My wife's due with our first child any day now, so between preparations for that and general panic, I've been trying to distract myself from going mad by finishing up alot of started projects (plus, once the baby's here, my modeling time will likely be zero for quite some time). Amongst those projects is the modular city I never quite finished. I just got around to starting to paint it (which, for now, is about as far as it'll go) so figured I'd post the results. I may eventually turn this into an article, but for now I'd like to get it out there for feedback & comments.

This is a very basic & relatively inexpensive option for city terrain. If I were more talented or had more time, this plan could be used to make a pretty wicked city. All the parts are readily available at any large home improvement store and/or craft store (I got everything here between Home Depot and Michael's Arts & Crafts Store).

First step is to get some foam insulation. They usually sell in 4'x8' sheets in various thicknesses. I bought 2 sheets- one 2" thick, the second 1/2" thick. While there, I also bought a drywall T (a T shaped metal tool used for cutting drywall at right angles) and a utility knife. I used these to measure & cut my foam in the parking lot into 4'x2' sections- both for easy transport in my car & because this makes a nice size for modular table sections. The T & utility knife are both essential tools for the project- the T made the job a breeze.

The other useful tools are wood glue (or school glue- both are pretty much the same thing), a tape measure, a marker, masking tape, toothpicks (I prefer round to flat), and a foam cutter- if it's the straight kind pictured below, it'll save you loads of work when cutting out windows.

The next few posts will break down the process I used to make the terrain.

Making a Window Template

Let's start with the window template. This is one of the most measurement heavy parts of the project, but if you take your time here, it'll pay off.

Take a look at your figures & decide how tall you want each story in the buildings- in general 3-4 inches is pretty reasonable (I went with 3" for my 40k city here). Now, on a piece of thin card stock, measure out increments of this height (let's say 3"). From there, decide how tall you want your windows & how high off the floor you want them (with 3" stories, I went with 1 1/2" high windows 1/2" from the floor). Remember to take into account how thick of a floor you'll be using (1/2" in my case). So, using the example figures, we'll mark lines at 1/2" (bottom of window), 2" (top of window), 3 1/2" (bottom of the next window up), 5" (top of 2nd window up), etc., until you reach the top of the sheet. Horizontally, you'll want measure the width of the windows- for our windows, 1" wide should look nice. Also, figure out how far apart you want the windows. I liked the look of the windows being spaced as far as they were wide, so I used 1" spacing.
As a tip, take into account how wide your building walls will be when making this template. My walls are built with 1/2" foam, so I would start the first window 1 1/2" from the edge of the card (I made the mistake of not taking his into account when making my template & ended up having to measure out an extra 1/2" every time I lined the template up)
You may want to make more templates with different sized windows to mix up the look of your city.

Once the template is made, you can tape it directly to the foam you intent to cut windows into. If you have a straight wire foam cutter, you can follow the inner edges of the template- the cutter will cut the foam, but not the card stock. If you plan on using a utility knife to cut the windows, simply trace the template onto the foam with a marker, remove the template, & cut away.

City Layout

Assuming you've followed the steps above, you should have eight 2'x4' sheets of foam- four 2" thick, four 1/2" thick. The 2" will be the base board and the 1/2" will be used to make the buildings.

Before starting, you hopefully have an idea of how you want your city to look. Ideally, you've sketched out a plan. To help things along, get out your drywall T and start drawing lines on your 2" base boards. I like to measure out a line every 1' in one color (red for me) to use as a refernce point. If you have sketches on graph paper, super- you can now transfer the idea in full(miniature) scale onto the board.

No formalized plan? That's just fine, we'll work from that assumption.
Figure that at some point, you or someone you play agianst will have tanks- they'll be bent if they can't fit down any of the streets. A few back alleys that only troopers can get down is great, but you'll want to plan on some wide paths for the big guys to get through. Using 40k as a basis again, to accomadate most stuff you'll want 4-5 inches, for Land Raiders & the like, 5-6 inches. If you're planning on playing Apocalypse, best to keep a few 8" roads. Figure, too, that usually at least 2 of your board sections will be abutting, so you can always build a road half your max width on one long side of each board- where they meet, you can fit a Baneblade!
Once you've got your roads mapped out, figuring out positions for buildings is easy: they go everywhere a road isn't. Of course, you'll want to put a few ruined buildings & rubble blocks in there, so not EVERY block needs a building- the density really depends on your taste (and your play style- you're building it, why not put some nice sniper spots in for your Ratlings )

I was just wondering, I've never used the pink insulation sheets and was wondering is it the same as white insulation sheets? well is it made out of polystyrene i mean?

