Constructing The Rock

Building this island fortress is my hobby project for January. When I prepare for something similar, I make detailed drawings until I have a working concept of the thing. In the meantime, I can have some ideas about execution as well.

The island should be about 50-60cm in diameter so it would fit a 4x4' table with enough space for approaching vessels.

The first thing I had to do was look at the photos taken from the game where I used makeshift objects to build the island, and think about recreating these objects for the tabletop.

• The islands and sand banks will be made of pink foam.
• The structures on the fortress will be created with a composite technique, balsa wood core and corkboard outer layer. Corkboard looks very much like stone/brick structures and I had used it in smaller quantity when making buildings for the Neue Böhnstadt colony, the concept is the same.
• The rock itself will be made from pink foam and will have a built-in dungeon where prisoners would be held. This means I can spare some foam for later. I would cover the outside of the rock with snow paste, bits of rock, tree bark and various other stuff. (The snow paste I bought is more like pumice and I mostly used it to fill out figures' bases instead of its real purpose)
• The gun emplacement on the smaller island will most likely be built out of pink foam bricks instead of balsa because the rounded form is easier to do this way.
• The piers and the wooden decking of the port will be made from balsa strips.

So the project now has multiple main pieces that shall be handled and stored separately.

• Three low sand banks
• The base of the main island
• The base of the smaller island
• The small farm
• The port and separate buildings (can be multiple pieces)
• The rotunda
• The fort (with separate walls so it could be a stand-alone structure)
• The barracks
• The rock itself
• The keep on top of the rock
• The surrounding walls on top of the rock
• Two staircases
• A bridge
• I'm also building a pair of small ships for the siege.

Improvements made from the original gaming table:

• The upper tier of the fortifications has a gun emplacement which can cover approaches the rotunda cannot. It should have a pair of smaller guns. 
• The dungeon cut into the rock was not originally there.
• The fortress is a fortress and not just an upper tier. It can only be approached from the port.
• There is a small ledge on the island on the western side where a few palm trees can be placed.