Morituri te Salutant. Part 7

Close to the end.

I really wanted to add sunshades or Velarium, to my Coliseum but because I also wanted to be able to split the model apart it would not be possible to have a weighted ring acting as a counterweight.

I looked back at the rigging I had done for my Blood and Plunder ships and decided to twist lengths of wire together to imitate rope.   From those I could simply attach material beneath it to look like a shade cloth.

I used small heart shaped beads and BBQ skewers, cut down to size, to bend the wire ‘ropes’ over.

I anchored the wires to the base by drilling holes and screwing the wires into place.

The base was finished with sand and painted with sand-coloured paints from rattle cans.

A few scattered grass tufts and a couple of figures finished the base off.

on fabric, however I found that it frayed a lot.  I toyed with the idea of using fabric glue to hem around the edges, but figured I was just too lazy to do that.

A trip back to the haberdashery and I found an alternative material that I was reliably informed would fray less.

With that I cut 4 sections of material to fit around as awnings.

2 longer pieces that would be firmly and permanently attached and 2 smaller pieces that I would hide a small wire frame beneath that could be removed to take the Colosseum apart.

For the arena floor I used thin hexagonal MDF bases glued to an oval of MDF.  I then lightly covered the surface with sand and painted it to match the rest of the ground covering.

I then based up some Gladiators to use so I can start play-testing my version of the rules.

The fighters are mounted on 40mm Hexes, and the arena floor is slightly larger at 45mm.

I have kept the actual fighting area reasonably small, just 8 hexes at its longest point.  I will add some scenery elements to separate hexes so that they can be moved around and add extra strategic elements.  The scenery should come in handy when fighting against Sagittarius (Bow armed) gladiators.