Building Porto

 As we gear up for our next scenario in Jonathan Jones’ O’er the Hills scenario book I have turned my attention to Porto. If you have ever visited this beautiful city in northern Portugal, you will be familiar with its precipitous location on the gorge carved by the Douro River.

A view of Porto taken from the south bank during our visit in 2017

Although JJ's map does not include the gorge and river, I knew that his specially built table for this scenario did and the pictures of his cliffs with the Bishop’s Seminary perched on the edge (as it still is today, although no longer a seminary) on his blog had stayed with me. However, I wasn’t wanting to make a permanent model of these cliffs but liked the idea of trying to fashion something believable, although temporary, with the terrain I have on hand.

Mr. Jones' beautiful purpose built table, seminary and wine barges for his Porto scenario.

The first problem to solve was how to build a split level table, the lower level being the Douro and the upper level the battlefield. I managed this by raising some of my tables (I have a mishmash of scrounged card tables etc. that I have collected over the years) about 10” above the others and then covering everything with my 2’x4’ masonite boards. The river surface was made simply by laying down my spray-painted plastic fluorescent light box covers and then it was time to tackle the cliffs.

The split level table with "water" in place.

A glimpse beneath the table showing my precarious building techniques. This is why no one would hire me to build their house!!

Years ago my brother-in-law gave me some sheet leading he had scrounged from a demolition site. I have used this a lot over the years, mostly for terraforming beneath my ground sheets. But this time I wanted the leading to serve as the cliffs, so I spray-painted them with one of those faux-stone textured spray paints. They were still a bit too shiny for my liking but thought they would serve.

My indispensable sheet leading. I have no idea where one would get this - a British reader suggested knicking it off the parish church.

These I shaped into the cliffs, also covering a small bit of land representing the south bank of the Douro where Wellington placed his guns. With the cliffs done I laid down my ground cloth (giving the terrain a bit of undulation with my sheet leading underneath (I’m not a fan of the billiard table look) and then had to peel the cloth back to add styrofoam for the raised ground north of the city (which I had over-looked) before replacing it!

Cliffs shaped.

Ground cloth and foliage added, as well as my adjustment to the under cloth terrain I had initially forgotten! I also decided to add a piece of the south shore for the British guns (lower left).

From there I just proceeded with my usual process, starting with bordering the cliffs top and bottom with sphagnum moss, sketching out roads with sand, placing the map terrain (in this case orchards and forests) laying down some flexible cobbled roads I had made previously for the city streets and then placing the city itself.

Table with roads, orchards woods and the town roughed in.

I then broke up the terrain with various squares of fabric I use for fields, edged the roads and fields with velcro strips of foliage that I use as verges and finally added some random walls and enclosures as suggested in the terrain notes for the scenario, especially on the high ground north of the city. 

The finished table after I had built and placed the seminary.

My city used a lot of my building models, and include a few that are more suited to central and northern Europe. But much of Porto is very much a city of grey stone even today, so I was okay with that. What I did lack was a building that would work for the seminary, where much of the fighting takes place, and so, inspired again by JJ’s beautiful seminary building in his own Porto game, decided to purpose build one.

As I say, the actual building still exists today so visual reference was no great problem. But as so often is the case when building wargame buildings for any battle scale above the skirmish level, it’s tricky to create buildings that work in terms of ground covered and still look “right” with the figures. My own technique is to make sure that doors and window sizes are believable while scaling the buildings down from what they should be in reality. 

The seminary as it appears today. The bridge would more or less mirror the route taken by the British when they crossed in the wine barges.

With the seminary, the problem was really a height problem - if I gave it its requisite three floors it would be massive if built in scale with the figures or puny if built in scale with its game foot print. So I opted for two stories, and for simplicity’s sake did not include the chapel on the western wall or the centre section of the seminary. I ended with a seminary-like building which will serve for this battle. To make it look more ecclesiastical I added a religious-looking statue for the front lawn made with an extra priest (blunderbuss removed) from the HaT Spanish Guerillas set glued to a metal nut.

Foam core base structure pinned together.

Windows are now cut out (there were a lot of windows!) and the pieces glued together, with some texturing to give it character and cover my mistakes!

Here it is with the roof made of card. Because nothing I build is ever square (think Homer Simpson and his bird house) the roof proved trickiest, especially as it does not have over hangs so everything needed to fit within the structure. I fudged it.

I then covered the card roof with some corrugated card to simulate tiles.

My ecclesiastical statue, fashioned with a Spanish guerilla priest (without blunderbuss!) stuck on a nut.

The finished building in situ.

Once more inspired by the lovely Douro wine barges that JJ made for his game, I decided to scratch build one of my own. My building method for anything is less than scientific and done more by feel and trial and error than pre-planning. The twists in the hull of this boat would make it decidedly unseaworthy, but it was fun and a challenge to do, and has had a second life as transport in our sea-going D&D campaign. In the final hour I decided it needed a crew member and some passengers, so the first was furnished by a converted HaT Guerilla figure. The passengers were created from some vintage Airfix British, the first Napoleonics I ever bought back in 1973 on a trip to England. They were unceremoniously lopped off at the waist and glued on a piece of styrene so they can be removed in the future, and then speed-painted. Too bad about the Belgic shakos, but time and energy didn’t allow that conversion!

My eleventh hour barge passengers, which I speed-painted.

Here they are painted and on their paddle board. I painted them as the 66th Berkshire, the reinforcing regiment in this scenario.

My guerilla-cum-wine barge steersman.

The passengers in their boat.

My slightly wonky wine barge on the Douro.

Finally, here are a few shots of the finished table, before all the lovely little soldiers arrive to trash it. It was, without doubt, one of the more challenging tables I have tackled although the build time was relatively quick, probably about four hours to assemble, not counting, of course, the time spent on the seminary and wine barge. All the other components I already had and are modular. They were scratch built or scrounged by myself. If you are interested in some of my techniques, there are some links in the navigation bar at the top of this page.

Next to come - the crossing of the Douro battle report!