Desert Village

New Desert Village  

   The Black Ops rules contain a scenario generator, one of the locations it suggests is a village.  It recommends 7-8 buildings. That's cool, it gives me something to aim for.

The first building! Square and dull, but it was used to define door/window sizes and wall heights.

  The buildings are foamcore.  I peeled the paper off one side in places and carved in brick.  I also taped the edges that would be hypothetically subjected to repeated stress.  This seemed like a good idea, I don't know that it's really needed.

The figures define the era, not the buildings

  I started with the bases, just hardboard pieces of various sizes, and built the buildings to fit those.  It isn't the normal way those things go, but it worked really well for this project.
  With no real need for anything specific, I just built whatever fit the base and looked good.



    For fantasy interiors don't matter much, people rarely go inside unless a scenario says to.  For modern or sci-fi, shooing out the windows or clearing a building are more common. So I made all of the buildings with accessible interiors.  That means the roof needs to come off, so a handle has to be made.  Some are actual handles (items to grip), and some are holes (ladder access).

    Once physically built, I painted glue on the base and added sand.  Then painted the exposed foam with glue to harden it and cover it for spraying.  When dry I applied Wood Putty to the surface for texture, but also to cover the tape and to fill gaps where walls meet.
  Then it was just spray it with a base coat (Rustoleum American Accents - Nutmeg), and then paint it the same way I did the desert.
  Once done, I went back and re-painted the wood and the bricks.
The buildings I finished. Click 'em to see them bigger.




   After I finished the buildings, I also made a few Market Stalls.  Partly because I wanted them, they look good and add to the town feel, but also because I mixed up waaaay too much glue when I did the building awning so needed to use it up.

   The "middle eastern" village was fun and easy to make.  I like the way it came out quite a bit, and I plan to add to it in the future.  But for now, I think these give a good number for use that will allow me to use them for many things.
   The architecture style hasn't changed in millennia, (brick and plaster does exactly what they need it to do. so why would it?) which will allow me to use the same buildings for anything from Fantasy, to modern, to Sci-Fi.
I love things that are multi-use like that.