A quick "dress rehearsal" laying out the buildings so far for my Gangs of Rome table. A few of the buildings here are incomplete and need a bit more set dressings or their roofs completed. I've got one or two new buildings to add along with some market stalls and scatter.
I treated myself to a break from my ongoing work on Roman tabernae for Gangs of Rome and instead dedicated some time to completing a Sarissa Precision Temple. The finished kit makes for quite an impressive and imposing build and will form the center of my marketplace/forum. I opted to make this a temple to Neptune simply because it was the best free Roman god statue STL I could find. I went for a classic colour palette that may well be more Hollywood than historical but I much prefer the clean white look.
I intended to do some pedimental sculptures for the tympanum by adjusting existing 3D files but nothing I came up with looked right. I would love for a 3D artist to design a simple tympanum that would specifically suit Sarissa's temple.
As I have mentioned before, I am really impressed with the appearance of Sarissa's pillars in this range. For mdf I think they really look the part and they have done a great job on their construction, which is both simple and very effective.
Right - back to butcher shops and bakeries for me...
This is the first upper rank building I have completed for my Gangs of Rome table - a moneylender. Although temples formed the first banks in Rome, private moneylenders or government supervised argentarii did exist. The kit is one of Sarissa's Upper Rank Insula Corner kits and has been my first experience with Sarissa's MDF pillars. I have to admit I was pretty dubious about how these would turn out but I am pleasantly surprised with how easy these went together and of the overall final look - they really do look like pillars. I'm very keen to tackle the temple now. The interior is fairly plain and features a floor mosaic that was simply printed out from a Googled image and gloss varnished.
This is the tenth building I have completed for my Gangs of Rome layout, a book dealer, and the kit is again another of Sarrisa's Lower Rank Insula Corner.
Roman "books" were not our modern idea of a book of course, but scrolls or "book rolls". I stupidly decided to make my scrolls by hand, when I could have just 3D printed them. That's about two hours of my life I won't get back! They probably do look a bit more authentic although because I used the pirate-map coffee staining method on them.
Apparently exteriors of bookshops were plastered with advertisements and choice quotes from the titles in stock. Martial once told a friend not to bother going in, since you could “read all the poets” on the door posts.
I've been wanting to add some greenery to my builds for some time and this time I included a trestle and climbing plant. On the blank wall of the building I made a small street shrine, likely to Jupiter.
The next Gangs of Rome building is this nondescript property known locally as the House of the Pomegranate, an upscale lupanar, or brothel. My inspiration for this was from the scene when Titus Pullo takes Octavian to the brothel in HBO's Rome. The House of the Pomegranate is one of Sarissa's Semi-Detached Small with Flat Roof kits and it was a nice change to not have do add any pan-tiles to this one. At a later time I may detail the open roof area with some couches and plants.
The front room of the lupanar has a large wall mosaic of Venus. Roman brothels are well documented for their highly "descriptive" wall murals but I need to keep this pretty tame as the table will be displayed to the public and players may include kids. I also used a rug that was simply printed and cut out from normal printer paper.