Urban Terrain, the beginning

A bit ago I visited my friend over in Stockport and we had a great Apocalypse game at Element Games where we learned a few things about the game and about the gaming center.

Chief amongst those lessons was that people will always stop by and start talking whilst you are trying to play your game and this inevitably slows play as you end up talking and stuff instead of concentrating on your game.

In our conversation on the way home when I dropped him off, we were discussing his house and the fact that he has a spare double bedroom just being filled with junk, a lightbulb lit up, a dubious plan was hatched and set in motion.

He had found out some older wargaming pieces which he didn't want anymore and had tried unsuccessfully at the Warboot (Element Games version of a Carboot sale) to shift, so I offered to try on eBay for him.

The proviso was that I didn't send him the cash, but used it to build up a terrain collection and we would turn his spare room into a gaming room with table, bookshelves, display shelves, etc.

With several of the items now sold, orders have been placed and started to turn up, just in time as I had just watched this YouTube video by LukesAPS.

First was for a set of MDF ruined city buildings.

There are varying amounts of 1, 2, 3 and 4 floor buildings here, all with floors and windowsills.

I've added some detailing parts from my own terrain supplies:

Textured brick plasticard, this is made for model railways, but I am going to use it here as a way of adding interest with parts of brick showing through plaster on a couple of the buildings.

Normal Crafting Card, will be used to create raised structural beams on the outside of a couple of the buildings to prevent the “flat MDF look”.

 

Likewise a cheap tub of baking powder, this will become the outer texture of the buildings, it's not as coarse as plaster or filler, and will look better I think when painted, again to add variation to the buildings.

 

 

I ordered a pack of these Notice Boards which should look nicely on either a lampost scatter piece or on the corners of the buildings. Likewise these packs of hatches and grills will serve the same-ish functions.

 

And these are a set of 3D printed crushed barrels I picked up to throw around the pieces and add some interest to them.

Toy cars are always a godsend, and this 1:48 scale JCB digger made by Teamsterz is a nice piece to use, I'll try to get some building site stuff to go with it as a scatter piece. More of use in modern, near future sci-fi though?

I also have several of the cars made by the same company available to use as well.

 

Lastly this is a strip from one of the old blinds that I had in the conservatory of my house which we replaced. I kept this as the texture and pattern on it was interesting, could be useful.

Never throw anything out...

Lastly, I dug through my “Old GW Books” box and dragged out the old Cityfight book, as I remembered that this had a good section on how to build scenery for 40k, techniques which can be used for lots of differing buildings as one of the aims with this project is to not make it too 40k focused, as we have both expressed interest in Bolt Action WW2 gaming recently as well.

 

A selection of the pages from the Cityfight book shows what I meant:

 

I haven't started building yet, just in the planning stage, but this is shaping up to be a fun project already.

Let the creation commence!

Until next time...

- Lewis