Making Buildings

This is the meat of the matter & where you'll be spending the most time. Once you've got it down, it's maybe the easiest part, but you'll be making ALOT of buildings & ruins.

Now that you've got an idea where you want buildings, decide how big you want them. For large buildings on a sparse board, figure 12-16" to a side. Smaller buidings may only be 6-10" wide. Always keep in mind, though, that you've got to play on this board. No matter how cool the scyscraper garden may look, if you can't reach between the dense buildings to move your figures, it's useless.

To make a useable ruined building, you'll probably want at least 1 wall broken down to allow easy acess. So, for each building you planned on in the step above, figure out how many intact sides you want and measure them out on the 1/2" insulation sheet. To maximize your materials, I've found it's best to measure the largest intact walls out first, then use the leftover pieces to build the ruined & half-smashed walls.
Cutting out the walls is a simple matter of lining up the drywall T along the line you want to cut and cutting along its edge with the utility knife. Even if you don't cut all the way through, the foam will snap neatly along the line you cut with just a little pressure.
For the ruined sides, measure out the highest point they will match to the intact wall, and cut diagonally from there to make a triangle. Tape the edges together to see if they match- if not, keep trimming until they do.

Before you go any further, you'll want to cut out your windows as described above in "Making a Window Template"

To make floors in the buildings, take some corner pieces from the 1/2" board and line them up between the walls. Mark where the walls meet the floor & cut the board between these marks. If the floor doesn't match perfectly against the walls, that's fine- you can trim the edges to get a better match, but the floors will be reinforced when we glue them in.

Gluing the buildings together is simple: just spread some wooodglue where the walls meet & press them together. Stick a toothpick in the joint through the flat edge into the long edge of the meeting wall. Do this while the glue is still wet- the toothpick will take some glue with it & make for a very strong joint once dried. Be careful, though, to stick the toothpick in straight- if stuck in skewed, they will stick out of the wall. You can also break the toothpick in two and just stick half the toothpick in- this will be plenty of reinforcement for a foam building. As a final step, you can put masking tape over the joint for extra sturdiness & to hide any gap in the match point. You may want to put extra glue under the tape- ask masking tape ages, it tends to losed it's adhesiveness & come away (I learned this the hard way- AFTER I'd already primed my buildings )

This method of gluing works well for the floors of the buildings, too. You may want to glue the floors in before you glue all the walls on- especially for large floors in building with 3 or more walls.

Pigeon616 wrote:I was just wondering, I've never used the pink insulation sheets and was wondering is it the same as white insulation sheets? well is it made out of polystyrene i mean?

The pink is alot denser & easier to work with than the white. The white is made up of small balls- the pink & blue are made from a liquid foam that is poured into sheets (the blue is pretty much the same as the pink- I think just different manufacturers)

Pigeon616 wrote:I was just wondering, I've never used the pink insulation sheets and was wondering is it the same as white insulation sheets? well is it made out of polystyrene i mean?

After a fashion..... Yes, it it polystyrene, and more appropriately, it is officially Styrofoam. But polystyrene comes in many forms. Namely extruded and expanded. The pink foam you see there is extruded polystyrene, it is much more expensive, but higher quality for what you want it for. Extruded polystyrene has smaller, more uniform cells and does not tend to flake like the expanded stuff, it also has better thermal and acoustic insulating properties.

Expanded polystyrene is the white, beaded, low-quality foam that you see so very, very often in packaging and the like.

I think the white stuff your talking about is expanded polystyrene... However, if it isn't beaded, it might be what you're looking for, but usually that stuff comes in pink or blue.

Details & Finishing touches

Once you've got some glued buildings, you'll want to "rough them up". To easily accomplish this, simply go along all the "ruined" edges and tear at the foam. By pulling little bits off all along the edge, you'll dramatically change the look of the building. If you have a long straight edge, tear off bigger pieces to make the wall look rough and bombed out.

