Month: January 2025

One of the most commonly seen features in the Battle of Pavia artwork is the Pavia city walls. In order to give my game context, I wanted to capture some of the key features including the city walls and park walls. I have just completed the city walls and I am now working on the park walls (which will be a feature of an upcoming blog post). This post concentrates on the city.

The above image from the Pavia tapestries shows the look of the city that I was trying to capture. The main features are the large gatehouse on the left, the city walls with smaller towers and the large towers with battlements throughout the city. I also wanted to capture the color.

At Historicon 2022 I put on the Battle of Ravenna. This battle took place outside the city and I decided to create the city itself as a backdrop to the game. I used walls from a company called Table Top World out of Croatia. They are excellent resin cast models. To save cost these walls formed the basis of the walls for Pavia. They may not be identical to the Pavia walls but they were close enough for my needs. In a previous post I covered how I painted and weathered the walls.

As you will notice from the above photo, the walls were limited in extent and did not have a gatehouse. The main reason is that Table Top World do not produce a gatehouse compatible with the period. Their gatehouse is fantasy based.
Inside the city I had buildings which I will use again for Pavia.

Walls and gatehouse

For Pavia, I wanted to increase the size of the city and include a gatehouse. I found a 3D print called Port Winterdale gatehouse. It was available in 28mm but was much too small for what I needed. A 3D printer that I use managed to scale it up to give the effect I was looking for. I then painted and weathered it in line with the other walls. I also bought additional walls and small towers from Croatia.

In the above image you can see the effect of scaling up the gatehouse. I places a 28mm SteelFist pikeman in the entrance for scale. In person the gatehouse does give the imposing visual that I am looking for.

The above image shows the increased length of the city walls, they occupy the best part of a 4′ x 6′ terrain mat.

Towers

The other item in the Pavia tapestries that I wanted to represent was the tall towers with battlements that stand over the city. Charlie Foxtrot models do a nice tower with a Pantile roof in mdf. I really liked the model but towers were not tall enough for my walls and the roof wasn’t what I was looking for. The owner agreed to sell me the towers without the roof section but with two extra middle sections for each tower to raise the height. I purchased three towers from them.

I then had a tower top scaled and printed from a Norman Fort 3D print. This fitted perfectly on the mdf tower. I then spackled and sanded the walls to get the texture I was looking for.

The work in progress is shown above, with the finished painted and weathered model shown below. I kept the same color scheme as the city walls.

The image below shows how the towers rise above the city walls. The combination of the walls and the towers achieved the appearance that I was looking for. I have two of the towers completed and plan to complete the third next week.

Closing thoughts

When I put the Pavia city walls on the table at Historicon I will populate the inside with buildings and figures from my existing collection in the same way that I did for Ravenna.

Overall I am very happy with the way the city is turning out. I know that a lot of people plan to run Pavia as a game next year. I don’t know if my city of Pavia will be the largest amongst those put on the table, but I suspect that it will be in the top five. If someone does something larger, I can’t wait to see it.

The next blog post will be on either the park walls or the Landsknecht pike blocks. I am working on both at the moment and I am not sure which will be finished first.

As a bonus image or two here is the pontoon bridge from the Pavia tapestries. It was created from 3D printed boats and some cut and weathered balsa wood.

The Castello Mirabello is a central feature of the Battle of Pavia, with most of the battle taking place around the building. I therefore decided that making Mirabello for Pavia was important and that using a generic building would not give me the look I wanted. Unfortunately no manufacturer currently makes a model suitable for Mirabello, which left scratch building as the only option. This post details how I constructed Mirabello.

Reference photos.

The buildings at Mirabello consist of a main building, outhouses, walls, a gate and a moat. Unfortunately only the main building exists today. A photo of this building was the main source material.

This photo set the main layout of the building. However, it looks like stucco was originally on the building as shown in the attached drawing.

This drawing also shows the outbuildings which I still need to construct. In addition to this drawing, many of the art pieces of the period also show an observatory. Probably the most famous is the Pavia Tapestry image.

The tapestry also set the color palette for the building.

Making Mirabello for Pavia.

I decided to construct the main building using foam as the base structure. The doors and window frames were purchased from “Things from the Basement“. They also cut me a piece for the balcony frontage. These were all custom parts. I would recommend this company for all mdf laser cut parts.

I contacted a local 3D printer to make the pantile roof. One recommendation is to buy the roof first and then make the building to fit it. I have found that 3D pantile roofs are a very easy option rather than try to make pantile roofs from scratch.

The balcony was a combination of a laser cut part backed by foam.

The building after the windows, doors and roof are added is shown below. This photo shows a temporary assembly to test the fit of the parts.

The next stage was to texture the building, the first thing that I did was to fix some brick paper in several locations. These would show through spaces where I left off the texture.

The next stage was to use spackling to texture the surface. This texture was added by hand, allowed to dry and then sanded down.

The building was then painted and weathered. As a base coat I used Vallejo German Camo Beige. I then dry brushed with Vallejo White Grey. Finally I used a Vallejo powder of European Earth. This last powder was applied sparingly, but it rally brings the building to life. Lastly, on the south wall I used a dark green wash sparingly in places to add algae to the walls.

Building the observatory.

The observatory was built using two different 3D printed buildings purchased from Etsy. The first was entitled Minature Arcane Dome. It is a very sci-fi type dome and I had to sand off many of the rivets from the roof. However, it provided a great top of the observatory tower. Below is a picture of the building after sanding and priming.

The base of the structure was another 3D building from Etsy entitled Harbour Watch Tower. This was a turreted tower. I removed the top of the turret and used the rest as a base. To join the buildings I needed a sloped surface as shown in the Pavia Tapestry. I constructed this slope from foam and finished the surface with spackling.

The finishing of the making of Mirabello for Pavia

The following two photos show the finished buildings. I still need to do the outbuildings, gate and moat. The overall building length is about 13″.

The making Mirabello for Pavia was really my first attempt at scratch building structures. I think that it turned out quite well. It is a little larger than most commercially available buildings, but will form a good centre piece for the battle of Pavia.