Port Blacksand

This bridge is a pretty large piece of scenery so making it as versatile as possible makes sense.  Rather than having permanent details tying it into one setting I have gone down the route of interchangeable details.

Having hidden loads of magnets inside the main structure before painting now allows me to be creative with how I progress.

The bridge can represent the city’s main entrance, lined with grim reminders to those looking to get on the wrong side of the city watch.

Alternatively, it could be one of the many ways within the city to cross from one side of the river to the other, lined with houses or rickety structures.

Or maybe just a simple smaller bridge in the countryside somewhere.

These are just a few options, and I am sure I will come up with more as this project progresses.

You are probably a little sick of ‘Bridge’ stuff by now and this project is about a fantasy town, not just a fantasy bridge after all.

So, I will quietly work on the bridge in the background and share some other progress details with you.  Plenty of plaster, brick and wood buildings are needed if I want to give the feel of a crowded town.  All the buildings are completely modular and by that, I mean I can change the height and layout of the houses as I wish.  Every roof, floor and wall section is removable.  I can swap bits around or completely remove bits if I choose to.  Ideally, I would swap same-coloured buildings with others of the same colour.

I still have more to add before I can call this first batch done.  They need doors, the roofs need to be finished, balconies made, and I have removable shop signs and the like to do, but this will hopefully give an idea of the direction this project is going.

The streets themselves need clutter, stalls and carts, signposts and notice boards.  all that kind of stuff to give some life to the town,

Ultimately, I am aiming towards a 6′ x 4′ table with a separate layout for the sewer system.

Every port needs to have warehouses, and this project will be no different.   For this first warehouse, it has been designed to fit into the river wall.  I can add extra levels to the building to make it taller, but I rather like the look of the town growing behind it,

A few pictures of a few bits just set up to give a feel of how things are starting to look.  With the scale of my plans for this build, it is unlikely that I will get all that I want to get done finished by the end of the month, what with work getting in the way of fun.  Anyway, I aim to at least make some serious progress into this build and have a decent playable amount finished.

It’s time to show a bit of progress as we move a little further away from the bridge/port area and more into the seedy back alleyways.

All the buildings so far are pretty generic on purpose so that rather than having to build an entire city I can just move them around to represent different areas.  Of course, all the buildings so far are completely modular and can change their heights and configurations, but I have assembled them in the layouts I like the best.

There are still feature buildings to do, but for the most part, all the basic buildings are built.  I need to magnetise some signs and small decorations for them to be removable and some random street clutter to add to give that dark grotty feel.

Off the top of my head, I want to add a Tavern, some buildings with walkways spanning across roads, a marketplace possibly with a central notice board area, a belltower, a gardens area with hedges sculpted to look like animals and of course some sewers.

It seems like there is almost no end to the amount of stuff left to do, but I’ll get there eventually.

When it came to doors it gave me another option to add variety and increase the level of modularity with this build.

All the doors are removable and reversible, so it made sense to paint the fronts and backs of each door differently.

The gatehouse stands like a tombstone guarding the entrance to the port and the city guard will think nothing of throwing an unwary traveller into the dungeons for their mere amusement.

But there is more than one way into the City of Thieves, there, in the port wall, a sewer outlet.  It may be unguarded, but you can almost guarantee it won’t be pleasant.

I have been making pretty good progress with the buildings for this project mainly because of two things.  Firstly, the buildings paint up easily and are pretty rough at the moment and secondly, I have been concentrating more on this project than my Gaslight project.

I want to get the bulk of the ‘building’ done before I knuckle down and start adding finer details and street dressings.  I think the smaller details will take more time ultimately because I can’t just smash it with a rough dry brush.

The buildings on the bridge don’t have any stonework on them at all and I think this makes a nice change to all the other buildings so far.

From memory there was a list of ingredients that were needed to take on Zanbar Bone, one of those was Hag’s hair which I think was found in the city sewers.

I am still waiting for a copy of the book to arrive, so I am trying to do this from memory.

Anyway, even if I am wrong and have my books mixed up what city would be complete without a network of sewerage tunnels beneath it to explore?

These are painted up in the same way as the rest of the stonework, are completely modular and just the beginning of the sewer network.  For the filth floating between the walkways, I used Vallejo British Army Uniform and covered it with ultra gloss wood varnish.

I have plenty more sewer segments to do.  However, I don’t intend to do a full layout of them, just enough to create numerous different scenes of about 2′ square.  After all, any gameplay in the sewer system will most likely be at a skirmish level.  I will do a few pieces with pipework’s as well because these would also fit in nicely with my Gaslight project.

Once I have built all I intend to do I will go back over the sewage with some two-part epoxy to help disguise the very layered look a bit.

It doesn’t overly bother me as it is and the layers look less noticeable to the naked eye, but they don’t look great in pictures.  On the plus side, the layers make a nice stable platform for placing figures on.

I also had the box of skulls from Citadel delivered at last.   I intend to use these for my version of ‘The Singing Bridge’.  Well, that’s the plan anyway.

Sewer’s progress.  Still lots more to do with this, I guess the sewers could have been a project all in themselves.  There is no way I will finish this by the end of the month so the sewers may have to flow into Dungeon month.

Again, same basic painting with nothing ground-breakingly different.  I guess if this does flow into Dungeon month, I can add some critters to populate it as it expands.

Every city needs a market square so that adventurers can stock up on provisions.   I figured it would also be a good place for a bell tower too.

The market stalls still have work to go on them.  I need to fashion some tops for them and paint up all the details.  I think for the tops I will use balsa and cloth for the most part.   The various wares will all be loose so I can swap them around for variety.   The ‘free range’ chickens and pigs will have to have bases I guess, especially the chickens because they don’t stand up too well on their own.

The Bell in the tower is resin and needs to be painted and I may add doors to the tower, or maybe not.

I have a Tavern on the go at the moment.  It’s still in pieces at the moment and I am toying with the idea of adding to it or just going with how it is.   I guess I can do more buildings and see how they look with the tavern and if I don’t like them, I can turn them into a separate row of buildings.

I Still have the gardens to do and the topiary that could attack anyone who attempts to take the lotus flower in the middle of the garden.

There is probably loads more to add if I put my mind to it.