To make rubble, save all those pieces you ripped off the edges and glue them to the base board- just a few pieces can make for some nice difficult terrain.

If you have the foam cutter, you can make some nice craters very easily. Securely tape a roughly round piece of 1/2" thick foam board on the base board. Cut out a cone shape into the 1/2" and the base board, being careful not to cut completely through the base board. Then, remove the 1/2" pice and cut the outside so the sides slope up and for a lip to the crater. Glue the crater back down & scatter some foam bit around it.

Painting

This is one of the biggest problems with doing a foam city: spray paint melts foam. Not in a cool, "it makes it look ruined" kind of way, but in a "AIEEEE! My work is RUINED!" kind of way. DO NOT USE STANDARD SPRAY PAINT ON THE FOAM CITY YOU JUST WORKED SO HARD ON!

Fortunately there are some solutions:

1. Paint everything by hand. Buy some paint and brushes and paint the whole city by hand. Of course, this can be tedious and leave unsightly brush marks, so be careful.
2. Coat the foam. If you coat the foam with watered down wood glue, you can then paint it safely. However, this is even more tedious than painting the city by hand and if you miss any spots, they will melt. On the other hand, with practice and care, this can be used to your advantage- uncoated spots with a light spray of paint can cause some unique crater effects.
3. Get foam safe spray paint. I know of only one source for spray paint that is safe for foam- a paint called "H20" made by Krylon. Unfortunately, it's a bit more expensive that regular spray (but not by alot), and much harder to find. Some craft stores do carry it, though. They only make one flat variety (the rest are glossy), and it's even HARDER to find. In the piece below, I've used the gloss black H2O. The glossiness can be eliminated by spraying a flat paint over the gloss.

Once you've got an initial coat down, you can paint the buildings as you normally would. In the examples below, one board section is still black, while the second was lightly sparayed with a flat grey to highlight the buildings.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for slogging through my lengthy, rambling post- I hope to add some final details to the buildings below (between working on other projects) and get the pictures up. In the meantime, I'd love to hear comments and criticisms on my techniques. Thank you!

Love the scale and the building types.... you've totally inspired me to take my next projects to a larger level .... great going on the buildings, I really like their structre etc... I also like working with the foam board... but I don't have a hot wire cutter (just starting back in with the whole hobby).

Hey, I have a question re: buildings and playing (for I have yet to actually play). Do the different floors need something connecting them? ie: stairs or a ladder ? or do we just use the same movement measurements and our imagination? In the buildings I have/am building I have not put those things in.... is that ok ?

I notice you have not textured your buildings (yet)? will you at a later date? or is this setup only concerned with playability? I think you could do some really cool stuf to this set-up.

Great work and thanks for sharing

P.S. Congrads on the little one, and soon to be a father tough, but rewarding job....

10/10, this is awesome terrain. Could you maybe provide some more pics of the finished product? What do you spray that styrofoam with to prevent it from getting dissolved by the aerosol?

This is awesome, in fact I'm going out to buy everything mentioned above tomorrow (actually its past midnight where i am so today i guess). Great tutorial

And thanks for clearing up my confusion.

Great stuff LuigiX, and don't worry, you will still get plenty of modelling time after the baby is born. In fact, that is the main reason I returned to this hobby... After the baby goes to bed, quiet painting or terrain building occupies a lot of time since I can't listen to loud music, movies, or video games!

Thanks all for the comments & support!

@sallad101: In the newest rules(and in the Cityfight book, for that matter), it specifies that it can be assumed that troops can get from one floor to another (which is super for me- I've tried building ladders & its a pain ). Changing level just requires 3" of movement.
I may texture the buildings & do a better paint job on them at some point- for now, I just wanted to get them looking good enough to play on. I've got plans for a few more board sections that I hope to make much more detailed (sewage treatment plant, park, & cathedral are all in planning stages)
I'll try to find a link to the foam cutter I use- @$20

@karmaiko: I'll get some more pics up tommorrow- for now, I'll put a few more below
With the H2O, there's no need to precoat the foam- it's safe to spray right on. Otherwise, I'd rub on a coating of watered down wood glue, but be sure to get 100% coverage. I've heard that some airbrushes can be used on foam, but I don't know for sure. Suppposedly, it's the accelerant in spray paint that causes foam to dissolve.

