A vexing Vauban venture pt 1

After many months with ruler and compass, I have finally taken the first step towards building a section of Vauban fortress to grace the corner of the occasional 6mm WSS battlefield. Not only does the complexity of these works make for a design challenge, the well-documented short comings of many models weighs on my mind – for instance see this TMP thread.

I was very interested to see the approach being taken by The Kingdom of Wittenberg in their excellent Fortress Fever posts. Particularly good to see such efforts pit into the Glacis which would seem to overcome must of the criticism of other models.

I took to the shed today and had a first attempt at cutting a bastion from a nice piece of cedar I have been holding onto for years. The initial plan is to construct a modular Vauban fortification mostly for the fun of it at present but also with the impending publication of Vauban Wars ruleset.

I have begun with a bastion to see if I can overcome some of the modelling issues I will face with managing the issues associated with getting the wall height to look right in conjunction with ditch and glacis. Here's the results of the first day's efforts with some bases of 6mm Baccus figures and buildings thrown in to give a sense of scale.

 My first impressions is the wall is too tall but I'm working on the bedding this down into the terrain considerably.

You can see the proposed height for the bottom of the ditch roughly marked on the outer edge of the bastion in the photograph below.

Using cedar for the construction has proved quite a success at least at this initial stage. It is so easily worked with hand tools for the initial cutting into shape and the parapet was then formed freehand with a router. It also has the advantage of being quite strong, yet light. The only struggle I'm having is the ex-joiner inside me keep thinking how nice this would look well sanded up and oiled, but I know I should give it a faux masonry skin!