How to build ancient Alexandria with Sarissa Precision mdf-kits

When Caesar went ashore in Alexandria it was the largest city in the world after Rome. Hundreds of thousands of people from many different cultures lived in this hellenistic metropolis. To play games set in Alexandria I obviously needed a lot of houses.

A busy street somewhere in Alexandria.

Wargaming in an urban environment is a notoriously terrain heavy endeavour. Street fighting is also one of the aspects that makes the Siege of Alexandria so interesting. Luckily these days there is a cheap source for terrain in the multitude of mdf-kits from a number of companies that are available. There are no specific Alexandrian or hellenistic kits that I am aware of but Sarissa Precision have a range called “Streets of Rome”. I’m no expert in ancient architecture and can barely tell the difference between a Doric or Ionic column (although I am sure there are many) but for a wargaming purpose the Sarissa Precision kits fit nicely.

The busy streets of Alexandria by the French archaeologist and architect Jean Claude Golvin. We are looking down the Canopic Avenue to the south west. To the right are the Royal Quarters and in the distance you can see the Heptastadion to the right and the Serapeum to the left. As you can see it is quite similar to our image of Rome, Athens, Carthage or many other ancient cities around the Mediterranean. Source: jeanclaudegolvin.com

The problem with mdf

Don’t get me wrong, mdf is great and the kits have evolved a lot since the first houses came out some ten years ago. The Sarissa-kits have details etched into them and other details, like window frames, are added with card. Despite this, mdf-buildings are understandably quite flat. There are a number of ways to make them less flat and more 3d or “real”. I chose to do this in two different ways, one was to add extra details with plasticard. This was mostly done arbitrarily, I simply added plasticard where I thought it would fit. It doesn't necessarily represent an architectural feature, it’s just a way to add some interest to an otherwise flat surface. There are also some deliberately added details, like door hinges, thresholds or the roofs.

I also wanted to add some texture to the walls and I have seen people do this by using a number of different methods and materials. The most common way is probably to dab or paint the walls in plaster or grout. I tried this and wasn’t very happy with the result. It took a long time and was very hard to paint afterwards. And when it was done pieces of it kept falling off, exposing the brighter material underneath. I might have done something wrong but I wasn’t prepared to try it again. Instead I decided to try another technique, textured spray paint. The one I used was a Montana “Granit Effect Spray”. It basically shoots out small clumps of paint that creates the texture. You can somewhat control the amount of texture by spraying a light or heavy coat with it which is nice. The downside is you have to mask parts of the house (like roofs) that you don’t want to have any texture on. It also sprays very wide and leave oily stains so make sure to protect the area you are spraying in with newspapers or something like that.

Three houses in three stages, with the plasticard (and some tape for protection before spraying), with the texture spray and finally with a basecoat of paint.

In the picture above you can see the three stages of prepwork for the houses and hopefully you’ll agree it gives the house a bit more life and character.

Time to paint

Next it was time to give the houses some paint. Contrary to Hollywood-tropes the architecture of the ancient world was not clinically white. Below you can see the colours I have used. These are just suggestions, feel free to experiment with whatever paints you already have. It could also be a good idea to vary the colours a bit from house to house to break up the monotony.

All of the paints used for at least the basic painting and weathering of the buildings. From the left; Abteilung 502 Olive Green, Dust and Industrial Earth, Vallejo Surface Primer German Green Brown, top row: Vallejo Model Color German Camo Medium Brown, Vallejo Model Air Light Brown and Aged White, bottom row: Vallejo Game Air Terracotta, Vallejo Model Air German Red Brown, Fire Red and Red, to the right: Vallejo Surface Primer Black, Windsor & Newton Winton Oil Colour Ivory Black and Burnt Umber.

I basecoat the buildings with Vallejos Surface Primer ”German Green Brown” and the roofs with Surface Primer ”Black”. Then the houses are airbrushed with a layer of Vallejo Air ”Light Brown”. I keep this a little lighter around doors and windows so the darker basecoat shows through. This is to create a little gradient to add some interest to the otherwise very flat surfaces. Next I airbrush Vallejo Air ”Aged White” in basically the same way but even more just try to hit large open surfaces with the paint, staying away from any edges like  around the windows and the doors, the ground, the roofs or any other details. I’m not too careful with this since I am painting a lot of houses and a few mistakes won't be visible when it is all done. The roof gets a coat of Vallejo Game Air ”Terracotta”. Details like doors, window frames and roof supports got a layer of Vallejo Model Color ”German Camo Medium Brown”.

