With the Old World taking a pause post-games day (read all about it here) we’re returning to the Ultramoderns. However, before we can hit the table and get Project Elements on the road, we’re going to need a table to fight over. After years of never getting them textured and painted up, I sold most of my MDF structures (although there are a few more to go) with the plan was to replace them with a set of 3D-printed buildings. The question was, which ones should I go for?

I originally had started printing the Patrick Miniatures Eastern European buildings (as I showed off in some of my What An Operator games) but I’ve decided I’ll come back to the Shyluz/Tsarist borderlands once I have a bit more time to kitbash together the Shyluz Scouts and their specific weapons (the combination of lightweight belt kit and G3 variants including the HK21 should make them standout). So in the mean time, time to head back to somewhere more familiar. Long time ChargeReal fans may remember Al-Bawaaba, the Albion Protectorate sitting between the Commonwealth and the Bazi Emirate, home to the slightly dead foot patrol generator and the site of one of my Skirmish Sangin V2 games. This is one of a set of states that broke away from the Albion Empire during the Civil War and now act as a buffer between two large empires while at the same time seeking to grow it’s own territorial control through the use of independence movements in both the Emirate and the Commonwealth.

My idea is that the fighting in these region will take inspiration from the battles in Iraq and Syria during the mid-2010s but reframed for my setting. With various militia groups, military forces and foerign assistance and advisors involved, the fighting is perfect for testing the force building for Project Elements, as well as provided a wide variety of tactical situations for platoon commanders to deal with. It also, as you might expect from a blog post talking about terrain, gives a wide variety of landscapes to deal with – from compounds hidden among rolling hills and wide plains, to small villages clustered on the dry land at the mouth of the river that, further upstream, flow through several major urban areas.

But how best to build said major urban areas? I’m pretty sure you can guess what I’m using if you’ve been following the blog, seeing as I’ve been a fan of Urban Scatter Gaming‘s stuff for a while. It helps he’s also a great guy to chat with so I’m more than happy to push his products as much as possible. His latest MENA range has basically released a complete pile of items to get you started with building up your own board, covering the key categories of terrain – scatter, linear obstacles, repeatable structures and key character buildings.

I’ve been hard at work getting the buildings printed off. These are all coming off the Elegoo Neptune 4 at 1.6mm layer height, so while they are taking a long time to go through (8-16 hours or so) they are coming out with a pretty nice level of detail to them. As you can see above, I’ve printed the Houses, corner pieces and multiple pieces from the apartment set so far and they look pretty good! I still need to do a little more cleanup on them and I had a failure with the arched building which I need to take a look at before trying again but otherwise the larger pieces are well on the way.

The next step will be printing off some of the wall sets to make the landscape more interesting to fight through (and take up more space on the tabletop) before then adding some scatter terrain for those final touches. If you’re wanting to see how these buildings can look, I’ll point you over to The Solo Wargamer who is building up a new MENA board for some upcoming games. I’m probably planning some similar painting choices, including getting out the textured rattle-can to smooth over the details.

For now though, the printer is hungry and the filament must flow…

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