@FoxPhoenix135: Yeah, I've got to practice my painting, before the baby hits 7 and starts painting better than I do Can't have the little one showing up her old man too bad

Pigeon616 wrote:This is awesome, in fact I'm going out to buy everything mentioned above tomorrow (actually its past midnight where i am so today i guess). Great tutorial

And thanks for clearing up my confusion.

Glad I could help! I look forward to seeing what you make- please post your results so I can check it out!

Fantastic results!

The best thing is once your child is walking you can play Godzilla on it!

Thats awesome, i look the ruined city scapes.

that pink foam is all well and good, but i can't find it anywhere near where i live!

anyone know where you can buy that stuff in the brisbane, australia area??

I really love your city -- that foam is tremendously useful. Very desolate, Stalingrad-esque. If I said one thing, I think the craters look too artificial, and perhaps should be wider and flatter.

How does 40k Play across vertical battlezones like this?

sA

Kid_Kyoto wrote:...once your child is walking you can play Godzilla on it!

You mean, play GHIDORAH on it.



Ghidorah

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Fantastic results!

The best thing is once your child is walking you can play Godzilla on it!

Actually, thinking I can kit her out as a Titan...

smiling Assassin wrote:I really love your city -- that foam is tremendously useful. Very desolate, Stalingrad-esque. If I said one thing, I think the craters look too artificial, and perhaps should be wider and flatter.

Thanks for the compliments. And yeah, they're definitely a different kind of craters- I may try out a few more craters as you describe- the ones I have (while I like the look of them) are difficult to fit figs in to use as cover.

smiling Assassin wrote:How does 40k Play across vertical battlezones like this?

I've tried it out a few times & it seems to work well. Though, honestly, the highest floors of the tallest building are rarely used- about 3-4 stories up is about as high as we've played. I've found that the higher buildings are most useful for long range squads like snipers or heavy weapons teams (and even then, range becomes an issue when the squad is 24" from ground level) . We had a cool game with Necron Scarab Swarms racing up to the 4th floor to reach a Devastator Squad before it could cause too much damage to the rest of the army.
One problem we did find with the design through play, though was that if the floors are too close together & go too deep into the building, it can be tough to move and position models. This was solved by making every other floor in the tall buildings much smaller (more of the floor "blown away" & crumbled)

Love this! I must do one myself...when my 80 other projects are done!

Thanks for adding to my list...lol

I painted the black board section's buildings. I drybrushed them with cheap acrylic craft paint using a 3" house painting brush with the softest bristles I could find (still a bit stiff). Found another tip: if you're planning on painting like this, make sure all your rubble is well glued down- a few pieces of rubble came off for me during the drybrushing. In order to get the buildings to take the paint, I did a light spray of flat black primer over the H2O coat (as the H2O is a gloss, I needed a slightly rougher surface to paint on).
In the pictures below, you can see a comparison of 2 painting techniques: the tall buildings painted with a light spray of gray over the black base coat, and the dense block painted with hand drybrushing.

Wow !!! ... i wish my polystirene buildings turned out like that !!!

Amazing, just amazing.

I think my favorite part is the walk way between the two buildings. Great work!

This looks great. You have inspired me. I will try it some time in the near future.

Great work, and great tutorial.

These are great looking buildings, I'm a sucker for City fight style games, nothing beats concentrated fire power down a corridor

i should start building some like this i think !

cant wait to see more

I got my 3rd section mostly done today. I'm planning it as a water treatment/ reservoir block. I've never used water effects before, so this will be my trial by fire. I plan to have thin layers of water in each of the 3 reservoirs and in the short canal. I may also put in some sections of fencing around the perimeter.
The reservoirs are made from craft boxes I got at a craft store and the pipes are simply PVC piping bought from a home supply store & cut to size. The canal was probably the most tedious part I've done so far- it was a pain to dig out the foam without punching through or going beyond my marked borders. If I had it to do over, I probably would just buy another sheet of 1/2" thick foam and cut & stack it up to 2" thick, leaving a gap for the canal.
Overall, I like the layout. It's a bit more open than the other two sections, but with more impassable terrain- should make for interesting play.

BTW, found a link to a foam cutter very similar to the one I've been using http://www.thewarstore.com/product187.html
Not the exact model, but looks to be pretty much the same. Be careful, though- with just a little too much pressure, the tip will snap- I'm on my second one due to hasty cutting.

