moulding pieces to the top of the roof. After the pieces are glued together I stick more pins into the inside edge of the moulding to help it stay in place.

The final stage of the roof cornice sections is to cut out a piece of 1/2-inch foam core board that will fit inside the four edges of crown moulding (5-1/2 inches wide by 9-1/2 inches long). I use hot glue to attach the piece to the top of the roof. This insert piece abuts the the interior of the crown moulding and provides extra strength to the crown. Without this, there is too much free standing wood on top of the roof that could break off with rough handling. Since the insert fits snuggly against the crown moulding, it is like adding a support wall that will prevent any breakage.

Adding details on the walls

The next step is to add some details to the walls of the arch that fill in some of the blank wall areas and give the arch a finer look. I use Lincoln pennies and Roosevelt dimes and glue them onto the wall with hot glue. I place Lincoln on the front and back sides and Roosevelt on the sides. I actually place two dimes on the side: Roosevelt's head and the reverse side ( I forget what it is called; phalange?).

Once the coins are painted over and dry brushed with white paint, the heads will be picked out and easy to see. However the paint softens the head image so that it looks like some Roman dude rather than an American president.

I cut pieces of balsa wood to make a frame over the top of the arch opening. The frame measures 4-inches wide by 1-inch high.

I use wood glue to attach the pieces to the surface of the foam core board on the arch. Usually the arch would have some words within this frame, either identifying the emperor that built the arch or it might have "SPQR" engraved inside the frame.

The side walls use a similar frame of balsa wood, but these are larger at 3-inches wide by 6-inches high.

Balsa wood frame with two dimes glued inside the frame, Note also the piece
of wood at the base of the model. This base kind of ties everything together.

The final construction step is to glue a piece of bass wood or balsa wood around the base of the arch, as shown in the picture above.

Basically, any join that involves pieces of wood should use wood glue and any join that puts two pieces of foam core board uses hot glue.

The finishing touches: painting the model

Now that all of the bits and bobs are glued together, it is time to paint your model. I use "chalk paint" that you can purchase from Michaels or purchase on line from Plaid Paints. Don't ask me why I use chalk paint, just trust me that it looks better/more realistic than acrylic paint. I used three coats of paint on the arch, largely to hide the primer paint that I used on the arch. I reasoned that primer should cover the wood bits and the coins before I could paint them. A light grey primer is the best color because grey sort of looks like stone. On other buildings I don't use primer, just painting over the surface of the foam core board.

The final part of the painting, of course, is dry brushing the model with a lighter color. Use dry brushing sparingly because it makes the details "pop out" from the darker undercoat. During each stage of painting, I use my finger to wipe the paint from the coins, otherwise the two or three coats of paint will obscure the images on the coins. It is only when the highlight color is dry brushed to the surface that I don't wipe off the paint.

That pretty much finishes the arch model. I want the "SPQR" letters inside the frames above the arches. I don't trust my freehand painting skills enough to hand paint the letters, so I will either find images on line to down load onto paper or maybe use Word software to print out the letters in the correct size. The paper will be glued to the surface using spray on rubber cement (spray the paper with glue, not the surface).

Here are some pictures of the finished arch (sans the SPQR lettering) shown in situ in my Roman town.

The finished arch. Note the sections of aqueduct in the background. I made those
prior to making the arch and they gave me practice in making arch openings
similar to that of the triumphal arch.

A view of the town center, or forum, showing the location of the arch. I think that 
the arch really improves the visual look of my Roman town. The cobblestone mat
is made by Cigar Box Battle Mats.

You can see that there are a number of buildings that are in various stages of "work in progress". The black models still require some final assembly and painting. The two larger buildings on the right hand side of the picture need to have their roof tiles painted so that they look like the tiles on the building on the lower right hand side of the picture. Herb Gundt made that building for 28mm figures and I have used some of the buildings that he made for my long ago Late Roman Project as templates and ideas for my large 1/32 scale Roman building models.

