Terrain - Peacock Inn

I've bought and build a ton of MDF for my Guilders - A Life In Shadows board. I want a densely packed 3'x3' board. MDF have the advantage of being cheap and really quick to put together. The real work comes afterwards when upgrading it to a higher standard.

I've done a quick youtube video earlier, covering the plans for the city board. 

In this blogpost I'll cover the stuff I've done to upgrade the TTCombat Streets of Venice Palaza Valteria. A new route to the way I did all my MDF for Frostgrave. 

Let's start of with showing the finished result. All the WIP stuff will come below. 

The Peacock Inn

A little nod to the excellent King Games Dunkeldorf line of miniatures. A huge building, perfect for the Guilders scenario Tavern Brawl. 

Painting has been done mostly with cheap acryllic paints and some spray paint base coating. I really want some color in my city. The roof and brick parts were base coated red, the ground floor grey and the top stories brown. 

I've been taking note of the timber framed houses and the colors used on the walls and timber. 

 

To add some life to the city I've been putting flower tufts beneath all the windows. I bought pretty much one of each from Gamers Grass and Army Painter. I was surprised to how little flowers I actaully needed, so I figure I'll have enough for the rest of the city. 

I also added some moss and grass here and there at the ground floor, addeign a bit of life and color to the grey area.

The Inn is named after a Peacock, so I wanted to have some bright peacock colors on it. That's why I went with the green for windows and blue for doors. It looked absolutey out of place in the beginning, but a layer of homemade brown wash (acryllic paint, dish soap, water) muted the colors neatly. 

King Games (behind the Dunkeldorf Miniatures line) was really kind and send me a few metal Prancing Peacock signs. But they were a bit too small, so I'll use those for road signs instead. I went online and searched for peacock inn signs instead. Found some fitting ones, printed those and glued them to cardbaord. It's an easy way to add high level detail to something like MDF. 

I have chimneys on nearly all the buildings in my city. And I want to add smoke to all of them, it'll add a lot of life to a city. I have a bag of old teddy stuffing saved just for this. Took out a bit and super glued it in place. 

I also added some small daps of super glue on the roof, so I could add green sawdust flock to it. Makes it look like a bunch of moss patches on the roof. Looks good. 

On the brick chimney and the stone ground floor I've given it a bunch of different drybrush colors. It's a quick way of getting some color play on it. I've also picked out a few single stones here and there, but not too many. Frankly I didn't want to spend time on that, and the drybrush effect painted horisontally workds well enough. 

Upgrading the MDF

A cool part of the Palaza Valteria kit is the roof, it's not as steep as many others. Models will be able to keep their balance on the roof and that's a really big part of the Guilders gameplay. A big problem with MDF is the flat surfaces - and when playing we are looking down on the terrain - so many flat roofs. 

I cut some long strips of thin card. Cut some easy roof tiles in it with a lot of small triangle cuts. It's fairly quick work, though it looks like a hassle. Make sure to make broad strips, so there's plenty of glue area on each strip. 

For the top strip I made a doublesided one, for a nice clean finish at the top. For realism one should cut individual stones, But I really couldn't be bothered. I like this clean finish and it'll be a lot more sturdy this way. 

I've added a few details to better let the miniature climb around. To the front of the building I've added a half-roof made as above. Drilled a few angles holes in the MDF and added some BBQ sticks for support. There's also some window boxes on the sides of the building (room for a single miniature on those). I think those boxes are from the Streets of Venice balcony set - otherwise I don't know where they are from. 

The vibe I'm going for in the entire city is like Baldurs Gate, the old game. Those tudor style houses there. Stone / brick ground floors and timber frames above that. I made the timber framing on the in with popsickle sticks (though thinner coffee stirrers might be better). 

To add the plaster that's on the walls between the timber framing, I've bought some pre-mixed polyfilla Tree Filler. It's a bit of a weird consistency. I've thinned it a tiny bit with water and added a big bunch of PVA glue. Gave a better thickness and the glue will make it bind even stronger.

It's easy enough to add, use an old brush - because it will be messed up something terrible afterwards. When painting this you can easily go the base coat / drybrush or base coat / wash way. The texture makes it easy. 

On the ground floor level I want it to look like stone. So I've cut out some bricks in two different thichness of card. I used added them here and there. It really does a lot after painting. Minimal and quick work, when you're not aiming for precision. 

Most of my city will be made from different TTCombat WW2 houses. Those houses all come with a chimney stack for each end of the house. That left me with enough parts to Frankenstein a chimney on the inn as well. Added card board brics to this as well, like above. 

The chimneys are another good Guilder feature, letting your miniatures find some cover in the heights. 

Here's a photo of the build after the base coating and some simple drybrushing. It really looks god aweful. Never ever underestimate the power of brown wash. All my terrain gets a layer of my hoemade stuff. Wonderfull the effect it has. 

Thank you so much for reading through this. Please support the Guilders project (and the blogging in general) by dropping some likes om all the various SoMe stuff. 

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