Luke Ueda-Sarson's DBM 15mm armies

Luke's 15mm DBM Armies

Communal Italians

(Part 3. Here are parts 1 and 2)

This page last modified: 19 January, 2002


One of my mobile siege towers. They are scratch-built, mostly from card and matchsticks. The crew at the top are on a separate base so they can be replaced by other figures if I want to use them for another army. One of the figures is from Peter Pig (the mostly hidden guy, on the other tower to the right he is the same figure is the guy with the green tunic ), the other two are both Gladiator.	I really want a guy at the back scaling the ladder - but the figure conversion will be quite tricky, so this is something for the future... Some of the crews really ought to be archers, since crossbowmen were by no means the only missile weapon employed at the time in Italy. Just a matter of getting hold of (and painting) the right figures.

Such siege towers were used at the battle of Motrone in 1170 AD by the Pisans against the Luchese. The Pisans were besieging Motrone at the time, and apparently repelled the relief army of Lucca by including "in prima acie fuerunt pedites omnes et sagittarii et milites octingeni, et sex castella lignea fortissima..." (ie. six strong castles in their front line). Motrone consequently fell to the Pisans. The source is Bernard Maragone's Annales Pisani; information courtesy of Brendan Moyle of the DBM-list.

Two WWg (S) WWg (S) - Top

As oxen were the favoured animal of choice in medieval Italy for traction purposes, even pulling 15th century bombards when other nations almost all used horses, my towers have two yokes of two oxen at the front of each tower. Like the crews, these can be detached for other purposes. There are two barrels at the top of the tower along with the crossbowmen - one holding ammunition, the other larger one for water to douse fires. I may in the future add some more crew on the other stories of the towers.

Due to their great height, in DBM WWg (S) have the virtue of being able to fire overhead of friendly or enemy troops. This has the potential to make their shooting quite deadly. I say potential, because the rules require any enemy target to be in a very narrow range band so that stray arrows don't fall on any friendly interveing troops. Moreover, enemy troops can also fire at them overhead, so this makes them extra vunerable to enemy artilley.

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As oxen were the favoured animal of choice in medieval Italy for traction purposes, even pulling 15th century bombards when other nations almost all used horses, my towers have two yokes of two oxen at the front of each tower. Like the crews, these can be detached for other purposes.	There are two barrels at the top of the tower along with the crossbowmen - one holding ammunition, the other larger one for water to douse fires. I may in the future add some more crew on the other stories of the towers.