Small Roman Temple - A Brief Tutorial

 

The interior of the temple in the dark. I later placed a 
wood bead under the altar so that the gap was filled up.
A 60mm King & Country senator is shown for size comparison.

I wanted to add a small round Roman temple to my city, one that is small enough to not overwhelm all of the other buildings that I have made so far; yet I also wanted it to be large enough to make a statement.

I think that I may have achieved this with my new round Roman temple.

The nearly completed temple with a battery operated flame on the altar.

I have limited carpentry tools and talents so I needed some already-made round components to build the temple. A trip to Hobby Lobby secured a 7-inch diameter round wood base. I then found two different sizes of round bases that would comprise the roof of the temple. I also found a round ring that looks like it might be made from hard compressed card board. 

I used chalk paint French Linen for the base coat and Antique White
dry brushed over the surface of the wood. The plastic columns were first primed 
with grey primer and then painted with the same chalk paints that I used on the
base and roof of the temple. Finally, I painted the columns red with Reaper Blood Red paint.

This picture shows the various wood components that I found at Hobby Lobby.
The wedding cake plastic columns were found on eBay.

The interior of the temple needed a mosaic floor and an altar. I did an internet search for Roman mosaics and found this image of a round mosaic. I cut out the round part from the paper and discarded the rectangular components. For the altar, I used a kitchen cabinet door knob and a wood round bead.

A Roman floor mosaic image from the internet serves as the temple floor.

Finally, a visit to the cloth section produced some rolls of different gold bricbrac to use for gold trim around the roof. I got the latter idea from a 28mm round temple that Herb Gundt made for me many years ago.

The various parts of the floor were glued together with wood glue, and then clamped together with "C" Clamps over night. I did the same for the roof structure. I cut out the mosaic pattern and glued it to the floor using spray adhesive.

I had previously drilled a hole through the center of the round base and screwed in the door knob that would become the temple's altar. The base wasn't thick/deep enough for me to screw the entire threaded piece into the wood. There was a gap between the knob and the floor. I filled this with a wooden bead, painted with the Antique White chalk paint.

Now I am at the most difficult step in the assembly project: gluing the columns to the floor and the roof to the columns so that every piece is lined up true. Fortunately the mosaic floor has some rectangular patterns on the edge of the round and these served as perfect location guides for the placement of the columns.

I will use two-part epoxy glue to attached the columns to the temple floor. Allowing for some time for the glue to set, say, a couple of hours. I will then glue the roof to the columns. This latter step makes me a little uneasy because once the glue is spread over the top of the column, I have to lower the roof section from above so that it sits "just right" and even on all sides of the temple.

The final touch is the battery powered flickering light bulb that I will place atop the altar when it is being used in a game. I don't want to run down the battery, of course, so the flickering flame is not turned on when it is stored away.

I am rather pleased with the results of this build. Nearly all of its components were sourced from Hobby Lobby and so I didn't need to cut out round pieces of wood with a jig saw. This model will truly stand out on the table top and catch the attention of passers by at the Historicon convention in July.

Yes, I Am an Influencer!

Prussian cavalry (foreground) clashes with Austrian cavalry at the Battle of Leuthen
Picture taken August 2020

I have noticed recently that there is a proliferation of "all cavalry battles" spreading across the blogosphere  and I think that I am right to take credit for creating this new trend. Yes, thank you very much my fellow bloggers. Whether it be in Yorkshire, Scotland or with Dogs or  Gentlemen of a military persuasion,  they are fighting cavalry only battles seemingly everywhere.

And to think, that I started this trend back in 2020 with my refight of the cavalry action at Leuthen, and then again last year in 2024 with my report on not one, but TWO all cavalry battles. One was with light cavalry and the other was with heavy cavalry. Both featured my Prussians against those brutes from Russia.

We can go back further in time to 2016 when we did one of our famous Big Battalion SYW games at the Battle of Weisenfels (see picture below). This was a disguised scenario based on Napoleon's Battle of Aspern-Essling and while it included one of the largest miniature cavalry battles that I have ever seen (outside of a couple that took place at the old Wargames Holiday Center), it was a combined arms battle of epic proportions.

