Fortresses in Catalonia (I). La Torre Blava de Vilanova i la Geltrú.

To begin with this series of post, I'll show you this small tower that can be found in Vilanova i la Geltrú. For those of you from outside Spain, Vilanova is a coastal village between Barcelona and Tarragona. It has a good harbour that with those of Palamós (in Girona), Sant Carles de la Ràpita near the Ebro Delta (in Tarragona) and of course Tarragona and Barcelona are the big ones in Catalonia.
During the Third Carlist War (1872-1876) people were scared of possible seaborn carlist raids and several defense towers were built. This one, called La Torre Blava (Blue Tower) or Torre de Ribes Roges is still present and fully reconstructed. It has several rifle pits on its top and i seems to have three different flors. During the Spanish Civil War was used as a watch tower in a defense line of bunkers and trenches.
It was never attacked.

Visiting castles, fortresses and battlefields.

Over the years, I've developed some kind of collectionism disease about visiting castles, fortresses and battlefields. My wife and family are now used to it and know that if we go on vacation we will visit some kind of "inspiration for wargaming shrine". When I got married, my wife and I went to Corsica and apart from mountains, beach and monuments, of course we went to the house were Napoleon was born in Ajaccio and the house were he was living prior to the failed invasion of Sardinia (in Bonifacio) my wife at one point asked me: "Ok, what's wrong between you and Napoleon?". I think that was at that point that she realised the truth behind being married to a wargamer.
I have been lucky enough to have visited some deifferent countries and to live in a place where military heritage from the iberians to the XX century can be found almost everywhere and I have been collecting pictures of all this places. I think that I will post them here to share this trully sources of inspiration with all of you.

Hope you enjoy them.

Upgrading my forest

Several months ago, I published a post explaining how to built cheap trees for wargames. One of the comments I received was something like: nice hula-hoop trees...Well you know, the kind of comments that move you to make things better. I decided to upgrade my trees so I bought a couple of bags of 30oz of woodland scenics polyfiber I glued the fibers onto my trees and I added some leaf effects. All glued with spray glue.
Here I show you the before and the after. Good results with a relative small amount of work.

Free Scenario to download! Baranda 1836 First Carlist War.

After a loong period of no blogging, no painting and no wargaming I'm back with a present to all the community. I'm posting a free wargame scenario for the First Carlist War. This is the first engagement in what was called the Gomez expedition so you can expect more scenarios comming soon. At one time I was willing to do some kind of scenario book but after seeing kingscarbine master work: "All honour is lost" I realized that I need to work really hard.
I think that the orbat (specially the isabellino) is something original, never before published. If you play it and you like it please let me know and if you find something odd or some bad spelling please correct me.
By the way, the map is brother's contribution and he is looking for job so if you work for a design company and know about a vacant...

Here you have the scenario: Baranda 1836