Almansa 1707 - 2mm Army Camps

A while ago, well back in early 2023, Reject Richard made some Army Camps, for his 30 Years War figures, here.

I thought they looked rather snazzy, so thought I'd make something similar for my 2mm Battle of Almanza project

Now being 2mm you'd have thought they wouldn't take too long to plan out and paint up, but I've been working on the 2 army camps for far too long, they shouldn't have taken me 6 months to complete but they have!! I suppose the 2 stays in hospital this year haven't helped?

First up, we have the French camp

All the figures on both camps are from the excellent Irregular Miniatures

On the base we have a few tents???? some infantry on parade, with a few Officers watching on. I added some supply wagons bringing in some garlic and onions and a base of the horses that I posted a few weeks ago.

The red coats will tell you that this camp is for the English and allies. 

We also have loads of tents, 2 smaller regiments of line on parade, a base of cows which again was posted a few weeks ago, and a few supply wagons too!

In this pic, I've added a unit of English foot for scale, both camps are based on a random shaped mdf bases, that I picked up on facebook from John Banks and are approx 5 inch square.

 I added a hill to each of the bases covered in woods just to add a little scenery and colour. I also added a large pond, again just to break the base up. I keep saying this.....hopefully we'll see these out in Posties Shed sometime soon? You never know.?

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Spanish Chuch

My painting has slowed down recently, but I did manage to get this wonderful Brigade Models Mediterranean Church finished.

Its quite big as you can see by the pics, so its probably more a Cathedral size?

It was too big to go on the 40x40 town bases, so I thought I'd make a feature of it. Giving it walls and a graveyard.

Which are all made from card!

And can come out, if you wanna place a stand of troops in the area.

The gravestones are a little large for 2mm. I did try to cut them smaller, but it just didn't look right, so I stuck with the over sized gravestones and tombs. Which I think was the better idea.

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Blockhouses

 

Technically, I don't need these luvvly Brigade Models Blockhouses for my Almansa project, but I just couldn't pass the up. 

You get 4 different buildings in a pack for the rather nice price of £1

Check them out at this Link

I originally based up a ew of them on a 20mm round base, but thought about it again and glued 6 of the 8 onto

some slate chippings.

I painted them up in the same way I painted the hill for my castle a few posts ago.

I'm not sure how they would be used in a game, but will probably be more tabletop decoration, than anything else.

For the final 2 buildings, I based them onto odd shaped card bases, on top of little foam hills.

Look out for more Almansa terrain items over the coming week.

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Roads

 

There's a fair bit of road need to try and recreate the battle of Almansa as you can see from above. So the question was how am I gonna try and make this and try and keep it cheap?

Reject Richard used lollypop stick for his 2mm roads, which looked brilliant, see below.

 

But at first they caused a few arguments, as we leant over the tabletop, some of the roads were pushed out of place, causing gaps to appear where they shouldn't be. So a un-named blogger suggested cutting up some small pieces of felt and glue them to the bottom of the stick, to make them stick to Posties terrain tiles. This worked!

So I had the thought of dumping the 100 odd lolly sticks I'd already bought and go straight to the felt idea.

I bought a few different shades of brown felt from Hobbycraft and went with a light brown in the end, I heavily dry brushed the sheet with the same colour paint I used for my bases, then dry brushed a lighter brown over, stuck on some 1mm flock to some edges, just to create that road look. I did try to add the odd bush, but they kept falling off, I tried using superglue, which stuck the bushes down but, it tended to leach around the bush an leave a stain.

Scale wise they should be probably be a little thinner, but I think that'd be a bit too fiddly. You might as well use string, like I've seen some 2mm gamers use. So I stuck with the width of a lollypop stick.

I did say cheap, I only used 2 sheets of A4 felt and I've probably got enough road to last me a lifetime, and all for 99p a sheet! And it sticks to Posties tiles like you know what to a blanket!!!

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Spanish/Mediterranean Buildings

 

I've got the castle, so needed some normal homes and houses. Brigade Models make a range of excellent 2mm Mediterranean buildings, so these were my first choice and at £6.25 for 20 mixed buildings you can't go wrong.

I also bought some Roman buildings too and used the more modern buildings to add to the collection. I'm not sure if Almansa had a town square, but my Almansa does! 

Then I saw the recently released  2/3mm Greek buildings from Irregular Miniatures by Geoff Addison and realised that some of the buildings would fit in very nice with the Brigade models. The Fountain in the town square above is from this collection, based on some sandpaper.

I liked the look of Reject Richard's 2mm buildings, he painted up for his French Wars of Religion, so I based mine up on the same sized base as his, 40 x 40. And based then to look a little like a street like Richard did. So if need be we can borrow each others for our games.