Back in those days our group did everything in epic proportions, as shown below.

Battle of Weisenfels in 2016

Here are some links to some of my past all-cavalry battles. Click and enjoy:

Light cavalry battle Part 1    July 2024

Light cavalry battle, Part 2      August 2024

Heavy Cavalry Battle, Part 3       September 2024

Show down with some Cossacks  October 2020

The link to the battle below was particularly large

Cavalry battle at Sagschutz   December 2020

AWI Cavalry Skirmish   July 2017

 

Battle of Wiesenfels   May 2016 (one of our largest cavalry battles ever, but I lost)

As you can see, I have been doing all-cavalry battles for quite some time (even more than just those shown in the links above). I like to think that I have had a little bit of influence on the hobby, particularly in the 18th Century space.   :)

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My New Historicon Video

 

"The Furies" gang come storming down one of the narrow streets of the City.
You had best get out of their way.

CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO ENLARGE

I have just posted a copy on YouTube of my movie trailer for one of my games at this year's Historicon wargame convention. The game time is Saturday July 25, 2025 at 1PM (EST). The Event Number is 707. Click on the link below to watch the trailer (1 minute 30 seconds).

My Historicon Movie Trailer

Of course I am using this video to stir up interest in my game and get people to register and sign up to play in my game at Historicon. My game will allow up to 10 players and the game is designed to last approximately 2 hours.

Here is the link to this specific game on the HMGS Historicon game registration site. Just click the link and sign up for the game. Easy peasy. (or "facile peasy" in Latin)

Sign up link

The game is a skirmish level game that is inspired by the movie "The Warriors". A group of Roman warriors are trapped behind enemy lines and must reach the safety of their military encampment. There are numerous "Bad Guy" (and Gals) who are dead set on preventing the Warriors get away. After all, Hannibal himself has placed an attractive bounty of 100 gold ducats for whoever captures the Warriors.

A view of the City as it looks today. I have made 16 scratch-built buildings
and 6 feet of aqueduct for the game, so far...

A ground level view of daily life in the City.

Overhead view of a part of the City. I added a new Bakery this past week.
It is the building with the three windows with awnings in the upper left corner.

Life is hard in the City and living ain't an easy thing to do when you have seven or more urban gangs out to get you.

The Good Guys

The Warriors:

The Warriors, themselves

The Civilian Mob:

One of the Citizen Mobs. They might be Good Guys or they might be Bad Guys.
Money speaks volumes with the Mob.

The Vigiles:

The Urban Vigiles are the police force of ancient Rome. They don't like any
group that is creating trouble and we do not know if they will help the
Warriors or try to stop them.

The Bad Guys

These are some of the gangs that are hell-bent on capturing (or worse) the Warriors.

The Furies:

The Furies are the insane bad-ass gang in the City. They dye their hair white with
lime and wear no clothing or shoes. Ask them if they care, if you dare.

The Wolf Men:

The Wolf Men are a band of renegade deserters from the Roman army.
They harbor nothing but ill will towards the Warriors. They want loot and lots of it.

The Wings:

The Wings are a collective of disgraced Gallic chieftains who need to curry the 
favor of Hannibal to regain their honor and positions. Capturing the Warriors
would help them resurrect their careers.

The Celtic Riffs:

Grizzled Vets of Gaul who have an extreme dislike for Romans. In fact, they really
don't like anyone so they would just as soon see the other gangs fail instead of capturing the Warriors.

The Spanish Flies:

Spanish light infantry warriors who are very quick and agile, almost as if they could fly.
Get it?

The Black Shield Gang:

No, the Black Shields are not from Falworth, but rather, they are a fierce 
group of Iberians who work for whomever pays the most. Nah, they don't
like the Warriors either so they would kill them for nothing.

The Lizzies:

I just found some 54mm Amazon warriors that I can use in the game as The Lizzies, a notorious all-female gang in the City. I will be painting these figures this week and I will post pictures soon.

Summary of Forces:

So that is up to seven urban gangs that are out to nab The Warriors, two groups of "maybe" friendlies and then The Warriors themselves. I am really looking forward to hosting this game and with ten different groups having their own, and sometimes conflicting, agendas there is no telling of how this game will end.

