The Grand Marché (Big Market) for my tabletop is now complete with the addition of the last two buildings: a restaurant and an apartment building with shops on the lower level.
The Buffalo Grill started out as a small Roman shop from Sarissa. This was textured and modified with various plastic elements (some scratch built, some O scale elements from San Juan Details) and a table set from 4Ground to try and give it a more modern African flavor. I left one door on the back of the building as an entrance to the residence above. One thing I would recommend with this kit is minimizing the use of the roof/awning card elements, as they are rather flimsy and won't hold up well.
The apartment building also began life as another Roman building from Sarissa. I opted to go with a flat roof to further differentiate it from the similar restaurant building, and also painted the window lattice black to help hide it. The back doors were covered up, and a entrance built from one of the lower shops (in blue).
In the original kit, the shop entrances are fully open, but I have scratch built roller doors (partially hidden by the awnings) and shopfronts for the butcher and baker. As with the restaurant, these are based off of real businesses in Mali.
Rather than a candlestick maker, the third shop sells and services mopeds/scooters. I didn't build this from a real prototype, but instead used advertising for a Chinese brand that seems common in western Africa. I couldn't find modern scooters to populate the sidewalk, but Miniature Building Authority has a vintage version that I thought could get the job done.
So here is my final Grand Marché, as inspired by the one in Bamako, Mali. Obviously it isn't to the same scale or chaos as the original, but it still take up approximately 0.5m x0.5m of table space and makes a great spot to ambush patrols.
Part of Bamako's Grand Marché for reference:
As with my previous shop builds, I'm including the signage (along with some others I collected) for personal use. If the owners of any of these establishments would like their signs removed, please contact me and I would be happy to do so.
