Production on terrain for The Iron Hand of Mars continues apace. One of the locations in the game is an abandoned Roman marching fort, now overgrown. It was left behind in 9AD when the legions of Varus set out to over-winter back on the Roman side of the Rhine.
Standard procedure would have called for its destruction before the homeward march. That it remains intact serves as a chilling indicator that Varus's men thought themselves in friendly territory. They expected to return the following Spring and reoccupy the place. Instead they were ambushed and slaughtered by the German tribes under Arminius.
By the time Marcus Didius Falco arrived in the forest, the defensive ditch was clogged with brambles and the interior of the fort was a dense thicket of saplings.
Obviously I wouldn't have room to represent a whole multi-legion fort on the table so just a corner of the rampart appears on the table edge.
The base is 2mm MDF rescued from the packaging of a framed picture bought on line. The rampart was built from layers of foamcore and all but the ditch received a coating of brown wood filler for texture.
The brambles are rubberised horsehair (an advantage of being married to a traditional upholsterer) glued in place with matt Modpodge over the black-sprayed ditch. A light airbrushing in burnt umber then gave a suitably bramble-like colour.
The rampart got my usual layering of static grass over fine flock. I deliberately let some areas remain as bare earth. This is not a manicured lawn.
Finally I added some vegetation inside the fort. The silver birches are cheap Chinese-made trees tarted up by painting the trunks and dipping the tops in fine flock after a good coat of Modpodge. A few 2mm clumps in mixed colours and clump foliage bushes complete the picture.
In the book, Lindsey Davies indicates a more substantial structure with a rotting wooden palisade. Given the constraints of table space I decided to go with a simpler (and perhaps more believable?) structure for my abandoned fort.
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