Building Better Communities - Japan

Slowly my villages are coming along. They will look more impressive when deployed on the battle field, but this will give you some idea anyway.

My Japanese village is coming along nicely. I think I have sufficient houses now, but still have some wall sections on order awaiting delivery. I don't expect to be adding beyond that, but we'll see. (Again, it's a low priority, but if something interesting appears, I might think about it.)

For my village, I have the options of one samurai's house (the building I have put the walls around), three residential dwellings (with the red tiled roof - yes, I know. Only two are in this photo - the paint on the third was still drying when I took this), a candle shop and a small inn for travellers, and several wall sections, plus a gate of course.

This village should be in action next weekend, as my Japanese army fights my Poles as part of the Pike and Shot tournament I started back in January. I need to get this competition over with so I can move on to my next project for the year.

My major building project for the rest of the year will be an Arabic village that I can also use for early "middle east" battles ("Middle East) covering from Egypt (actually from Carthage, even further west) across to Persia. That's going to be a BIG one.

Building Better Communities - Eastern Europe

Slowly my villages are coming along. They will look more impressive when deployed on the battle field, but this will give you some idea anyway.

I now have a nice big "community meeting house" for my early European (mostly German and further east) villages, to go with a sizable collection of small residential houses, so I think I can assemble a pretty impressive looking village on the tabletop.

These buildings will get a lot of use, as I have so many Germanic, Russian and "countries in between" armies that these will be suitable for. Maybe other special buildings can still be added, but I'm happy with what I currently have, so adding to this collection will be a low priority.

Building Better Communities - Celts

Slowly my villages are coming along. They will look more impressive when deployed on the battle field, but this will give you some idea anyway.

My Celtic vilage now comprises one residential dwelling and three store houses for the clan's food. Plus, some fencing to surround the village.

I want to add two more residential dwellings. For a small clan, all buildings might be inside the perimeter fence, or there may be no fence at all. For a larger village, perhaps only the storage huts will be inside the pallisade, with the residential dwelling outside. If there were enough of them, "streets" might begin to appear - not as well paved as Roman (or modern) roads of course, but certainly you could see a distinct pathway.

Hopefully, my collection of buildings for a Celtic village will be complete and fully ready for any tabletop battles I may require it for by the end of June.

Busy weekend - photos to follow!

Except for limbers, my Austria Seven Years War Battalion guns are now done. Just need to take the photos for the blog and book.

Also finished painting my meeting house for my East European villages that will be part of battles featuring East European armies. Also have added a third store house to my Celtic village (two more homesteads to do and that will probably be it), and painted some more walls for my Japanese village.

My various townships are looking in pretty good shape.

April project will be the second infantry unit for my Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth army, to finish that off, then on to Great Northern War Russian and Swedish armies for most of the rest of the year.

Lots still to do!!!