The cobblestone surface in the town is a Cigar Box Battle Mat that I purchased recently. The civilian figures are a mostly from King & Country in Hong Kong and they are 1/30 scale (about 60mm), but I find that they fit rather nicely with my 54mm figures. The Egyptian Obelisk was purchased from the New York Art Museum on line store.

Conclusion

I know that there aren't too many of my readers that will have a need for 1/32 scale building models, but I thought that the step by step construction tutorial would transfer easily to smaller 28mm models. On the other hand, there are quite a few laser cut Roman buildings that are available from some of the more notable and usual providers of such things. I really like the Sarissa models that are sold though Footsore Miniatures in the UK. Click on the link below. I only wish that Sarissa made some of these models in 1/32 scale, but I know that there is a limited market for models in my size.

Footsore Miniatures

My Roman town continues to grow. I need more apartment buildings and then I would like to tackle a temple with columns or a Roman bath building.

salve!

My Little Wars Games Have Been Entered

 

Carthaginian elephants with light skirmishers providing protection.
54mm HaT Industrie figures that I painted

Click on the pictures to enlarge. 

Double click to make them REALLY large

Yesterday I entered three games for the upcoming HMGS Midwest Little Wars convention. The show will be held from April 24 to 27, 2005 at the Sheraton Lisle Naperville hotel (3000 Warrenville Road, Lisle, IL). This is the same hotel venue as last year.

Hannibal and his retinue. These are metal figures from John Jenkins Designs.

I am running three 54mm Hannibal! games during the convention:

Thursday April 24, 2025    Scenario TBD

Friday April 25, 2025        Battle of Zama

Saturday April 26, 2025    Battle of Zama

Here is a link to the HMGS Little Wars convention web site where you can get more information. Game sign up begins on April1, 2025 at Noon CDT (Chicago time).

Little Wars 2025 link

As with my two previous 54mm convention games (Khartoum and Pickett's Charge), I hope to have three tables 6ft by 15ft running parallel to each other. The games at this convention and at Historicon in July 2025 will be the third part of the 54mm Big Game Trilogy that I have hosted over the past three years. After this year, I will retire the large 54mm games for a year of two and go back to hosting smaller 28mm games.

The first game on Thursday evening will feature a general encounter between Republican Roman and Carthaginian forces somewhere in Italy. The game will include elephants, of course, so it is not the recreation of any particular battle since Hannibal had lost all of his elephants while crossing the Alps.

The Friday and Saturday games will recreate my version of the Battle of Zama. The battle is to Hannibal as Waterloo was to Napoleon, a final defeat that followed a string of famous victories.

Preparations 

I was going to include a Roman town on one of the corner areas of the game tables, but I think that it might take up too much table space and interfere with the movement of troops. Instead, I will have several Italian farm houses set up on a corner of each of the two back tables in my game. I am also working on the construction of a Roman aqueduct that will span the entire width of the three game tables. The aqueduct will be set up on one of the table edges. I have five feet of aqueducts in various stages of completion so I have another six feet of structures to build from scratch.

My Roman army has three Roman legions and one Italian allies legion. I need to paint one more set of 32 figures to complete the Italian legion. Other than that, my painting of units is complete and I have shifted my time over to terrain building.

Two of the three units that comprise one Italian legion.
HaT 54mm figures that I painted recently.

I now have a bunch of Roman buildings in various states of construction that I probably will not need for either of the two conventions this year. What to do with them? My thought is to continue modeling 54mm buildings and over time, build a complete city that will fit on a 6ft by 12 ft table in my basement. This way I can add a few bits here and there over time and end up with something fantastic. This is sort of how a model railroader constructs his train layout.

A view of the town from across the river. You can see the "shells" of the aqueduct pieces
at the rear of the city. The black buildings are works in progress and need to be finished.

A view of the city from another direction.

Another view of the town forum. You can see the start of a basilica structure
(white foam core board) at the top end of the forum.

The carpenter's workshop 

Dockside in the town

The town forum or central square in the city.

