Boxer Rebellion part 2

Greetings my friends. We are here at the second entry for my Boxer Rebellion project. I have started to lay out my buildings and walls to see how everything fits and I have to say that I am very pleased with the results.

The first view is looking towards the main wall with the British Legation on the right and the Soo Wang Fu on the left. As noted by the bridges, the canal will run directly down the center of the table.

The walls in the foreground are made from thick (1/2") foam core covered with a wallpaper I obtained at a discount store for about $5 a roll. The tops of the walls are made from corrugated cardboard to look like roof tiles. Buildings are mostly made of ceramic and some were obtained from Christmas Village manufacturers.

The above view shows a closer look at the city wall with the Russian Legation in the lower left. Closer to the wall will be the American Legation with the German and Spanish legations. Also in the upper left corner is a temple. This piece was obtained at a pet store for a mere $10.00.

This view shows the numerous Chinese hoses that I made about 12 years ago (good grief was it that long already!). These are made from 1/4" foam core cut into various patterns with doors and windows and then glued together into a myriad of sizes. All the roofs are made from corrugated cardboard that was scored to give the impression of tiles roofs. Very inexpensive and I think very effective. They are all hollow, light weight and durable. The center poles are just pieces of wood dowel.

Some of the buildings scattered about may or may not be used in this game but made it on the table for now to take up spaces or just because I needed a place to put them.

Well more to come soon I hope. I need to finish painting the Japanese Legation and create some movable barricades. So please enjoy and as always comments are welcome.

Good Gaming!

Greg

Boxer Rebellion Project - Too long in the making

Hello to all and I hope that your Holidays were happy and pleasant!
I have decided to start posting a brief history of my ongoing Boxer Rebellion project that focuses on the 55 day siege at Peking. I have always been interested in the historical events where one side no matter how heavily outnumbered or unlikely to survive, manage to pull out the victory and live to fight another day. Examples are of course Roarkes Drift, The Alamo (even though they did not make it) Major Dundee crossing the Rio Grande (oh wait, that's not historical).
So about 20 years ago I decided to do the siege of the Legations in Peking. Over the course of the years I have drawn up maps of the Legation area and translated them onto tables. I have collected books on the subject and even obtained a copy of the official report written by a British officer. I acquired figures from wherever and whenever I could and even have most of them painted!
As you can see from my first picture, I had the grand idea of presenting this game on two tables using the canal as the dividing line (this was actually dry during the time of the siege).

The larger table was to be 5'X12' and the smaller one was to be a ping pong table about 5'X8'. Populating this size of an area would have been a tremendous task and I began to lag behind in completing this project.
But urged on by Bill, one of the 'Gang of Four', our war gaming group, I have begun the process of finishing this project.
First I will compress the Legations onto one table, the 5'X12'. After having done this and added the dry canal to the layout, I will paint up any lacking buildings(about 3 or 4) and add more Boxers to my forces.
Here you can see the table with many of the building just placed anywhere just to get an idea of space. The base for this project are multiple tiles of 3/4" dense foam painted and flocked in grass ground and road surfaces. There are about 32 of these and I will need to modify the center ones to accommodate the canal.
More on the details of this later.

Soon to follow will be pictures of the general layout of the Legations without all the details. Here though are pictures of most of the figures for the game. As mentioned earlier, I have been working on this for many years. The figured are made by Falcon (the old 25mm ones from Medford Massachusetts), Foundry, Richard Houston and Old Glory. There are about 400 Imperial Chinese and 100 Boxers. The Legation forces are naturally much smaller but I think all told there are about 120 of them. Not all figures are shown in these pictures but here is a preview.

Thanks for looking and I will update you as I go along. Special rules and some notes on scenery and figures will also be included.
Take care and good gaming.
Greg