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George Washington Returns

 

George Washington and Friends.
Fife and Drum Miniatures

Several weeks ago I was running a Battle of Princeton game and I realized that my George Washington personality figure was missing. Where's George? I wondered. After a futile search for the Father of Our Country I conceded that I was not likely to find him (unless I painted another one) so I painted a new George Washington and added a mounted soldier carrying Washington's headquarters flag. I add a Continental officer in hunting shirt who seemed natural in looking off into the distance. I also used one of the Fife and Drum Hessian jaeger officers with telescope to round out the vignette.

Here's Nathaniel Greene:

Nathaniel Greene

More to come.

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Roman Bakery: Bread & Circuses Anyone?

 

Roman Bakery model (1/32 scale) that I built for my Hannibal games.

Click on the pictures to enlarge the view

Yesterday I finished the building of a Roman bakery model in 1/32 scale to use with my 54mm Hannibal Project. Unlike previous models of retail and commercial buildings, I opened this building up quite a bit so that you can view the inside of the bakery. I also added an oven, preparation table, and retail sales table. I am still working on a small model of a flour milling machine.

The bakery takes up the full 12-inch frontage of the building and has large open doorways (2 on the front and one on the side). My previous retail stores were 6-inches wide with two stores within one building model. The problem was that I couldn't see inside of the stores, but the double wide store fixes that problem. The new structure also allows for the creation and placement of interior furniture/work station store fixtures which add some details to the model. Models are all about the details.

Interior view showing the flour mill (work in progress).

The front of the store. The baking oven is visible in the background.

Work in progress picture that shows the roof trusses detail.

The bakery is located in the upper left corner of this picture.

The bakery's placement on the forum square made me move the existing two-store building to a new side street behind the bakery.

The existing two store building has been moved to a narrow side street. It is the home
of the carpenter and the cobbler.

A woman walks out of the bakery with her purchase of today's bread.
The forum square looks rather busy today.

I now have made 16 buildings and 6 feet of aqueduct for the Hannibal Project since the start of February 2025. I want to add a couple of work sheds for my farm buildings, but other than that, I now have everything that I need for my Historicon games.

The town's population has grown too. I now have over 80 civilian figures populating the town.

This terrain will be featured in my Hannibal games at this year's Historicon convention. 

Historicon Game Sign Up Period is Now Open

There will be one game ("Romans, Come Out to Play-yay" that is a skirmish level game that will play out in the town. If you are interested in signing up for this game, then visit the Historicon Tabletop Events web site and look for this game listed on Saturday at 1PM. I have one player signed up for the game (9 tickets still available) as of this posting,  so if you plan on attending the convention then please give some consideration to signing up for my game.

I am offering something for everyone's' taste. If you like large set-piece game then there are two of those, but if you prefer smaller skirmish style games that play fast, then I have one of those too.

Here is the link to the HMGS Historicon game sign up using the Tabletop Events system. It is really easy to sign up for games.

Historicon Events Sign Up

Here is a link to my specific game (game number 707) on Saturday at 1PM - 9 tickets available

Romans, Come Out to Play-yah

I know that it is still early in the game registrations, but July is coming up fast and if you wait too long then you might find yourself locked out of any game that interests you.

Here are links to my other two games, which are traditional set-piece Ancients battles:

Thursday 11AM Game  ("Hannibal, The War Game" Event number 603) - 9 tickets available

Hannibal! The Battle of Zama (Friday 11AM Game; Event Number 708) - 4 tickets available

A view of the Roman town. The new bakery is adjacent to the triumphal arch.
The existing commercial building was moved behind the bakery with its 
back side positioned up against the town walls.

Girl Watching In Ancient Rome

A comely servant girl carrying water has caught the eye of a number of the men.

The sport of girl watching has been going on since the beginning of time, I suppose. So here is a little vignette that I set up in my Roman town to reflect that. In the background a wife is getting ready to let her spouse get an ear full of her opinion as it relates to his wandering eyes. Poor fellow.

