Dacian Layout - Outstanding Models 8

The above is a 6ft x 3ft Dacian layout for Steven Pepa.

Now if you don't know your Dacian & Roman history you might be forgiven for thinking the Walls are Roman and the wicker fencing is the Dacian fortifications.

Well its the other way around, as those Dacian fellows were canny operators. After Dacia, which is in modern Romania had wiped out a whole Roman legion in around 80 AD and Rome had then failed to successfully suppress them, a peace treaty was agreed which favoured Dacia.

Part of that agreement was that Dacia would benefit from Roman engineering skills and they then started to build walls, roads, piped water etc in some of their larger towns and as Trajan's column shows, they also acquired some military equipment such as ballista.

Also having a lot of Roman prisoners from the war must also increased their awareness of how to build in stone and Roman tactics.

This knowledge was used to fortify 6 major sites centred in and around their capital. with the remaining towns and villages looking much like any other tribal ones at this time.

If you take a look at Trajan's Column in Rome which the emperor Trajan had built, you can see carved in stone all around it, a blow by blow account of his later successful conquest of Dacia, and which shows Roman style stone walled Dacian towns.

look on the Internet for their capital Sarmisegetusa and you will see that it was a major religious site and was then later fortified prior to Trajan's invasion, with some impressive looking stone fortifications, internal stone roads and clay piped running water.

The Romans besieged the town and successfully stormed it and then true to form, they promptly levelled it, although as you will see from pictures, its remains are still quite substantial and you can see a lot of stone work associated with the numerous temples and its defences.

As for the layout, its made with a little gaming in mind, rather than an exact replica of Sarmisegetusa. Behind the Roman siege works will be a large Roman camp, with tents and waggons etc, overlooked by the tree lined mountain.

The actual town had several stone towers and a mix of approx - 10ft wide x 15ft high walls and wooden palisade and so I've kept to this mix and also added a tower over the gateway, over what was quite a small entrance into the actual town.

As you can see the two tower tops need finishing, or to be more precise changing, as I started them with a slight overhang, but was not happy with the look of them. When made they will match those seen on Trajan's column.

The defencive walling was only built in two sections on the flat approaches to the town and no doubt wooden palisades were used on the higher parts as I've shown, with the steeper mountain sides not requiring any protection.

Inside the town will be some houses and livestock pens etc, which along with the Roman camp and a few hundred figs, should make the whole layout come alive.

The layout has gone to have a display cabinet built around it, but I'm hooking up with it again in August when I'll take some more pics of it once I've added all the odds and ends mentioned above.