Sahel Conflicts: Shops and Signs for Mali

My village has expanded with my residents now having a place to do some shopping. These are all based on actual stores seen in Mali and other French speaking African nations. 

All of the shops started life as MDF kits produced by GameCraft Miniatures. The kits have minimal detailing and do not include windows, doors, and the like. As such, my first step was adding architectural elements created from plasticard, brass rod, and O scale modeling details (now produced by San Juan Details).

To hide that the buildings were MDF, I textured them with Liquitex Ceramic Stucco, and also added Liquitex Natural Sand to the sidewalks.

Once dried, everything was sanded down to a smoother texture that looks more in scale for 28mm.

For the small shop awning, I originally only pinned the bottom of the posts with brass rod, which ended up not having the strength I hoped for. When moving to the larger building, I decided to pin the awning from top to bottom. To make sure the post holes lined up, I taped the awning base to the sidewalk and drilled all the holes at the same time.

Here is the awning under construction, with the brass rods encapsulated by thicker styrene tubing.  The same construction method was used for the billboards.

The first shop is a small grocery. The iron bars on the windows were built from sections of O scale railing. I felt the door openings looked too tall for regular 28mm miniatures, so I created an overhead window out of more railing and plasticard. The added roof was also plasticard, and has been painted to imply that it is made from smaller sheets of corrugated metal. 

The second shop is a money transfer agent, with additional office and mobile services. Mobile phone money apps seem pretty common in Mali, and this independent shop supports a wide variety of systems. It was built from the same MDF blank as the grocery, but with the front flipped and the awning added. The kit comes with a roof opening to assist with removing the roof, but I didn't think it looked appropriate for a modern building and covered it over with a metal door. To get the roof off, the billboard on top now functions as a handle. The security gates were made from additional railing sections.

For the large building, I decided to subdivide it into 4 smaller shops, using foam core to create the inner walls. The door openings are the same height as the smaller shops, but are double-wide.  I though the proportions looked ok here, so left off the over door windows. The downside to the bigger openings is that it's easier to see further back into the shops. I wanted the interiors mostly empty for placing miniatures, so decided to add additional details near the doors to help block line of sight and keep the back areas open (and when you only have have normal overheard lighting, the back of the shops are much darker than you see in these photos). Security doors/gates are a mix of San Juan elements or are scratch built. The roof lifts off using the billboard as a handle, same as the previous shop.

The fist two shops are a mobile phone supplier and a hair salon. The mobile shop is a copy of a a real one in Bamako, but the coiffure is created from a composite of materials from various African salons. The salon chair is a leftover O scale train seat I had from another project.

The Islamic bookstore is based on another real shop in Mali, though I don't know the city.  The detail elements, including the display case, mimic what is seen at the real location. My only disappointment here is with the sign; for some reason my home printer really struggled with cyan variations in the texture and the result is pretty monochromatic. The pharmacy sign is taken from one in Chad,  though I added some more descriptors to the bottom. Pharmacies in French-speaking Africa are often white and green, so I have used that color-scheme here. 

Lastly, I have a test build of a roadside billboard.  It's made from an 60x90mm MDF base, brass rod, and styrene elements. It can display advertising on both sides for additional variety. I'll make a few more when I have time. 

This was a really fun build and I'm extremely happy with the final results. I think the added details really give it a lived in feel compared to the basic MDF starting point, and will hopefully make games more immersive.

If you would like to use any of the signs I collected or created for non-commercial use, they are freely available below.  For any of the business owners from whose property these were adapted, please let me know if you would like them removed and I will do so. 

French language shop signs and advertisements:

French language billboards with distressed texture:

Sahel Conflicts: Test Game with Spectre Operations

One of my gaming friends was passing through town this weekend, and offered to demo the Spectre Operations rules for me. The scenario called for eight French Foreign Legion troops to rescue two reporters being held hostage in a small Malian farming village by twelve Islamic insurgents. He did not know where the hostages were being held (2nd floor of the two-story building) and I did not know what direction he would be attacking from. As such, I decided to keep my forces as mobile as possible and placed a squad in each corner, assuming he would come in from one of the long edges. 

While he did pick one of the long edges, he unexpectedly came in from the corn and cotton fields on the corners instead of the shorter central distance behind the walls. 

The sentry watching the corn field was unable to spot the French Legionnaires advancing, but the insurgents saw the movement in the cotton field and opened fire. Unfortunately, no injuries were inflicted. The insurgents had the initiative the next round,with more troops moving to cover the cotton field.  Again, they were unable to hit their targets.

The Legionnaires returning fire in the cotton field had success, with the minimi operator chewing up three insurgents. The team leader and grenadier also managed to kill and stun two more insurgents on the far side of the compound before taking cover behind one of the buildings.

 

Things were better for the Islamists on the other side of the table. An RPG-equipped insurgent caught the other FFL team coming out of the cornfield and eliminated two members before they could reach the wall.

Back at the cotton field, the Legionnaires tossed a grenade into the alley, killing one more insurgent. They also gunned down the Islamist leader as he tried to get into a better firing position. However, the enemy RPG still had a lock on the passage, keeping it a potential death trap if the French tried to enter.

On the corn field side, another Legionnaire rushed the wall and wildly threw a hand grenade. It missed its target and bounce off one of the buildings, but still managed to take out the other RPG-equipped insurgent. 

The suppressed survivors of the attack returned fire with a shotgun and AK47s, but their frantic firing was all for naught. 

The FFL gave up on the alley, using a smokescreen to hide their rush to one of the other buildings, kicking in the door and finally entering the village.

The surviving insurgent moved behind hard cover and hoped a target would present itself.  Meanwhile the other Islamists in the village were all gunned downed.

The Legionnaires guessed the hostage location correctly, sending one trooper through the trap door and freeing the reporters from the upper room. It was the final round of the game and the French Foreign Legion were victorious, though it cost the lives of two comrades.  

My first impressions of Spectre Operations were that it's a fun game for small actions, but I think these rules would bog down with larger forces. My friend kept the rules and mission simple for my benefit, so it would be interesting to try something more in depth to see how it plays.  The hardest part for me was the mind shift from planning unit actions to individual actions, as I've mostly been playing Bolt Action with my usual group. I also didn't realize how poor my insurgents' skills would be against the Legionnaires.  I probably should have broken them up into smaller fire teams and kept them hidden in the buildings for as long as possible.  But you live and learn, and I still had a good time.