Should be cool. I like this.

This stuff looks really good.

I am going to shamelessly copy your work here to make some of my own. If I can get it 1/2 as good I would be happy with it.

Wow! You're getting great results there man. Very Inspiring!

*mutter* Copy *mutter* *mutter* Name as own work *mutter**mutter*

I did a rough paintjob on the 3rd section & put some "water" on it. Rather than use "Water Effects", I bought some polyeurethane gloss varnish (for 1/4 the price). It looked good on some small test pieces, so we'll see how it turns out on the terrain.

Look forward to seeing pics after it's dry

First of all, I LOVE the article and will likely take bits of it to make buildings, that is, not a full cityscape YET.

While reading your article I had a pretty good idea how you could do a large building which isn't demolished... This is merely theory and hasn't been practiced.

If you took 1/2 inch foam insulation and crafted the floor and four walls as you wanted, that is, 4" tall with 1 1/2" windows ect... and kept the entire floor whole. Then, in lieu of toothpicks, use bamboo kebob skewers cut down to about 3 inches. Place a skewer at each corner of the structure wall.

Then, build another floor the same size as the first. The idea is you can then stack the individual floors and the skewers at the four corners of the structure will help anchor the floors together so there's no accidental tipping of the buildings.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to integrate the technique for a smaller-scale rural environemnt. The biggest issue is how to transition from ground to building without it looking out of place.

2000 Volts wrote:*Great idea for stackable buildings*

Thanks for the compliment, and I like your idea. A friend and I have discussed similar concepts for building a stackable building (I usually fall back to magnets being the ultimate modelling cure all & the discussion falters...). I like the idea for skewers, but my concern would be for the durability of the foam around the hole (might tend to crumble & crack). Maybe if the hole was lined with a thin coating of Gorilla glue or something... Along those lines, though, I've worked up a quick sketch below for a variant of that idea: what if inside each corner of the building, you glued a section of narrow PVC pipe. In the top of the pipe, you could glue a piece of dowel rod that could be inserted into the PVC of the piece stacked on top of it (or even reversed, with the dowels on the bottom to insert into the PVC below).

I think your idea would work great. I don't remember tho what the smallest guage of PVC pipe is you can get at the store. The smallest I've worked with is 1/2 inch but remember that's the bore size not the actuall pipe. If there's even smaller it would be great.

I'll keep on the idea myself. Actually, I'm going out today to pick up some materials and I'll look at what hte options are. The biggest PIA on that project would be cutting four... wait... stop that thought.

If you had one dowel to run the entire building (which would make it more laborous to remove individual floors {unless said dowel could simply be extracted before removing floors and easily removed}) then you actually odn't need to worry about the pvc sections running the entire height of the floor, only a small bit of tube will do.

By the way, congratulations on the baby. I've found since my daughters were born I've had a lot MORE time to model and such. Mostly by merit of the fact I can't leave the house these days.

Have fun and remember: A DVD player in the car will be your best friend. As soon as she turns 9 motnhs old BUY ONE!!!! Seriously. I know people frown on TV being a babysitter but when the child is stuck in a car seat for any length of time they tend to get mad.. aUnless they have that magic TV playing their favorite Elmo's World.

how did you do the paint????

2000 Volts wrote:If you had one dowel to run the entire building (which would make it more laborous to remove individual floors {unless said dowel could simply be extracted before removing floors and easily removed}) then you actually odn't need to worry about the pvc sections running the entire height of the floor, only a small bit of tube will do.

That might work even better. It'd be easier to transport & store, too.

2000 Volts wrote:A DVD player in the car will be your best friend.

I've heard this from a few people. It's something I'll definitely need to consider- just no @#&% Hanna Montana...

ricekake87 wrote:how did you do the paint????

All drybrushing. I basecoat the section with H2O (foam safe spray), then a flat black cheapo primer over that(for a rougher texture), then I do a heavy drybrush of whatever color I want the building (usually a dark grey). I use cheap acrylic paints that I get from a craft shop (they look good & are 1/10 the price of mini paints). I use a paper plate as a palette and a 2" or 3"(depending on the sixe of the building) house painting brush with the softest bristles I can find. After the 1st drybrush, I do a light drybrush for highlights.
I used a similar method for the water above, but with green. To give it a less "painted" look on the smooth bottoms of the vats, I pushed the brush straight down to create more of a stipling effect.
I doesn't hold up to miniature painting standards, but it looks real good as terrain.

