I actually meant to dovetail this with my last post but didn’t have time. The other terrain I was able to complete was for my Old West setting. I showed a few of these during my ongoing paint challenge but was able to take a few more shots to show it all off.
Here we have the town of Little Church fully laid out. I have some additional pieces I want to add but they are more for scatter terrain and creating some interesting tactical options.
Little Church gets its name from the only beacon of light in this dusty well spot. I really was hoping this church model would be bigger. To scale, I think it could fit maybe 4-8 congregants (if they squeezed together and Pastor. The size discrepancy did lead to my town naming so I can’t be too disappointed. It actually helps build the world a little more as I like the idea of this down-trodden church trying to survive in a rough, unforgiving world. Maybe like Reverend Smith trying to survive in Deadwood.
With the light, comes the dark and the most prominent building in Little Church is the Undertaker. Kind of an acknowledgement that, for good or ill, Death comes for us all and in the end, only he truly benefits.
As so often as it happens, we indulge in the worst parts of our nature thinking to curb and contain it, keeping it from escaping and harming those that truly matter. The Saloon of Little Church is such a containment. Meant to let the locals relax and blow off steam, it pushes the better part of our nature. Unfortunately, that nature is too often a dog that knows no heel. Rarely do these sanctuaries contain the behavior, to ruin of all.
But all is not forsaken in Little Church. Law does exist and, as testament to its necessity, it sports an oversized jail to accommodate those that would abuse the rights of man and nature. Of course, sometimes man has gone so far down the road of hell that simply removing the offender is not enough. The Gallows stands as a grim reminder to all that there are lines one cannot cross here.
The last stop in Little Church is a vice of a different sort. Acting as both benefactor and temptress, the Bank helps to divide the haves and the have-nots, often with more conflict stirred up as people try to define which side of the line they are on.
To liven up the terrain, I put up a few posters. These were easy enough to find on a google image search then resize appropriately. Because I’m going monochromatic and sepia, I did the same to the images in Photoshop before printing.
A little bit of white (PVA) glue sets them up on the painted MDF. As you can see, one does not need to make things straight and I like the crooked nature these posters portray as it breaks up the laser etched precision of the model and helps give things a more natural bend.
That’s it for Little Church for now. I have a game mat on order but we’ll see how well that comes out. The hardest thing I’ve found when doing Monochromatic settings is getting a proper game mat. Most of them, even when converted to grayscale and custom printed, have issues with having a wrong under-color and it ruins the whole aesthetic for me.
Aside from cacti and barrels/boxes for scatter, I have a graveyard planned up as another reminder of how well the Undertaker is doing. That will have to wait for my 3D printer bed to be fixed because I can’t have the base warping under my non-heated bed.