Siege Testing - (1) Town Planning

I have a little spare time available, and today I received a shipment of what originally was intended to be an interim solution for the matter of trenches, but the interim solution seems so good that it may become a more permanent solution - I'll say more about this in a later episode...

Since all my reading and scribbling notes have only gone a little way toward developing a working ECW siege game, I think the time is right to set something up on the tabletop and try some ideas out. This is not really going to be a proper game, I hasten to add - merely an extended test of ideas - but I have a few days to work on it.

View over the formidable Bridgegate, looking west - the dodgy-looking suburb
outside the Stockgate is an immediate issue for a military governor, I would say
- it will have to be cleared - this is where trouble starts if the mayor owns
the land. Note the mighty Duke's Sconce defending the North Road.

Tonight I set out a fortified town - tomorrow I'll have to work out the population and the appropriate size and composition for a garrison, estimate what size of attacking force is needed and allocate engineers to the two sides.

It is not a real town - it has a couple of features I borrowed from Chester and Carlisle - it may develop a proper identity later on.

View of the North Wall, seen from the direction an enemy will approach! The
medieval walls, as you will see, have no earthworks to protect them (this is the
situation Newcastle was in in 1644 when the Scots arrived).

With a bit of luck, the backbone of an ECW siege game should be adaptable for Napoleonic sieges without too much grief. I have fiddled about with sieges for some years now, without managing to produce a best-selling siege game - that's why you have never heard of me.

View across the Market Cross, inside the Stockgate, with St Thomas' church in
the distance and the Old Barbican back left. A prosperous town? - I think it will
declare for the King...

More soon...