Hello all, this is a project I completed in our hiatus.
While I was at the Phalanx show, in St Helens, I did the ‘last walk round’ thing, where you’ve sorted your shopping list out and you’re having a womble round just looking at stuff.
I’ve not had much in the way of laser cut MDF buildings before, but I have had some items from Blotz (http://www.blotz.co.uk) before. I purchased some of their 15mm buildings before for use with the Tanks game, and some cemetery railings and gate for with an Undead army (note to self – go back and do an upgrade on that stuff).
Anyway, as I went past their stall, I noticed that they had these walls on it. I have been thinking about something like this for a while, they would go with the Amazons and the other Dark Age/Heroic Age Greek Mythological stuff. So, I stopped and had a look. Plus, I had about £30 in my pocket that I hadn’t spent.
It just had to be done.
So, I bought two short wall sections, a tower, and a short wall section with a gate - just to see what they were like. It was only when I got home, that I realised that I had bought enough elements to make the South Tower and gateway of Troy VI (generally considered to be the Homeric city) as it appears on the cover of the Osprey book – Fortress 17 Troy c. 1700–1250 BC
The next day, I took some time out of working on the Empire army, and tried to put one of the wall sections together. Right off the mark, there were three things which became obvious.
1. These things are really well engineered, thoughtfully planned out and they would be strong structures that interlocked well and looked the business.
2. After a couple of false starts with putting it together I got the wall assembled, but for the other elements – the Tower and the Gateway, I was going to need the instructions.
3. The instructions were not available as the Blotz new website had not gone live yet. It was due be live that Sunday, but wasn’t while I was tinkering.
Still the wall didn’t look too bad,
Some of the obvious gaps needed filling, and there is a decorative strip that runs along the base of the crenelations, but as that is illustrated in the Osprey image as being of a different colour, which I like the idea of – I would leave that on the sprue, paint it separately and then glue it on last (and I decided I would do that for all of the other elements like that). But I could see the potential. Certainly, Mrs P liked them, as she agreed I could buy some more – “It will do for your Christmas present!”.
There are obvious issues with laser cut MDF, and one of the biggest is the smooth surfaces. Lasers can show the outline of the detail, but it can’t add texture. Plus, there are all those slots to conceal.
The best example of this was the walk-ways on the walls. I think that these were probably paving stones originally, but I opted to use ready-mixed filler spread out to cover the slots and then burnished to get it as smooth as possible and like a rough cement type of floor.
I then painted it, in a Linen coloured craft paint.
Which I also used as the colour of the stucco on the crenelations.
I was deliberately enthusiastic/rough in painting this on, to get the effect of stucco, and I think it looks okay. I think they probably maintained this colour as a way of emphasising the fortifications to any enemies, as a kind of status thing. (You find that in neolithic monuments, where they’re cut into chalk, the colour of the chalk showing through emphasises the status of the monument)
But the chances of maintaining a walk-way because of the foot traffic is pretty remote, so the walk-way received a thinned coat of my dirty wash, especially right against the crenelations and on the very edge, and then, when the wash dried, I dry-brushed the linen colour back over it.
The rest of the stone work in the walls, in fact all of the stone work on all of the elements, received a base coat of – wait for it – yellow ochre!
It will provide a good base coat for washing and dry-brushing up to pale stones. I used some Vallejo and some craft paint. (If you haven’t ever made MDF buildings before, the bare material is really, really thirsty, it absolutely absorbs paint, the cut edges especially.)
Thinking about how to make these elements ‘pop’, I started looking at the doors and gates.
There are three door ways in the tower, and the two halves of the gate way – and of course I lost the one from the bottom of the tower! (It’s somewhere on the bench.)
To improve the doors, I started by slicing up some coffee stirrers into strips of various widths, and then placed them onto a piece of blue painter’s tape.
From this, as you can see, I cut three doors, applied ledgers to the back, painted them Vallejo English Uniform, washed them with GW Nuln Oil, and dry-brushed them with the Linen craft paint.
Once this was done, I masked the doorway off with masking tape, so that I can paint the stone work and not have to redo the door. In fact I later masked off all of the doorways, windows, that have architectural details around them and the upper areas of the crenelations – so that the dry-brushing didn’t get on to the surfaces, which I wanted to keep smooth.
The valves (I think that that is the correct term) of the gate, had engraved detail on one side and were bare on the other.
I went over the laser-cut details on the valves of the gate with a craft knife and an awl and deepened it. I scribed some detail onto the back side of each gate piece, then added ledgers on both sides from coffee stirrers, pressed some details into the exterior face, (the backsides of them are inside the tunnel, so less visible) painted, stained and dry-brushed them.
This is the gateway part built, with the doors in place, with a 20mm orc to show the scale.
Some more pictures.
The tower.
This is the base of the tower with a room at wall-walk level.
This is the room on the next level above, and I have done the interior with the Linen craft paint for the floor, a red-ochre walk (based on Minoan wall arts) with a cream border at the top and bottom.
I will tidy that top edge up, before it’s done.
The top of the tower – the step along the base of the long walls is the top of a tab that allows the tower to slot together.
It has also had a second coat of paint, but this shows what I was saying about how ‘thirsty’ MDF is.
The fully assembled tower – there seems to be some debate about the actual height of the Troy VI structure, but this allows all the options.
Right! Having gotten everything assembled. I undercoated the wall piece in the yellow ochre, washed it with the dirty wash, and then while that was drying picked out some of the stones with un-diluted Nuln Oil, and a 50/50 mix of Agrax Earthshade and Vallejo Red Ochre. I dabbed that on with a brush and then dabbed it off with my finger. The effect I was looking for were stones that had iron or or some other discolouration.
Then I went over all the wall sections with a dry-brush of the yellow ochre again, then Vallejo Iraqi Sand and lastly a craft paint called Antique White. I was going to throw some Buff and Deck Tan in but decided that less was more at this point.
A Short Wall section, the Tower, and the Gate section from the outside, and I think I managed to get all of the dry-brushing consistent across all of the elements. Cyclops by Alliance.
The two Short Wall sections on either side of the Gateway, with an Amazon Warrior from the Alliance Mounted Amazons set for scale. You can see that I also added some door pillars to the gateway, I just felt that it finished it off better.
Here she is again, looking at the base of the Tower,
The Gateway before dry-brushing.
The back of the Tower with the doorway masked off.
The two upper floors of the Tower showing the accent colour, a deep red ochre.
The back side of the wall and gate sections.
Okay, so at this point in the story, it’s two weeks (Sunday 3rd July) after Phalanx and I am just about calling these done. There are a few more details but I need to get back onto doing ECW figures.
I painted up some figures from Caesar H021 Mycenaean Chariots for the pictures,
The Gate section – closed and open.
From the inside
One of the Short Wall sections from the outside and from the inside.
The Tower
I put the sections together as they would be if you were looking from the Citadel of Trpy VI, towards the South Gate, with the Tower over-looking the Gate. Two young women are bringing jars of something back to their dwellings, along with their charges, a warrior greets them as they pass and, on the wall-walk above, a hero is heading into the tower for something.
It's not a great picture but the hero I painted up
Is based on this
I came across it on the Hellenic Armors group on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/HellenicArmors
Stunning modern reproductions, they made me think about how I paint figures from this period.
Thanks for looking in and I hope you enjoyed it.
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and that is kind of what I am aiming at, if only because it will break up the huge expanse of walkway. But, we will see how it goes. 