YOu won't have to deal with Hannah Montana for about 10 years and by then it'll be some new obnoxious girly show. For now you'll be going crazy with the obnoxious yet catchy tunes of Elmo's World and the it's *gasp* Dora the Explora. It's sad, I find myself singing dora songs quite a bit now even when I'm not around my girls (one is 3 and the other is 9 months).

Bravo, good sir.

Very simple but very cool, I am favoriting this post.

Bravo.

Over 48hrs later and the gloss varnish is still not quite dry. Where it is dry, however, it looks good. Pics below show progress so far. Weird problem I hadn't anticipated, though- in the last picture below, notice the reddish line under the varnish. This is where I drew a red reference line with marker on the foam before I started construction- the varnish somehow pulled it out from under the primer. Not a big problem, but definitely something I'll be careful of in the future.

Wow, simple yet visually, very effective.

The water may still be wet (& white), but I couldn't resist getting some pictures of all 3 sections together. I fit them in a few different arrangements and took some pics for your perusal. I plan on doing some more painting on the board (specifically, getting the "roads" to look about the same shade of black- as you can see, each section has a slightly different color & sheen).

Also, I'd like to give a big thank you to everyone who's followed & encouraged me through this process- all the wonderful feedback really helped keep me motivated to finish this project. While I'm far from done with "Luigiopolis", I've reached my goal of 3 board sections before the baby with time to spare (maybe now I can get my Greensteela Kult finished )

Beautiful work, sir.... I see much potential here, particularly with some foamcore work....



Consider your techniques stolen by yet another fan of your work here.

LuigiX: I bought the same foam cutter at a local craft store and when I turned it on it totally melted its own casing then didn't work at all. Did you have a similar problem?

unclehomefries wrote:LuigiX: I bought the same foam cutter at a local craft store and when I turned it on it totally melted its own casing then didn't work at all. Did you have a similar problem?

No, I've never seen that. I'm on my second (the first I broke the wire on because I was putting waaay too much pressure on it), and I've never had anything similar happen. Sounds like you got a defective model- I'd take it back. Maybe they screwed up the wiring during manufacture. That's a pretty severe(and potentially dangerous) flaw- makes me want to ramp up my safety precautions when using mine.

Dig the work man, kudos. I've always hated having to cut foam, impossible to get good clean shapes with heat or razor. I like the liquid effects going on, my next project involves industrial ruins-I'll have to remember that varnish technique.

Awesome stuff, very inspirational!

This is seriously, seriously awesome. I am new to the hobby really and want to get started on some of this terrain in the next couple of days. I just have one question before i get started, would a soldering iron work as well for cutting the foam?

forgive me if im being stupid

I don't know, I've never tried with a soldering iron- my fear would be that it may get too hot & burn the foam. I'd try it out on a scrap piece first, just to make sure it doesn't destroy a good piece of terrain. Keep in mind that the fumes from burning foam can be VERY harmful- you don't want to breath that in, so work outside or in a well ventilated area.

Im thinking if i attach a short length of copper wire to the end of the soldering iron, that should keep things a bit safer - just have to try it and see i guess....point taken though i will try it outside first!

I wouldn't suggest using a soldering iron. It gets too hot and is a very massive heat source. Generally a foam cutter has a very thin wire which can heat up and recover very quickly. I've got this foam knife which is huge, it requires a lot of power to get hot and it becomes very hot (stop top hot). It melts more than it cuts.

Well, my wife had the baby last week, so diaper changes and sleep deprivation have put all current projects on hold. I did manage to get a picture(low quaity though it may be) of the dried water in my algae choked canal. I'm happy with the look of the gloss varnish, but definitely a warning: in a few places where it was poured thick, it shrunk a bit & left cracks when fully dried. Fortunately, they are in hard to see locations on this board, but in the future I will be sure to pour very thin layers and let them each dry for at least 4 days before pouring another on top.

Well that is a nice little bundle of I am going to give daddy grey hair when I turn 18. You know girls are punishment for us being men.

