Medway - The diorama in the final steps

 After two years of Covid, we now had the chance to come together and work on the most important details of the diorama. So far, nearly 12.000 figures are painted, but how to put them on a plate.

We met in Schmitty's home at Bingen and try to check, how much space we got and what is possible to create. Our plan was 6x8 meters for the plate. I hope Patrick will find a tent big enough at the dioramica to put it into.

First step, we only had tables 6x4 meters available. So we planned in two parts.

Schmitty and Rainer thinking about the posibilities

I painted a rough plan 

The central piece is the river Medway. We started to cut a painted Wallpaper into size.

One of the rare photos where you can see Markus working :-) Here with Rainer

We changed the tables to show the run of the river up to the end of the plate

That done, we made an account of how much space we have for the Celtic earthwork. It will be 2,80 meters long and the celtic warriors will stand around 15 men deep on it. 

Rainer brought an interesting thought to the discussion - from where comes the earth of this earthwork. For sure not from the front of the entrenchment, otherwise the river will come too close. So it is behind and we have to level down the area around it. 

Next step was to position the Romans. As we want to show the battle, like the description in Simon Scarrow, we have one Legion trying to storm the earthwork, while the second follows over the river.

So one unit fighting, the other marching, standing etc. 

There is enought space between river and entrenchment to show the Romans in two lines, each for ranke deep. The first fighting at close quarters (if this is possible with the entrenchment, the other line giving covering fire with their pila. 

When we put markers for the units on the plate, we recognised the empty space, where we want to put some of our forest stands, which followed us on nearly every battlefield we created since 1998:-) 

In the afternoon I sad glueing the units on the stands. I am very grateful to Rainer who offered to take my 2500 celts to glue on stands and who will care for the earthwork. Schmitty takes over the river, I have to paint one of the Roman River-Navy ships and still have to paint many standing and marching Roman legionaries. 

Schmitty also took on this task with his figures

Still much to work 

Ar noon, I had finished three cohorts.

Now the work continues. The diorama will be on show at the 3rd Dioramica at the end of May.

I hope some of you will come to visit it in the final version:-)