Urban Terrain: Municipal building progress.

So, things have been rather busy at work as of late.
Last minute schedule and timetable adjustments, staff going off sick, coming back, stress levels at everything are high as we deal with the public at large. So hobby time this past week or so has practically disappeared.

That's why I haven't posted any 30 minutes for 30 days recently more on that soon!

Today, I got a day off from work and the world, so cracked on with some hobby to relax.

When we last left the Municipal Building (as that's what I am making it), I'd gotten the base bevelled and the foundation applied.

Progress has been rapid.

I started with thinking that the build was missing something, looking at some old world war 2 photographs on Google I was struck by how often a chimney would be left standing surrounded by rubble. This phenomenon was very common in Stalingrad, must be how the Russians build their houses.

So armed with some hasty measurements:

 A sheet of foam board and 15 minutes or so, I had this:

Another 15 minutes or so with some rapid drying PVA and things were progressing, a few snippets of an old plastic straw also produced chimney pots:

It was then placed in a test position on the build:

You may think it's a little tall, but look around at houses and building near you. They are often a lot taller then we actually think, andd most wargaming buildings are just shells placed to represent a building. With this project I figured why not actually try to make stuff to scale, especially height as that is one of the main things I found lacking in the terrain collections at Element Games and Warhammer World.

Whilst that was off drying, I got to thinking about the front garden area.

I wanted to include a fenced off area, generally make this one of the more well looked after parts of the city before the war came.

I had picked up some MDF laser cut fencing and with some cutting and sanding:

 To see how it looked together I threw a few Ventrillian Nobles on:

These steps were mainly done over on Saturday evening when I got home from work.

Leaving the chimney to set overnight, today, being bright and sunny, I moved outside to work.

First thing was to get the chimney a coat of the textured PVA, sand and black emulsion mix, then glued down and foam formers added around it:

I hadn't glued down the fence on the front, as I needed to keep the building frontage removable until the next steps are complete.

In order to build up the ground forms and not have it just look like polystyrene foam, I bought some of the modelling compound from Geek Gaming, time to figure out how it worked, Luke makes it look so easy...but that's his business so he has to.

 Armed with this and some water, how difficult could it be?

Turns out not that difficult*, and as he says in as lot of his videos, you just slap it on, and have about 20 minutes to work with.

As I was out in the sun, it was more like 15 but working in small area's at a time it was really easy to create the landforms I wanted:

Now remember, all this will be covered with rubble, sand and gravel soon.

That's the next job, even though it says on the packaging that it is ready in about an hour, it does say it can be damp for up to 24 hours, so I'm going to leave the build overnight to cure properly before moving on.

I am aiming to create a few flatter area's with the next stage where miniatures can perch when fighting within the building.

Once this stage is completed I can can glue the building in place proper and start landscaping the front, including ac blown in the fence on on of the corners (I messed up when cutting the fence to size).

And a few "action shots" for scale:

 Burna Boyz lead the way in for the Evil Sunz Klan.

View through the front door, there will be a stone path leading up to it.

A Ventrillian fireteam, with Sentinel support patrol the ruins.

Lastly:

"Private Jenkins, No grenades inside the building...get back here you stupid boy!"

(I could have called him Private Pike, but these guys aren't that much of a blundering set of fools).

Before I leave the cityscape, as this build is progressing, thoughts inevitably turned to the next one.

Browsing eBay I found this kit:

Something different, what about a Canal?

Running across the width of the board, it would give a piece of blocking terrain which would hinder movement but not range or LoS, something not often seen on a table (or I haven't seen it anyway).

I went searching through my cityfight book for a particular image, the Imperial city of Tsaragrad:

Complete with canal...mine would be a slightly raised one with the canal water level on the same as the board, but I have 12% of a plan to deal with it.

Well, this was a huge post, hopefully I should be able to post updates more regularly.

Until next time...

*I am not affiliated with Geek Gaming or sponsored to include this in this post, I just like to share awareness of products I find good and useful.

 - Lewis

Urban Terrain, building commenced.

Along with the Samurai challenge I am taking part in, I have managed to get some time to work on the terrain pieces.

When last I left this topic, I had just been doodling in my notebook and planning things out.

Well no more, my guesstimate bases sizes were way under sized, so the bases have expanded.

The main house is now about 20"*18" overall, this will allow me to build up some rubble around it.

This somewhat gives you a size of it.
The grey area in the middle is some insulation underlay which happened to have a textured side which looked like floorboards. Like you can see I have been adding to the building itself (why do I do these things to myself?).

A couple of views showing the main elements before anything else added, excuse my out of scale hand in the photo's.
I also took the time to hit the buildings with as mixture of black emulsion paint, PVA and sand in order to add some texture to the smooth MDF pieces, I'll add this to all the different buildings I eventually make for this build.

Next I started to add former to the interior, these will for the base for the modelling compound to go on and make the rubble piles:

Insulation polystyrene carved up and glued down. Remember there is a layer of stuff over this, these pieces just mean I am not using more compound then necessary.

Finally I covered the lot in a mixture of black emulsion paint and PVA to add strength and seal the polystyrene.

I've since finished detailing the building to where I won't be able to get at it later, and it's ready to be glued down in place allowing me to start adding the outer formers, fencing, tree stumps, etc.

It's a thing, definitely progress, more to come.

Until next time...


 - Lewis