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Building a Punk Venue for WitS Pt. 1


Chris from Slow Death Games/Wild in the Streets isn't going to be able to make it to AdeptiCon this year so the Breaker Press Games booth is going to be running Wild in the Streets demos in addition to our yearly introduction to Broken Contract. This means that I'm going to need suitable scenery to use for demo purposes, as well as for photos used in Tooth Chipper Fanzine. With that in mind, I looked around the internet in search of buildings that fit my vision of the hip neighborhoods I've frequented around the country as my old bands toured. Everywhere I looked, the modern buildings I was most drawn to were all from the TT Combat City Scenics line.

I looked at their entire range, and even though their old theatre, comic book store, and music shop all seemed like automatic selections, I needed to get the most bang and flexibility for my buck, so I ordered their Take Away set online, which is meant to be a stripmall with 3 restaurants in it. Eagerly, I waited for it to arrive.


The core of the Take Away set is a series of 3 identical buildings. Each one is wrapped separately and takes up three sprues. I used an x-acto blade to carefully cut the points of contact that hold the pieces of MDF into their sprues. I saved the empty frames in case I wanted to use any of the pieces for detailing. You will actually notice a length missing from the bottom of the frame above. That's because it became part of the inside of the building. More on that below.


I trimmed and test fitted all of the pieces and then went to the hardware store for some Rustoleum spray paint because I don't own an airbrush. I wanted to get my base colors down so I used Flat finish Black for the roof and floor, and I used Satin finish Stone Grey for the external portions of the front and sides of the building.


The inside of the building was a hard choice. This particular building was not going to be a restaurant as intended - it was going to be a small punk venue. I have been to countless music clubs around the country that were red or black on the inside. Unfortunately, if you want the models to pop, the colors should be a bit brighter to help reflect the light that enters the structure. With that in mind, even though it was really dark, I opted for red out of a desire for authenticity. In this case, I sprayed the internal walls with Satin finish Colonial Red.


One unnecessary bit of detail that I opted for was to make the front door removable in case I wanted to leave the door open, as is often the case before a show starts or between bands. It was a bit of a pain, but I used a pinvise with a large bit, an x-acto, and a needle file to gouge out a space for a magnet at the top of the door.


Inside the club, above the door frame, I superglued an old blade, too dull to be used anymore. You can see its trapezoid shape between the open space of the door and the piece of wood above it. This little bit of door framing was just a piece of the MDF frame the building came in, cut to fit above the door in a balanced fashion. Its primary purpose though was to prevent anyone from accidentally cutting themselves on the dull blade. It also helps keep the magnetized door straight when attached.


Once I had all of the core colors sprayed, I set to gluing the ground floor together. You'll notice streaks where the floor was hand painted, that's going to need another coat.


 Here's a front view of the ground floor all sprayed and glued. I chose black for the front of the building because its just a common "rock club" color and will look great when I detail out the front with black and white flyers. More on that in Part II.


Similarly, this is a shot of the sides and back of the building in Rustoleum Stone Gray. The top of the building is going to be glued together as a separate unit so that the floors are removable for game play purposes. 


This is a final shot of our punk music venue so far. In the next installment I'll start detailing it out to make it look even more legitimate. A building that has been painted to this point would be fine for a normal game, but I have some big plans for this little building. More to come in the next installment!

I recommend that you check out TT Combat's City Scenics line of buildings and, of course, check out Wild in the Streets by Slow Death Games. Thanks for reading!

-Nick

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