Building a 'Charge the Breach' gaming table

For the last couple of days Gavin over at Barking Irons has been looking into producing a breached wall for use in a Flintloque scenario/game, in addition there has been comments and posts over an the Flintloque Yahoo site The Notables - I have produced this simple pen sketch showing my own design for a 2foot x 2foot gaming table featuring a breach in a Spanish/Peninsular defensive wall.

I would suggest that the table could be enlarged to 2'6" x 2'6" or build to suit an existing board. I would build the two complete wall sections from Blue Foam, with the stonework carved and later textures with a sharp pencil and a broken rock from the garden (press the sharp edges of the broken rock in to the Blue Foam to add surface detail).

The rubble would be built on top of a foam former and detailed with Blue Foam stones, rubble from the garden, sand and fine gravel.

Painting would be simple - pale creams and light browns, with some greenery, mainly tufts of pale grass spread over the exposed ground (try using pale paintbrush hairs pressed in to small holes and sealed with uPVA glue).

The whole scenario would be played around the wall breach and as such there would not be a need for a huge table or loads of superfluous terrain, in this case 'less really does mean more!'

For added interest why not include half buried Ferach Elves in the rubble or gabbions, strewn across the rubble, I have seen a number of (54mm) single figure and vignettes that use this technique, it would also add some colour to an otherwise bare board.

A simple attach the breach or Forlorn Hope scenario could be played twice (swap the attacker defender roles and see how well you can attack a breach). A further suggestion would be to use the game as a means of gaining promotion or man the barricades with civilians and soldiers to add interest.

Tony