I think that the fellow in the blue tunic is in for a bit of trouble
as his wife gives him the old stink eye for letting his eyes wander.

Today I moved my fountain from the central forum square to a new square that I created off of one of the side streets in the city. I printed out some grey cobblestones on paper which create a rather nice visual effect.

The water fountain has been moved in front of the Basilica. The cobblestones are paper
printed off of images that I found on the internet.

A view of the fountain, the Roman Bath house behind it, and the Basilica on the right.

 

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Time for a Bath, Anyone?

 

A Roman Bath with a black and white tile floor. The two building wings are 
not attached to the floor for ease of packing for travel.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

Earlier this week I commenced work on a Roman Bath for my Roman town/city and it is nearly finished today, save for a little bit of touch up painting and gluing the columns into place.

The model had to fit into an area measuring 16" long by 12" high as this is the size of the cork placemat that will serve as the base for the model. The only problem is that the Roman Bath model would not fit into one of my cardboard carrying boxes (purchased from Uline). So I came up with the idea of making the components of the bath free-standing so that they would fit into a smaller container. Then when I am ready to set up the model on the game table, then I lay the 16x12 cork placemat on the table and place the two sections of the bath on top of the placemat. The actual bath and other accoutrements are added as needed.

The bath has two separate "wings" of the building that flank the center bathing pool. The wings are removable. I use my usual black foam core board as my basic building material and pieces of bass wood to make the roof trusses. The terra cotta roof tiles come in a plastic sheet made by Plastruct. I bought my tiles online and they arrived within two days of placing the order.

The joins where two pieces of foam core board meet are taped over with masking tape to hide the join lines (see below). The plastic columns are from a wedding cake tier set that I found on Amazon. The black and white floor tile is a decorative paper that I found at Michael's Stores.

This morning I glued the roof onto the structure using a hot glue gun. One of the roof panels was glued upside down, but this error is barely noticeable given the size of the individual tiles on the tile sheets. Take care to line everything up before hand so that once the hot glue is spread over the roof frame you end up with the exact amount of roof overhang that you want. On one of the panels, my overhang on the left was one rank of tiles whilst the right rank of tiles was three tiles wide. I had to tear off the piece of tile before the glue set in and do it all over again. Then I tried it again, but this time the overhang was even on both sides, but I had glued the tile sheet upside down. Doh!!!!

Eventually I got it right, as seen in the pictures below. Then I applied a coat of linen grey chalk paint over the walls of the buildings. This is to hide the color of the black foam core board. After the grey color dries, I apply a coat of antique white chalk paint for the final color. A border of terra cotta red will be applied around the base of the buildings.

The following pictures show the model after the first base coat of chalk paint has been applied and after the roof tiles are attached. The two columns shown in the front are part of a set of four columns that will be attached to the building sections, two columns per building. I drilled two holes into each column so that I can pin it to the building wall so that the columns do not fall off of the model during handling or travel.

So here are some pictures of the almost finished Roman Bath House:

Is it a public Roman Bath or is it Messalina's House of Fun?

We had better close the drapes and not find out.

The bathing pool in better times. A tribune is consoled with vino,
served by one of the servants at the bath house. A senator appears to 
be negotiating for something that he shouldn't be doing.

The Roman City Continues to Grow

I have now built 15 buildings and six feet of Roman aqueducts since the beginning of February 2025 and I have been rather amazed to see how this project has grown from a village to a larger town and now into a city with each new addition.

The new Roman Bath is located in the lower right corner.

I added a narrow side street that runs parallel to the forum square.

The dock area is a "what if" type of set up just so that I could see what it might
look like. I won't have enough room in my vehicle to take the docklands to Historicon.

The view of the city looking from the Triumphal Arch towards the Temple of Athena.
The new bath house is located in the upper left corner to the left of the temple.

Another view of the town from the same point of view as the previous picture.

And finally, nearly all of the civilian figures that populate this Roman city are 1/30 scale (60mm) figures from King & Country of Hong Kong. Some of KC's new civilian releases arrived the other day and now I have over 80 civilians roaming around the streets of my city. The population is certainly growing!

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