I decided to add some colour by painting the bottom of some of the houses, and some other details, in red. I know this is a “classic” Roman look and I haven’t really found a source for why they did it (or barely if they did it). Consequently I’m not really sure this is something they did in Alexandria. But it looks good.

So I masked the buildings using fine masking tape from Tamiya and used the airbrush to apply a layer of Vallejo Air “Fire Red”. I then sprayed Vallejo Air “Red” on the upper parts of the red to create a gradient from top to bottom. On other houses I varied this by using Vallejo Air “German Red Brown” as a base and then highlighted with the “Fire Red” as above.

After these steps the houses look quite flat even with the gradients in the red and the white. To create some contrast I mixed Winston & Newtons “Burnt Umber” with their “Sansodor Thinner” to create a wash and applied this all over the red and white parts of the building. Then I did the same with a mix of Windsor & Newtons “Ivory Black” and the thinner and applied this to the brown parts and the roofs. Just these washes gives the houses a very real look and adds definition to the details. I’d be happy to put these on the gaming table. To add just a little bit of weathering I did some streaking, again using the oil paints. To do this I added small dots of oil paint, mainly Abteilung 502 “Olive Green”, “Dust”, “Industrial Earth“ and Windsor & Newtons “Burnt Umber” to places where dirt and grime would accumulate and then rain would make streaks. An obvious place would be from the windows or from the roof ridge. Then you take a bigger brush, dampen it with the thinner and drag this over the dot of oil paint to create the streak. You can vary this by making longer streaks, adding more oil paint for a stronger effect or thinner to erase or thin out the effect.

The house on the left only has the base colours on, the one in the middle has been washed with the oil wash and the one on the right have had some weathering in the form of streaks made with the oil paint.

As you can see these pretty simple steps give a fairly realistic end result.

Pavements and floors

The Sarissa buildings have a quite big base and a large part of it is pavement in front of the house. I wanted to blend this as much as possible into my game mat so I needed to make it look like cobblestones. I had used Sarissa's stencils to paint some bricks on another house some time ago and there are other patterns in that stencil set that I thought would work. I started by painting the whole base in Vallejo Model Colour Neutral Grey, not inside the houses though. Then I simply put the stencil on the pavement and started dabbing with a brush using Vallejo Game Colour Cold Grey. To add some variation I picked out a few stones in Vallejo Game Color Stonewall Grey. This was then washed with the same mix of oil paint and thinner as the roofs.

I can really recommend Sarissa’s stencils for things like this, they work great.

It’s all in the details

The houses in themselves don't necessarily make for a great wargaming table. To make it look interesting (to make it look “real” is a bit of a stretch) you need details. I’m a big fan of having “scenes” in the terrain that don’t add anything game-wise but just looks good. For me wargaming is as much a game as it is a visual spectacle. 

To this end there’s all sorts of little things you can add, one obvious is civilians. Here we are spoilt with choices for this era, Footsores “Gangs of Rome” range is great as is Wargames Foundry’s ancient civilians. Animals is another example, I have added cats and pigeons, both from Bad Squiddo Games. Another great set from Bad Squiddo are their crates and tables, which work perfectly for the docks or the shops. I also have some tables, benches and crates from 4ground. 

There are a wealth of producers of little things like this if you browse around the web, not to mention the possibility of 3d-printing.

Just some “street furniture” to put the house in some kind of context.

So these are some basic steps of painting your Sarissa Precision houses and enhancing them just a little bit beyond how they look straight out of the box. There are a lot more you can do with these kits, I haven’t even touched the inside of them yet, so I am sure I will return to these and add elements to them in the future.

A note on sources

One of the problems with ancient Alexandria is that there is not much left of it. Nothing unique when talking about ancient cities obviously but we don’t have the wealth of information as we have from Rome or Athens for example. Two good sources about the city are Judith McKenzie’s ”The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt 300 BC- 700 AD” and Michael Bengtssons ”Alexandria and the World of Cleopatra VII”. McKenzie’s book is pretty heavy going and deals in detail with columns and wall paintings. It does a good job of accounting for primary literary sources though. Bengtsson’s work is a reconstruction of the palace during Cleopatra's reign and a very interesting visual resource. Another source is the video game Assassins Creed: Origins which takes place during the siege of Alexandria. I’ve seen scholars vouching for the accuracy of the portrayal of Alexandria in the game and I thought I’ll at least mention it even though I haven’t played it myself. I’m pretty sure it’s a lot more accessible than the previous two sources with the caveat that it’s a videogame.