The table mat is made by Cigar Box Battle Mats and these are a recent addition to my table top set up. The mat looks really great, but I wish that the company had the option to order it with grey stones rather than the earth tones used on this mat. Despite that, I like the mat because now I don't have to make city roads. I just lay all of my buildings on top of the mat.

I am considering creating a scenario called "Who Killed Julius Caesar?" that is based on the board game "Clue" (or "Cluedo" as it is known in the UK). I am working on some other ideas for skirmish style gaming events inside the town. The Gangs of Rome rules look a bit complicated for my taste so I will write my own Roman Skirmish Game Rules in the future. The idea is to have something that uses the many civilian figures that I have accumulated in recent years.

You can never have too many pictures of 54mm (1/32 scale) elephants. These were ones that I painted in 2024.

More later...

cc

AWI Skirmish Game Report

 

Stillwater was not very quiet today. We might have to call it The Stillwater Massacre
because so many British, Loyalists and Mohawk warriors died.

                                       Click on the pictures to enlarge

Last evening we invited two couples to our home for dinner and an AWI skirmish war game. None of them had ever played in a war game, but they knew about my hobby and they were all keen to give it a try. So I had five "newbies" and myself playing in the game. The scenario was a simple Indian/British/Loyalist raid on a patriot town, Stillwater,  in upstate New York near Saratoga.

I had my own set of skirmish rules "Croat Terror" that I adapted to the AWI (Croats = Indians; Prussians = British; Militia = Militia; Loyalists = Frei Corps, etc.). It looked easy enough, but then at the last minute (90 minutes before the arrival of the guests) I decided that even my easy to learn skirmish rules had too many charts and might overwhelm a newcomer to the hobby. I recall playing a Sword and Flame game for the first time and all of the charts made my head spin.

So I wrote a new set of skirmish rules on the fly, based on rolling only D6 dice. The rules fit on one side of an 8 x 5 inch index card. I put the rules on one side of the card and the individual personality traits and missions on the other side of the card. That's it!

Here is a picture of the  rules

By the way, if you click on the image of the rules they will enlarge sufficiently that they can be easily read. Feel free to use these rules.

As the game went on I decided to scrap the morale rules and forgot to use the card suit outcomes for the melees; if you had the high card in a one on one melee then the opponent was killed.

Each player had a particular mission to accomplish. I pasted their respective missions onto the back side of the index card. Here is an example:

I was Joseph Brant and I failed miserably in achieving my objectives. I captured two civilian prisoners, but then I forgot about the part about having minimal casualties. Thirteen out of twenty-four of my warriors were killed. I think that the tribe will be looking for a new chief. In the heat of the battle I got so caught up in shooting at the militia that I forgot about minimizing my casualties. Fog of war.

The cornfield was a bad place to be if you were an Indian warrior or a British regular.

The British commander, Major Payne, had a mission of finding the British spy in the town and escorting him to safety, back at the British camp. While I advised Major Payne to look for a church pastor, the good Major was standing next to the pastor and escorted the nearest civilian back to safety. I told the Major that he had carried off the wrong person and that he might need to go back and retrieve the correct person. Fog of war. The Major and I had a good laugh over that.

Who needs Fog of War rules when you can usually count on the players in the game to provide their own Fog of War.

Some Brunswick Jagers had the acumen to go and retrieve the pastor and bring him back to camp, so at least one player was paying attention. LOL.

The Brunswick Jaegers bring home the right man.

Everyone seemed to have a good time (and why wouldn't they?) and by the third turn they were starting to get a handle on how the rules worked. It was a good call on my part to write a simpler set of rules prior to the start of the game given that all of the players were new to war gaming. Everyone expressed an interest in coming back in the future and playing another war game.

Mission Accomplished.

AWI Skirmish Game Table Top Terrain

 

Colonial America terrain

                                                CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE

This weekend Mrs. Fritz has invited two couples to our house on Saturday to play in a war game that I will be hosting. Yes, you heard that right! She told me that in our 30 years of marriage she could not recall ever having played in one of my war games and that she wanted to give it a try. The other two couples have long been aware of my hobby and they were curious enough to want to try playing a game.

