Rorkes Drift - Buildings Finished... Groundwork started

A few months back I posted some pictures of the Warlord Games Rorkes Drift buildings I had acquired -

more pictures here.

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/zulu-wars-rorkes-drift-project-finished.html

At the time I said the project was finished - well it wasn't. To be frank I had only just finished the buildings and wanted to get them out on the table but with hindsight their was still a lot more work to do.

So over the Christmas break I started on finishing these off. First up they were mounted on hardboard and given the usual ground treatment - static grass, foliage etc.

The Store house

The Hospital

The roofs were painted matt black and then drybrushed grey. I think this looks much better than the untreated fur look used previously.

Now having finished the buildings I thought it might be a bit of fun to lay out the defences. Using a map I found on the internet (see below) it was relatively straight forward to configure the bits I have into the set up below.

Of course nothing is ever really finished in the Shed and I have decided to build some bespoke boards for the defences at Rorkes Drift. Many of the reports read that the Northern defence mealie bag wall actually sat along the top of a low rocky embankment. Further investigation suggests that the defence sat on a terrace slightly above ground level.

So using a few precut mdf boards I have glued down some 20mm polystyrene to build up the terrace. This will incorporate the embankment along the northern wall and it will slope gently away on the southern.

The Map above shows the main frontages of the attacks - why the main attack would come in from the South and then sweep round and attack the higher northern wall is something I am going to need to investigate further.   

The picture below gives the right impression of the embankment & mealie bag wall

This weekend I'll get the filler onto these boards and then the serious groundwork can begin,

Oh yes - did I say this all has to be finished in 2 weeks ...