I love collecting, painting, converting and scratch building terrain. I even get to play a game once in a while. I'm a big fan of gamification as part of teaching - I'm an elementary school teacher.
This blog covers my hobby work and 'teaching through gaming'.
I've already build a bunch of small WW2 25mm houses from TTCombat. They were quick to build and very cheap. But I have also gotten myself a bunch of bigger row houses, in both two and three storey versions. These houses are a lot bigger and really give off that Baldur's Gate vibes that I'm going for.
The upgrads of these buildings are the same and I've done with the smaller houses. Stone wall ground floor, timber frame second floors, added plaster and lots of colors. The top of the roof is cobber, and would probably be all green from verdigris in real life, but that color clashed to much with the buildings. So I've only painteda bit of verdigris here and there.
For a tutorial style step-by-step check out this post here. And see all the collected fantasy city terrain on this page.
I've also made a YouTube video with these buildings:
When I bought all my city MDF kits, I also got a pack of TTCombat Streets of Venice balcony upgrades. It was pretty cool and allowed me to add a lot of balconies on these house. Some already came with balconies, but it's a seemless fit, so hard to make out which is which.
The awnings are originally from grey board, but I've tossed those out and found some striped fabric instead. These give a much more life like look to the entire building. I've also made some signs using an online coat of arms maker, those will be added one day when I get around to it.
All colors chosen for these buildings have been found with online research on real tudor or timberframed houses. And I've made sure to mix it up, so all buildings have different combinations.
It's pretty fast to paint these buildings, as most of the job is actually done while base coating with cheap rattle cans, then some drybrushing and was will make it all pop. Flock and posters add the last layer of life to them.
On my other houses I've made sure to add a 1cm flat area on the top of the roof, for miniatures to keep their balance there, but that's not needed on any rowhouses. It'll look great when I get around to painting the last 4 of these.
Check out the game Guilders: A Life In Shaows. A 28mm skirmish miniatures game, with lots of RPG elemenets. Inspired by my love of Frostgrave, Mordheim and the Warhammer Quest RPG book. All Guilders is collected here.
For the game Guilders: A Life In Shadows there's a few scenarios, that require play inside buildings. I've covered the build of this huge tavern, based on a TTCombat Carnevale set before in this blog. And covering some of the bits and bobs painted for the interior in this blog.
Now the entire thing is completed. Take a small trip through the build in this little video and read on for some words on how it's done. Most of the miniatures in there are from Dunkeldorf.
I 3d printed some flat doors found on thingiverse. Some of the prints failed, but since I don't like throwing suff out, it was easily fixed with some coffee stirrers.
I've printed out some floor details, found online somewhere. I printed them on a3 paper, so they fit an entire floor with having to make some funky line-ups.
I also found a bunch of pictures of carpets online, printed them out and glued them in place here and there.
For the stairs, I printed some I also found online, and to save space on the top floor I simply added a wooden trapdoor in the floor, that saved me from cutting actual holes in the terrain - that would serve no practical purpose anyway.
The walls are painted an off white that I mixed with cheap acryllics. It's painted on with a sponge, it adds a bit of a textured detail with the MDF shining through here and there.
I added rooms to the floors using thick cardboard. The doors don't open, but that's not really a problem during gameplay. The wooden beans are used coffee stirrers glued in place, but they really break up that MDF look nicely.
Normally I've been opposed to gluing terrain in place inside buildings, not wanting to 'waste' painted interior. But these days, I glue terrain inside. It's just easier and with 3d printing and a ton of terrain crate - I'll never run out anyways.
The top floor is a large suite, added some nicer looking interior details up here. Some a Dunkeldorf bits, some are from Mantic games.
Full topdown look on the 1st floor, with two small common room and one room that's a bit more exclusive.
This is the top floor suite, with one large room and a seperate sleeping chamber.
If you like my stuff, please consider following some of the SoMe pages, it'll all help once Guilders is released and goign into sale. You can also pop into the Discord, it's a very good little community of supportive hobby people. It's all found through my LinkTree.
This game of Guilders was played a long time ago, back in Februart 2023 (blogpost written in start June). So I really can't remember the details of the game, should have written a battle report right after the game. But that's how it goes. Enjoy some pictures instead.
This was also the last game we played with some 10+ game guilds. We felt it was about time to paint some new guilders and start from scratch, as we've tweaked many rules since their inception.
The goal of this scenario is to infiltrate a tavern. The rooms are magically sealed and the keys must be stolen from nobles wandering the streets.
This was also an excuse to upgrade my TTCombat tavern with some interior.
Our guilds at this point were very experienced, and that led to us often taking a very direct route and chosing violence over stealth. Resulting in a lot of generated alarm around the board.
Guilders: A Life in Shadows is a 28mm skirmish campaign game, it's miniatures agnostic - so use whatever you find cool. There's large TTRPG elements to the campaign part of the game. You play as thief guilds trying to make it in a big city. There's rules for civillians and guards, that the game controls based on player actions.
You can find the beta rules (and a Lite version), starting warbands and similar stuff right here: Google Drive.
And please check out my LinkTree: I use all the SoMe different, post dfferent stuff and such. Drop a few follows and come join the awesome Discord community.
This is kind of a summary post. I've finished up a full 3'x3' board of painted city terrain. This areas is what Guilders: A Life In Shadows is written for, so it's a nice accomplishment to actually getting around to finishing it. Now it's all just about getting more clutter, more life and variation onto it.
Here's a youtube video going over the different stuff.
I have collected all the different blog posts about this project on this page right here: Fantasy City Board hub.
When doing terrain I always take lots of photos and write step-by-step guides for it. My style is always simple and cheap techniques for huge upgrades.
Thanks for checking out the blog! You should consider checking out the Discord server, it's grown into an amazing community with some very lovely people.
So far I've build an entire 3'x3' board worth of buildings. These are more of the super cheap "25mm" WW2 house from TTC. The size fits well for both 28mm and 32mm miniatures.
For a full ste-by-step tutorial on how I upgrade these houses to something nicer, you can check out this previous blog post.
I also talk about the upgrades and show the buildings in this video:
The Swedish House
I try to mix up the colors for all my buildings, so I have as many different combinations of colors as possible. All houses colors are also some I've found doing research online. Another way to change them up, is I've placed chimneys differently and the board ledges as well.
The furnace is from Terrain Crate by Mantic Games. It was a quick little piece to do, but adds some nice life to the city board. Will fit equally will in a dungeon.
Shop
The other little building is a shop. I found some checkered fabric pieces and just for awnings. The buildings come with grey board, but a quick upgrade to real fabric does so much for the life of the building. I've used the online Coat of Arms maker, to make some signs for the buildings - that I'll get around to adding at some point... in some future.
Whenever I build some terrain I make sure to cover the build process with a blog post and step-by-step guide. So follow the different SoMe platforms, if you want to make sure to catch them.
