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Author Topic: Height for a medieval castle wall  (Read 1929 times)

Offline Dolnikan

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Height for a medieval castle wall
« on: July 02, 2022, 02:46:00 PM »
I'm not entirely sure if this goes here, but I want to build a 28mm scale castle (which will be modular to fit the rest of the terrain system I'm working on). But one issue I'm running into is that it's hard to come up with a good height. Because of the limitations of the foam, the walls will be just over 4 cm thick but I can't find a good ratio anywhere. Does anyone have suggestions for such a thing?

Offline Cubs

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #1 on: July 02, 2022, 03:01:42 PM »
A 'typical' medieval castle wall might be something in the region of 40ft high by 10ft thick, so if your model is using 4cm as the thickness, the height would come out at about 16cm. 
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Offline jon_1066

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #2 on: July 02, 2022, 04:17:09 PM »
Go with what looks right.  At 28 mm scale a “true scale” castle would be so huge as to be unworkable.  So don’t get hung up on such things.

Offline Unlucky General

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #3 on: July 02, 2022, 08:28:44 PM »
Dolnikan,

I don't have any ratios - just a couple of ideas.

If you are relying on the foam core doing all the thickness work you could double them up - near 10mm. Historically (if we are talking post Norman medieval castle building then the walls of large castles were sandwiched (rubble in-filled between two stone walls) so to replicate this you'd be building your foam core walls like tall, thin hollow rectangles. Apologies if this is obvious.

Lastly, if exact proportions aren't important, I'd go for wall heights of about 100mm as it's just past a double height of a 28mm mounted figure, putting the defenders sufficiently out of reach. Just high enough to need ladders or engines to get at the battlements. It should look fine.

Offline valleyboy

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #4 on: July 02, 2022, 08:46:41 PM »
Great question
I wonder what height are the walls of some of the commercially produced walls out there.
I'm going to suggest it should be a few cms higher than the roof apex of any houses you have
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Offline bluechi

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2022, 03:05:04 AM »


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Offline voltan

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #6 on: July 03, 2022, 06:19:54 AM »
One practical way of doing it is to measure how tall a knight holding his lance upright is as that's the minimum you need for a gateway, then add a couple of centimetres on that for the height of the fighting platform.
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Offline tin shed gamer

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #7 on: July 03, 2022, 02:03:53 PM »
The first question to ask is how on earth are you going to store it? Then you can look at what's feasible rather than realistic.
Here's a couple of pictures of my modular castle in use. Although technically it's a Fantasy  building and I mismatched nearly two thousand year's  worth of fortifications ideas into it.
It should give you an idea of the height and its relationship with figures.
The stone section of the walls upto the wooden crenulations is 10cm .It's made to look taller by adding a slight angle to the front face . The Gateway is approximately 22cm to the eaves of the slate roof.
It's not a particularly large Fortification the straight wall sections are only 25cm long.  However with it's keep it has a foot print somewhere in the region five square feet ,and requires two 100ltr boxes to store it.

Offline rampantlion

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #8 on: July 03, 2022, 10:02:17 PM »
Tin Shed Gamer, that is a really nice looking castle.  Did you say that you scratch built it?

Offline tin shed gamer

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #9 on: July 04, 2022, 11:00:15 AM »
Yes it's a scratch build. There's construction and progress pictures somewhere in my Fantasy thread if it's of interest.

Offline Griefbringer

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #10 on: July 05, 2022, 05:59:06 PM »
A 'typical' medieval castle wall might be something in the region of 40ft high by 10ft thick, so if your model is using 4cm as the thickness, the height would come out at about 16cm.

Castle wall 16 cm high would likely be the tallest I would consider as practical for tabletop use, and it would need to be balanced with care to prevent it from falling over (or models toppling from the walls - wooden rail on the inside might help and would be historical).

However, assuming horizontal scale of 1:56 (for 28 mm), it would be equivalent to merely 9 meters height in real world terms. High enough to get me uncomfortable on the top, though not exceptionally tall by medieval standards (before the introduction of artillery).

Offline WitchQueenofAngmar

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #11 on: July 05, 2022, 06:28:41 PM »
For my castle in 28mm, I went with 6" long sections that are 3" deep, and 8" high. In metric, that's 15.24 cm long, 7.62cm deep, and 20.32cm tall. At this scale, it's about 40' high, 15' thick, and 30' long. My reasoning for this was that there's giants and ogres and other tall folk, so the walls would have to be a little taller than in real life where the average was 25' to 35' in height. The sections are 30' long because that's the typical movement speed of dnd/wargaming figures.

The pictures aren't great as it's a WIP, but hopefully the minis show how the scale works.

It's made from 1" insulation foamboard, and the machicolated crenellation is from a 0.5" foam board. The stonework is just from a ballpoint pen scored into the foam.


Offline Griefbringer

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Re: Height for a medieval castle wall
« Reply #12 on: July 06, 2022, 04:25:45 PM »
Thanks for those WIP pictures, they show details that were not visible in the earlier images.

For example, the low lip at the rear of the rampant looks very handy for helping the figures to stay on the top, instead of accidentally falling to the courtyard. Maybe not too historical in style, but it is not too obvious at least from the outside the walls, and seems very useful for practical gaming purposes.

 

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