Another Sarissa City Block Building

Sarissa Precision City Block 28mm (Style #2) building for my modern Africa games

A week or so ago, I received a shipment of three additional Sarissa City Block buildings. Terry from Wargame Tools picked out three slightly different ones for me on his recent trip to Europe, and brought them back with him. All are three different numbers in this line, one of which I ordered with an additional floor expansion to create a 3-story building. I absolutely love the simplicity and ease with which the Sarissa MDF buildings go together. And since I need lots of buildings for the upcoming Wars of Insurgency city fight, set in a fictional, modern African country, I have been working on these steadily, lately.

Three quarter view of the building, with my modification - a small, rectangular roof structure (door to stairs)

I decided to do a slight modification on this building. Since I like how the roofs are set up perfectly for figures to fire from them in games, I added a small building to show where the staircase to the roof comes out. I probably went too "no frills" on this. I simply cut a square bass wood dowel to the appropriate height, and then placed a wooden square on top of it for a roof. A had a door (or was it a window shutter?) from one of my earlier log cabins that I hadn't used in my bits bin, and pulled it out and glued it to the small rectangular structure atop the roof. I wasn't overly pleased with how it came out, so will try something else next time.

Style #2 has more industrial style windows, I feel. The reddish-orange tint is more brick than rose, unfortunately

Since the City Block line are essentially identical buildings, just with different window patterns, I also wanted to make them different in the colors I paint them. The first Sarissa building I did was in a golden yellow stone color. This one I thought I would attempt a weathered rose color. After assembling the building and spray priming it black, I applied the first coat -- Howard Hues Middle Eastern Flesh. I like this color as it is a kind of dull, faded red with orange undertones. When I applied the base coat, I attempted to not put it on so thickly that it would seep into the laser-etched lines between the stones. For the most part, I was successful, and the black shows through as the joins between each stone block.

This view illustrates the dry-brushing I did roughly in the center of each laser-cut stone block

The next step was probably the most time consuming. I dry brushed the central area of each sqaure etched stone block with Howard Hues Colonial Khaki. This lightens and fades the orange color. I had not intended for this building to look like brick, as the etched stones are way too big for that. I was disappointed it looked a bit like brick in color, though. I should have realized it, though, as this is a very similar color combination that I've used in the past on brick buildings. To salvage it, and give it a bit more red cast, I did an acrylic wash of a red brown. This gave it less orange and more red of a look, plus softened the brush strokes of the khaki.

Once again, printed off wooden floor patterns to put on the inside floors. The walls on the inside were a light gray -- nothing fancy. Just something to have a little color when the roof or second floor is pulled off to move figures into or out of for game purposes. Next up -- the three story building!