The Silent City

I’ve got three sets of buildings to combine into something that will sit together nicely on the table.  Unlike in real life I think it is better if model buildings are all the same colour so all will follow the same paint scheme.  Given the volume the initial need is for coloured spraypaint.  My local art shop stocked Montana Gold which is a range favoured by graffiti artists apparently.  I went for one main colour “Sahara Yellow” and two other tones for a bit of under/over spray, the darker “Sahara Beige” and lighter “Elm”.

I didn’t bother with primer, just straight on with the coloured spray.  A couple of coats needed for the 3D printed stuff as the grey was quite dark.  The Fogou stuff was mostly in his new white resin and this doesn’t need an undercoat and showed the colour nicely but a second coat helped to even things up.  Then a quick under spray for low lights and very light overspray for some highlights and we are done with the primary colour.  Overall this colour proved a good match for the mdf pieces that I had bought already painted.

The next stage was adding some dirt.  A band of a blend of AP Strong Tone, Medium and a dot or two of Brownish Decay gave a dark brownish green but thin wash which went in a band around the bottom of things and then as a quick shadow along joints and inside corners.  On the right the basic colour after the spraying, on the left the added mucky wash.

The green shade was needed to help blend the buildings onto the mat which is quite a green shade – Geek Villain Streets of Rome fleece It doesn’t look this green in the photos online.

The larger buildings also got some weathering with the wash – to show the effects of the infrequent rain runoff.

This picture also shows the addition of some Black 3.0 paint.  This is the super-matt stuff that helps to give the impression of depth, here it makes the holes look deeper (above), they are only a couple of mil. deep and looked pretty terrible with the base colour showing (below).

Finally the woodwork was painted with Sachel Brown Speedpaint, any meta work with Vallejo Air Metallic Black and leather with Vallejo Beasty Brown and we were done.

The mdf buildings aren’t anything to write home about but they are functional and will create a good mix with the others.  4 single and four double sized dwellings.

These are 3D prints from Iain Lovecraft.  two double and four single dwellings.  Nice mix and good designs.  Removable roofs and internal detailing are useful too but I’ve not painted those yet.

The big attraction of 3D printing was the ability to print things like this big tower.  This comes in four sections.  You can see that there was a bit of a printing issue with the central one where it peeled off the build plate but I fixed this with some additional miliput and thought that the curves actually suited it as the wood wouldn’t have been absolutely straight anyway.

The tower is really tall, 19 1/2″, nearly 500mm.  Here is a miniature’s eye view.

Here are the Mudstarter 2 buildings in their finished state.

The set came with loads of scatter bits too.  Here are some extra walls, an oven and the well.  The Black 3.0 paint again here helps to make it look bottomless.  There are two other resin staircases here from an unknown supplier, they were with the mdf buildings auction lot.

Here’s an interesting effect.  The spray paint isn’t intended for miniatures and something about the formulation didn’t like the Fogou resin.  Some time after it dried it started to crack.  You can see the effect on this roof but it happened on all of the buildings.  I like it.  A happy accident then 🙂

I meant to explain the title – The Silent City.  I got the idea from an article in the North Star Magazine called THE ARMIES OF REI BOUBA THE “SILENT CITY” By Chris Peers.  This described a Hausa-Fulani city on the Saharan Savannah as remote and mysterious as Timbuktu.  An interesting read but there is certainly enough mystery and romance in the name alone. 

For those interested the drawing used on the project cover is the Yemeni city of Mocha in the mid-nineteenth century.  This is definitely the “vibe” I’m going for and my town will be a port at some point when I get the necessary wharf and dock buildings printed.

Trying to upload all of my final pics is breaking Projects so I’ll do them in a couple of posts.

This table will probably get used for a first run out of Xenos Rampant with Enforcers vs. Cultists.  I could also use it with Rangers of Shadow Deep and even Saga (for example).

Miniatures are mostly Eureka but planty of other manufacturers too, some of the more interesting, like the sleeping guards, were by Effincool Miniatures.

That’s it for this project and Terrainfest 2023.  I should probably add some trees and gardens to this set but that can wait as I’m out of mdf.  Good fun.  I’m looking forward to next year’s already.