Here they are in all their splendour around Almansa Castle. With a base of  2mm Spanish infantry for scale.

There's loads more terrain to come!

Almansa 1707 - 2mm Almansa Castle

 

After finishing the two opposing armies for my Almansa 1707 project, I thought I better start making some terrain. The first thing on my mind was whether or not to make Almansa Castle, as it didn't feature in the battle, the Franco-Spanish army set their battle lines with their back to it. But as the armies are in 2mm and there's a lot of room for terrain I thought why the hell not!

Almansa Castle resides on an elongated rocky, craggy mass rising out of the plain on the north edge of the city of Almansa, in the province of Albacete in what is now called Castilla La Mancha. It is speculated that both a Roman fort and a Moorish fortress occupied the site before the conquest in Almansa by James I 'the Conqueror', the King of Aragon, in 1255. He ceded Almansa to the Knights Templar, and it is very likely they constructed some sort of the castle on the rocky summit before they were discredited and suppressed in 1312. Much of the castle as we see it today was built by Don Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena (1282- ), about 1346. He was extremely wealthy and powerful, and chose writing as his vocation and greatest claim to future fame.

In 1444 King Juan [John] II granted Almansa, and the surrounding area in southeastern Spain, to Alfonso Téllez Girón y Vázquez de Acuña (d. 1449), a Castilian soldier and nobleman of Portuguese origin. He passed Almansa on to his son, Juan Fernández Pacheco y Téllez Girón, generally known as Don Juan Pacheco (1419-1474), 2nd Marques of Villena, who added the tall rectangular donjon and other sections to the castle. In 1469 when Princess Isabella married Fernando [Ferdinand] II, King of Aragon, and the War of Castilian Succession soon followed, Juan Pacheco sided with Juana of Castile, known as la Beltraneja (bastard daughter of King Henry IV), in a losing cause.

Beginning in the 16th century, the castle was in a continuous state of gradual deterioration, though it was used by troops of the Duke of Berwick in 1707 during the War of Spanish Succession. Berwick commanded the troops of the Philip V, Bourbon claimant to the Spanish throne, against his Habsburg rival, Archduke Charles of Austria. Clearly outnumbered, Berwick won what has been described as "the single most important battle fought in Spain". The castle had so deteriorated by 1919 that the mayor of Almansa requested permission to demolish it. A report by the Royal Academy of History resulted in the ruin not only being saved, but declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument in 1921. Several restoration projects have resulted in the castle being an important and stunning tourist attraction.

So back to my model after the history lesson.

I didn't have much to go on, apart from modern photos online, but found this plan below, so I tried to copy it the best I could with various Castle bits and bobs from the great selection of Modular Castles at Brigade Models. Unfortunately its made as to how the castle looks today, not in its heyday or in 1707. I just couldn't find the info. I was helped by Julián, who recreated the battle using converted Playmobile figures.  His Facebook site is called PlayAlmansa Espana, check it out.

Its nowhere near an exact copy, and is slightly too big, but hey ho, this is 2mm after all.

The map's great but I couldn't work out the scale, so I took a quick look on Google earth, very close to the castle is a football pitch, so I based the scale from the normal size of a football pitch, 110x70 yards or 100 x 64 metres

The hill is made from layers of purple foam cut about to try and simulate the mount, based on a plasticard base.

I covered the mount with layers of Polyfiller to sculpt the terrain.

I did mean to do a few shots after everyday of how I was progressing, but kept forgetting, so here's 1 pic to give you an idea???

Do check out Brigade Games 2mm scale buildings, they make some fantastic terrain items. I've bought quite a bit and will be showing some other stuff over the next couple of weeks.

Well I'm rather pleased with it, even if its not 100% correct or even the right size, but I won't tell

 anyone if you don't???

Almansa 1707 - Spanish - Silly's Brigade

 

Silly by name Silly by nature!!!

And here we are, the last brigade for my Almansa project,  as the war was called the Wars of Spanish  Succession, I thought it only fitting that the last brigade are Spanish.

Even though I'm posting the last brigade in June, I actually painted and based them back in the middle of May. Which means its only taken me 6 months to paint all the units, which I think is pretty good going.

Why has he circled 2 brigades you ask?

Well they were both part of Silly's brigade, you can also see that Silly's brigade were formed on the right under Lt Gen Duque de Popoli.

Making up Silly's brigade were...

4 squadrons of Pozoblanco

4 squadrons of Guardias de Corps

and lastly

3 squadrons of Rosellon Nuevo

The flags are all from the earlier Nine Years War period, although the Burgundian Cross above was most probably used by all units.

So there we have it, now onto some buildings and terrain!!!