Mogadishu is an interesting challenge. It shares a lot of its architecture with what we generally consider to be “Standard” Middle Eastern terrain (mud-brick huts), but it’s generally cleaner, simpler, and more efficient in its design.

In approaching the Mogadishu project, I’ve started to look up images of Mogadishu in 1993. It’s been enlightening and made me realize I really need to vary the styles of buildings I produce to represent the area. I’ve identified a few characteristics of different buildings that I want to get onto tabletop:

1) Buildings tend to be clean, box shapes, whitewashed. They’re dirtied by weather, but for the most part they do appear cleanly white. I have to account for the quality of the images—these are photos from 1993, so I assume they’re dirtier than they appear. I’ll do my best to imitate what I’ve seen with other whitewashed buildings in places like Portugal.

2) Roofs vary from flat concrete to slanted tile, to corrugated metal.

3) Some areas were significantly more beat up, requiring that I take the time to really dirty them and vary their colors.

4) There were a lot of shanties throughout the city as a result of years of fighting. For these, they come in two major styles: one is brick huts with corrugated metal roofs, and the other is the classic corrugated metal all-around.

5) From a painter’s perspective, things are pretty simple. Walls are white, pastel red, or pastel yellow. Roofs are white, red or metal, and windows and doors appear generally brown. Awnings are often red, but I’ve seen a few yellow. Shanties tend to be standard oxidized shanty colors.

Another striking element was how green the area is. I believe I can replicate this by using my standard European tree style and just shrinking it to 15mm. I’ll need a considerable number of trees to really get it right. I’ve also found photos of greenery along the roads—ferns and other plants growing all over the place.

I’m unsure if I will really get to these smaller plants—it’ll be hard to find a good way to place them spread around a neoprene mat (I don’t plan to build the board itself), but I do believe greenery is important.

Finally, the city is dense. Images show many one- and two-story buildings relatively close together along major streets. There’s a lot of alleys and nooks that are clearly defining of the space.

I’ve found a few varieties of printable buildings to try and represent the area. I’ll continue to hunt and leverage as many different styles as I can, possibly using some MDF buildings I found that recreate specific buildings of importance (Gamecraft Miniatures sells them).

Ultimately, I think I need around 40-50 buildings to fill up a 6×4 mat at the extreme. I may go lower than this—my games will very likely be played on 4x4s. After the buildings, I need roughly 50-60 trees and as many shanties and scatter terrain as I can stomach alongside a bunch of cars that fit the scale.

All told, I expect this to be a month-long project if I keep it simple on the paint jobs. I don’t plan to add posters or to take the time to really decorate everything. Unlike some of my recent projects, this will mostly be done via airbrush, including dirtying the terrain. I’m overdue for a project I can bang out without having to constantly stop and consider colors, realistic weathering, etc. Call that another reason I settled on 15mm: smaller scale means a little less detail and a faster overall project.

This project will be the true test case for 15mm for me. If it goes as planned, I’ll be able to run an event game after only a few weeks of work in a setting I have nothing pre-existing for. This means I can follow up with games set in China, or Portugal, or South America throughout various conflicts with minimal comparative work. I actually regret that I’m leaving for vacation—if I could start on this today, I would!