With that in mind, I reasoned that a skirmish style of game would be the best type of game to play and that the AWI (or American Revolution, as we call it in these parts) would provide the most fun. Everyone is familiar with the Minute Men and the Red Coats, etc. so they will have some context and connection to the period that doesn't requiring the level of explaining that something like Napoleon's or the Seven Years War would require.

So yesterday I cleared everything off of my two parallel game tables (6ft by 12ft and 5ft by 12ft) and set up some beautiful Colonial America terrain for my 28mm Fife & Drum Miniatures AWI figures. At first, I only set terrain up on the larger table and after viewing my work, I decided that it looked good. As long as I have a second table, I thought, why not use that one as well. So I ended up terra forming two game table.

After setting up the second table, I decided that I should also hang up the light blue felt "sky" material to form a background for the scene. I use light blue felt randomly sprayed with white paint to create the impression of clouds in the sky.

Here are some pictures of the game tables that I snapped last night before hitting the hay:

I used EVERY tree that I own in my collection to populate the table top.

The red house is modeled after one of the buildings on the Saratoga battlefield.
Ed Phillips made the model as a gift for me.

The Black Smithy in the local village of Stillwater

I haven't entirely settled on a scenario for the game, but it will be set in upstate New York during the Burgoyne/Saratoga campaign. The setting will allow me to use some Iroquois Indians in the game as British allies. I am getting a sort of Oriskany vibe from this for a scenario.

I am envisioning several companies of British regulars going either on a foraging expedition or they have heard that one of their spies is running loose and needs to be rescued before the Rebels/Colonists/Good Guys find the spy and invite him/her to a neck tie party. Likewise, the Americans are aware that there is a spy in their midst and they want to find that scoundrel before he/she delivers important information to the evil Red Coats.

A party of Iroquois scout ahead of the British column

Naturally there have to be some competing agendas within the commands for both sides. Perhaps the commander of the local militia has a beef to pick with the captain of the Continental relief force, undoubtedly over the affections of a woman.

The Iroquois would likely prefer to take some hostages and loot and perhaps burn down a farm house or two (payback for taking over their lands, clearing the land of trees, and general development of the land).  Of course, this might conflict with the British desire to get in and get out as quickly as possible.

All of these competing agendas should create a little bit of roll playing for the gamers and make the game experience more fun. Remember, non of these players have ever played in a war game before so I want the rules to be easy and the game to be fun.

Here are some pictures of the various family farmsteads around Stillwater:

The Brown Family farm

The town of Stillwater and a view of The Savage Swann Inn

The Purky Family farm

The Rose Family farm

The LeBlanc Family farm

The Enoch Poor Family farm

A view of the two AWI game tables.

As for the rules, I will be using my version of Woodland Wars by Tom Kelly. It is a playing card driven system and hand to hand combat is done using cards (high card wins the melee and the card's suit determines the outcome of the loss - Hearts = dead; Diamonds = wounded; Clubs = captured; Spades = flee and run away).

Each player will have two 12-figure units of soldiers and each of those units have two cards that identify them. All of the cards are placed into a separate card deck, shuffled, and randomly drawn from the deck. Each unit can do two things per turn (move, shoot, etc) and each card drawn represents a "phase", so it is conceivable that a unit might be able to shoot its muskets twice on the same turn. After all units have phased twice then the turn is over.

My recollection is that morale is done using a D12 die (there are 12 figures per unit) and so a player needs to roll a number that is less than or equal to the number of figures that remain in the unit. For example, a 12-figure unit of American militia lose two figures this turn, then they need a die roll of "10" or less in order to pass morale. There are only several modifiers positive and negative so as not to complicate things too much.

I am looking forward to hosting this game and seeing how things work out with people completely new to the sport of war gaming. There are two guests that I suspect will prove to be very adept and ruthless (in a good way) in their gaming style. This should be fun. After the game we will convene for dinner and happy talk.

Cheers,

Old Fritz

vv