My 2019 Project - Siege of Rhodes 305BC

I've decided on my project for 2019 and settled on the Siege of Rhodes 304 / 305 BC.

This came about because I saw the Little Wars TV video of their Siege of Carthage on You Tube, which caught my interest. So, I got a digital copy of their rules Age of Hannibal which I had printed and took with me on a weekend away for a bit of reading.

Age of Hannibal includes a very workable, quick play set of siege rules and that got me thinking...

I could do a siege game for Little Wars Melbourne 2019 (no relation the the You Tube channel) and also put it on for my club's open day. But which siege?

In the video they use some ancient galleys for a landing... Hmmm... I have little ancient galleys. They also use 6mm figures. I don't have any of those. All my ancients are 15mm.

So I set out to get some 6mm. I ordered some in October from a company which I won't name - Because I still haven't got them yet!!! (mid December). I also put in an order from Baccus last week but I don't expect them to arrive until after Christmas or early in the new year.

However, I visited to Eureka yesterday and bought some Irregular 6mm because I'm keen to try my hand at painting them. Nic at Eureka also pointed out their siege engines and ladders, so I got some of those too.

Here's my first try at painting 6mm. The first unit I painted are the red heavy infantry. They were a challenge and I really had to force myself away from detail and that's not as easy as it sounds when you're use to painting detailed 15's & 28's. But that unit only took one evening of painting. The second lot (theurophoroi) I knocked over this afternoon.

My first 6mm test on 50mm x 40mm bases.

And this evening I did some siege engines. This scale really is easy and fast to paint.

As for the naval aspect, I intend to use my 1:1200 scale ancient galleys. The scale is off compared to 6mm but with the land part of the battle on one end of the table and the naval aspect at the other I'm hoping for a forced perspective type of effect with the ships basically acting as counters (in a 3d ship type of way).

But I'll have to get my hands on some more ships to create a siege tower mounted on a pair of roped together, triremes.

I've also been scouring the internet for a detailed map of Ancient Rhodes. That's not an easy task and the best I've come up with so far are these:

This one is a screen shot from a you tube video about the siege by Kings & Generals

I like this painting. Sorry I don't remember where I got this from.

It looks more like the Medieval city but gives a good general idea for the harbour.

As for the city walls. I've looked at various possibilities and spoken with several people. I bought a pdf of paper walls but I'd prefer something more substantial. I could make them myself but that would mean casting them and I don't really want to do that. Or I could make them from balsa wood and cork. I don't really want to do that either. I've been speaking to Mike Parker at Battlefield Accessories about making them out of mdf but I'll have to see about that after Christmas.

During a Google image search I saw this website . This is the sort of effect I'd like to achieve.

Anyway, that's my plan. I'll keep posting updates as I go.