Siege of Acre 1191 – TerrainFest 2023

When the foam finaly dried I moved the project to my workshop as it was starting to get very messy.

The rubble mix in the dry moat had not set very well and I ended up just scraping a load of it out. But what was left actually looked and worked fine so really it was more of a case of me over doing it in the first place.

Then it was back to spray paints agin, this time introducing some lighter shades to pick out the rocky areas and generally give the whole table a dryer more arid look.

I dont like wastage, so I try to use even failed 3D prints, in this case I had a failed gate that I wanted to add rubble to before painting.

Then it was time to put down a protective sheet and start priming!

Priming was a simple process of Chaos Black, then a zenith dusting of Seer Grey

Once the primer had cured, it was a simple matter of dusting them with a couple of shades of brown weathering spray and then working the colour in using a damp paint brush.

After quickly painting up the Crusader Cogs, I decided I wanted to experiment with making Crusader Era flags.

I tend to bootstrap these projects when I can and in this case I din’t have the spare cash or time to order off the shelf 15mm flags (some of which are excellent btw!)

So I had a brainwave… I use and experiment with AI quite a lot in my spare time, and ChatGPT had just started becoming multimodal so it could not only reply in text but also use the DALL-E3 engine to render images.

Could I work with my AI pal to create some flag designs?

I think the answer was a resounding yes if you read the dialogue above. (Yes I do indeed say please and thank you to AI… as you never know!)

Anyway, I sent the corresponding designs to my printer and set to work to try and create posable flags using copper tape as a mettalic core to the flag to give it poseability.

Then the same process repeated for Saracen Flags and Banners

By this stage of the project I had really come round to the look of the foam painted without adding additional texture, and in future projects Im very much going to explore this further by adopting a subtractive approace and carving texture into the foam rather than trying an additive approach of sticking stuff on. (Except perhaps static grass etc)

So I added little bits of foliage to the scrapes and gouges I had perviously planned to fill with rubble texture. This served to break up the uniformity of the ground, and indeed bring it more in line with the general levels of foliage you would see in that part of the world.

With most of the really messy work out of the way it was back to the games room, to do another round of fitting and layout to see how it was all coming together.

As mentioned one of the key features of Acre is its port which is a little north of the ‘Tower of Flies’ (Basically a look out tower kind of thing).

I had some left over MDF type walkways that I decided to use for this purpose, so after trying a number of layout possibilities…

I set to work on distressing and weathering the pieces to give them some sense of age and usage. Time to whip out the trusty mini saw blade for scraping!

It was now time to start adding the little additional details to the terrain pieces to help break up the uniformity and just add a little more of a lived in look.

I had 3d printed some little middle eastern style ‘Hole in the Wall’ stores and decided to add some to the walls just to change things up a touch.

Then it was time to start setting out the inner part of the city. I wanted the option of quite dense terrain layouts for more skirmish style games where two forces are fighting street to street.

The buildings were a little too bright for my tastes so I mixed up a simple wash using the tame models mates brown weathering sprays I used everywhere else on the board to knock back the brightness a touch.