I can't stop thinking about ancient Rome - De Bellis Antiquitatis edition

Big update on the project over the last two weekends I pushed through and finished what I have for terrain for my DBA project!

I started with Vallejo Brown Earth Texture medium to make some roads and put texture into the middle of my Build Up Area. The road pieces are just some plasticard leftovers cut to a single base width of 40mm and varying lengths. The idea is you can layer them up on the ends to make the road turn or connect. I spread a small layer of the texture medium to add some grit and color to the plasticard. Quite pleased with the end result. They are a bit rectangular but I’m glad to used up all of the plasticard scraps for this. I also applied texture medium to any of the areas that are build ups of dirt embankments on the Build Up Area and Camps.

Next I moved onto the stone work and for that I started with Dark Stone but found it was too dark. I switched to Uniform Grey as a highlight over the Dark Stone. All of the stone work around the Build Up Area and two Camps were painted.

On to the tents. I found among my old Warpaints set didn’t have a tan or light brown I liked so I dipped into my WW2 Vallejo set and brought out Khaki and this was a great match for the color I wanted. I applied it to the tents. I also used it on the ropes that tie the log walls together.

Moving onto the cut wood sections I wanted to bring it shades up in color but again didn’t have the color I wanted to use so I used Vallejo Flat Brown. I’m going to come back and revisit the log ends with some new tans that I put an order in for today. All of the plank runways and frames for the walls were painted and it did bring the brown up a few shades from the primer I had used. I’m happy enough with it to continue. This was the largest area cover and it was a challenge to the attention span. I’m used to tiny tiny models and not big pieces like this.

That brings up a need in my hobby supplies to get some bigger and flat brushes to help with terrain. I also think for large areas switching to a non-hobby paint to get a larger amount and not pay the hobby tax for 18ml at a time. I also picked up some Soft Tone dip to wash these and bring out the shading as things are quite flat in color right now. I’m going to be using a lot of Soft Tone for my Roman buildings for Gangs of Rome as well so just going to brush this on rather than the dip and shake you’d usually use the dip for. Lastly I got some tans and blues to round out some gaps in my colors. I also put an order in for some textured clear plasticard to help make some rivers in the same way I did the roads though I’ll be painting the smooth bottom side and leave the texture on top to give the illusion of current. I also picked up some brush cleaning and conditioning supplies as I need to restore a brush I might have ruined by accidently getting paint in the ferrule.

This project at this point has several firsts for me. My experience with painting was 15mm WW2 airborne for Flames of War. Now I branched out to Romans, made some terrain using resin pieces, used plasticard, used flock to create grass, and made some tree and hill sections. Next time I’ll get some foam and cut it at an angle to make some more visually appealing hills but for DBA these are perfect for the game set approach I’m going for here. I learned a lot and I have more to learn about shading and highlighting so I will likely revisit these pieces as the new supplies come in and I get more hobby experience. Now I have a variety of pieces to make a few different DBA table configurations and it feels great. I’m going to get a table all set up and show the final result in another post.