Blood & Plunder: Port Gun Battery

It has been close to a year since I last posted here, which is a bit of a shock really; the reasoning behind a lack of posts is not through a lack of playing games although. I'm glad to say it is the complete opposite and that I'm playing more games now than ever, just not as much war gaming as I'd like to, more role playing and board gaming. Sometimes a skirmish game comes along although that really grabs my attention and wants me to drop everything else and get building and playing. Enter Blood & Plunder.

Blood & Plunder, from Firelock Games, is a 28 mm historical miniatures war game set in the 17th century during the golden age of piracy. Not only are the rules innovative and clever, but they have a great range of period miniatures to support it and an amazing selection of resin ships. One of the first posts on this blog was concerning piracy and ships, so it's a subject close to my gaming heart. I've yet to actually play a game of Blood & Plunder but from what I've seen it ticks every box for me, with streamlined and convincing ship combat.

I have decided to run demonstration games of Blood & Plunder at MOAB in October with some mates, because I really want to show off this system and want it to do well in Australia. So thoughts have immediately turned to a table layout and the necessary terrain. Because we will be demoing both land and sea combat we need a combined land/sea table.

Part of that table planning led me to design a small gun battery. What follow are the steps I took in it's construction. Enjoy.

The finished gun battery

Draw a 1:1 template

Cut out the template - base piece and walls

Cut out the blue foam and scribe the brickwork. I use a cake decorating stencil that I press into the foam

Apply the brickwork to the entire sections and both sides

Use the template to mark the angles of the wall and use guides to cut the foam

This did prove tricky and I used a combination of method. Forgot I had a diamond saw and next time I'd try that

Apply texture to the brickwork, by first scribing deeper cuts in the foam and...

...then applying texture with a rock or aluminum foil ball and press down some individual bricks

Dry fitting all the parts together - there was a lot more gaps then I'd care for

Testing the cannon placement

Cut out the platform - I just used Styrofoam because it would be totally encased

Cut the bastions for the cannons.I also made a brickwork floor, which I later decided to ditch

Glue all the pieces to together and pin them. Fill the gaps with filler (a lot of filler)

I had to fill quite a few gaps but it all looked ok when painted

Fix down the distressed wooden stirrers for the guns to sit on

I decided to go with a dirt floor - sand the area with pva and water

Paint and add grass

I used varying shades of grey on a black undercoat.

My gun battery is supposed to be sitting in the sea, so I left the base a little darker/wetter

And there it is, a port gun battery. If you have any questions don't hesitate to comment below.

Here is the accompanying port wall and gibbet.

Also please don't forget that Blood & Plunder's current Kickstarter No Peace Beyond the Line is in it's final days and is well worth looking at. It caters to some new factions, but someone wanting to get into Blood & Plunder can still benefit from pledging.