Karl needs a vacation in the Tirol!

Last year at Historicon I ran two games set in the Tyrol, for that, I needed some Tirolese buildings.

Being unable to find anything I liked at any reasonable price, I made my own!

All of the buildings were framed out with foamcore walls, held together with pins and white glue.

The wooden exteriors were added with cuts from craft sticks.

The "stucko" was made buy spreading spackling compound on top of the foam core (for the first building I used sanded Grout, but that was both difficult to work with and very heavy!)



Farmhouse and barn; I looked at lot of pictures of buildings from the Tyrol.



I had a pack of assorted resin windows and doors I had bought years ago, and finally had a use for!

The roof of the spire, similar to one seen on a small village church in those photos, was made from cardboard, overlaid with paper towels soaked in diluted white glue; the green is supposed rto be the verdigris of aged copper.

The base structure of the roof was made of sheets of craft wood.

Commercial plastic "wood shakes" seets were cut and glued (with difficulty) on top of the wooden roofs. 

The one thing I didn't have time to do before Historicon last year was to weather the roofs. I finally got around to doing that last week, and it improved all of the buildings immensely
.

It takes a Village!


ADD 7/28/2020:  I knew I had taken some p[pictures of the construction process, but I couldn't find them when I was creating this post. Then today I was cleaning out old pictures from my phone, and found them!

Basic plan for the 4 walls of 2 buildings drawn onto foamboard.

The four main buildings cut out, and the wall assembled using white glue and pins to hold the structures together (the Church was a later addition). 

Roofs made of thin craft wood from Michael's craft stores. 

Windows and doors made of thin wood and glued on.

Timbered sections added from strips of craft sticks. Later, the stucko was added , as seen in the final versions, plus sheets of roof shingles and  ridge poles made of wood handles of cotton tipped applicators. 

Caldiero 1805: Turn 3, First Austrian Initiative. 2nd Austrian and french Initiatives

 Karl eagerly anticipates a 6 card run of initiative... and promptly turns a LULL; Massena cannot capitalize on the opportunity, but still! Schrecklich!

ARTILLERY FIREPOWER; ordinarily a blessing on the defense, but almost all of the Austrian Artillery is out of action now, so not much better than a Lull! 

 The sole remaining (!) Austrian battery shoots to no effect, and reloads. 

MELEE; "Ach du lieber!", another card the Austrians cannot make much use of!

O'Reilly's light Cavalry decide "What the heck", and charge down the Verona highway at the Italian infantry in square. The square shoots at its attackers, but fails to impact them.

The cavalry doesn't get a bonus for initiating melee when attacking a square, but the infantry does get a reduction for being attacked by 2 units. The Cavalry score a marginal success in round 1, and both sides become Disordered.  

 Round 2 sees another marginal win by the cavalry.

Round 3 is tied, no effect.

 Round four sees the square repulse the cavalry with minor losses.

Melees with squares only end when 1) the attacker is repulsed, 2) the square suffers a Routed result, or 3) the square is eliminated. 

LEADERSHIP; OK, not a bad card, but Karl really really needs a MOVE to salvage anything from his position. 

Nothing gained.  

 Nicht.

 "Auf wiedereshen, Eichhörnchen!"

Keine Freude!

GM Wentzel tries to rally these troops before they leave the table (the lack of MOVE cards has the perverse benefit that they have been frozen at the table edge for a long time); he does riding tricks, while singing Opera, and then moons the hated French. Despite his (three) Daring Deeds, the men are unimpressed, and continue to do the shuffle of to Rufalo!

Almost unnoticed, GM Wentzel  is killed in the process of his over the top antics.

(Daring Deeds are Dangerous Deeds!)

Order restored to the beleaguered Grenadiers. 

Rout, rout rout for the home, team!

Overview of the crumbling Austrian defensive position on the Northern ridge. 

View of the entire Northern half of the field; even the troops to the far North are in Disorder. 

TACTICAL ADVANTAGE. Six cards and almost nothing to show for them.

Das pisst mich an! curses Karl, as he saves the card for later use. 

The whitecoats win the initiative; will they be able to do anything with it? 

MELEE. Karl decides not to try attacking the square again, and no other units can use this card.

 ARTILLERY FIRE again; could he get worse cards than these? 

May as well throw in the TA... which makes no difference at all!

Overview from the South... 

and from the North.

 Massena gets an ARTILLERY FIRE of his own.

 Miss!

Having started loaded, the battery fires a second time, also to no effect!

The horse battery drives the Hussars off.  

 Nuthin' doing here!

INFANTRY FIRE; definitely useful; many French units reload. 

Firing to effect here. 

 From one grenadier to another, with love - the Austrians are routed from their defensive position. 

The same for the last remaining unit on the front line of the Northern ridge. 

It is just not a good day to be wearing a white coat!