Great looking terrain, and the baby kit came together quite well it seems!

One little niggle/suggestion about your buildings: a little ledge at the bottom of each window would go a long way to making the buildings look more real. Either just a little strip of card board glued under each window or a strip going the whole way around would add some of the detail one usually sees in buildings and add a little visual interest.
Also, there are some nice textured spray paints one can get now in a variety of stone colors that have worked well for me in the past. Those might be nice to put over your glossy primer to help grab a dry brush.

The baby look as thought he is swearing lol any back on topic do you have any measurements for your buildings or even for the whole thing would be good.

sonofruss wrote:Well that is a nice little bundle of I am going to give daddy grey hair when I turn 18. You know girls are punishment for us being men.

QFT (I've got 3 she-grots of my own, but my 2 boys are DEFINATELY easier to work with !)

On topic : Nice work, though I agree sills would add to the look of some of the windows. I'm liking the algae choked water-way tho

I really want to do a canal system, I've got this bottle of water effects I've been meaning to try out, would it be easier to just use the varnish? The cost either way doesn't bother me.

That all came out really nicely, but I'd like to see more details put into them. Thats jus my opinion tho =)

Looking back through your posts, I've just had an

If you pour another layer of varnish on the choked water-way, let it set, sprinkle on some patches of flock, then add another layer of varnish it might add some "depth" to the algae rather than just a stippled surface. Repeating this a few times, whilst time consuming, should just enhance the effect and slightly smooth out the finish. In fact, this could even be used with small peices of modelling lichen I expect !

Just a thought.

This looks amazeing. I hope my 40 k terrain will turn out at least half as good

LuigiX wrote:

Dude! Be careful, I suspect your wife may be tainted by Chaos. You daughter has a thumb growing out of her ear...


Unless its YOU who is tainted!


*dum-dum-DUMMMMMMMMMMM*



Ghidorah

jabbakahut wrote:I really want to do a canal system, I've got this bottle of water effects I've been meaning to try out, would it be easier to just use the varnish? The cost either way doesn't bother me.

The varnish was pretty easy to use, but it did take a loong time to dry- I've never tried the water effects, but from my research, they seem to be pretty close to the same stuff (though the water effects hopefully would not have the same problem of cracking when dry if poured too thick...)

Wehrkind, Reaper6,& Sicarious85 wrote: Needs more detail...

When I started all this, I had plans for plasticard windowsills & door frames, foamcore staircases, curbs, and streetlights. Once I got going, I realized that in order to meet my deadline of completetion before the baby was born I would need to cut some corners (and details were said corners). One day I may go back and add many more details, but for now it suits my needs just fine (plus, I discovered that I'm really not very good at cutting straight lines in foam core )

Lanky-feck wrote:do you have any measurements for your buildings or even for the whole thing would be good

I'll work up some measurements on the buildings in the next couple days & post them here.

Reaper6 wrote:Very cool algae idea

That is an excellent idea. I've got a small test sqare going in my basement now- I'll see how it turns out, may be a plan for future works.

Ghidorah wrote:Dude! Be careful, I suspect your wife may be tainted by Chaos. You daughter has a thumb growing out of her ear...

After watching the birthing process, I suspect she may be an agent of the Lord of Change... And we're hoping that thumb-like appendage is a tentacle nub- that would be sooo cool

And thanks to all for the compliments on the terrain & spawn As more progress is (eventually) made, I'll be sure to post it here.

um hi i am new here and love your stuff, and since its been about a year have you worked on it any?, and if so could i sneak a peek?

ps. i think the greensteela klan are awesome! any news on them?

I do miss playing with hand crafted buildings like this as the individuality of design makes for a more varied gameplay experience.

Now a days it is usually all plastic GW kits to be found, so props to you for going all nostalgic/old school...

That massive building is great.

The only thing that looks "off" are the craters. Since you have what looks to be foam basing why not dig the craters in as opposed to building up the "doughnuts" typical of free-standing craters? I think they would look a lot more convincing and add to the feel of the board...

Regardless, good stuff!

Great work! I was looking for some Spray Paint that didnt melt the foam, So thanks!

I would love to play heroclix on this board, would be win!

Awesome work!

Krylon H20 spray paint is foam safe.

You should be able to get it in the US.

mattisuber16 wrote:um hi i am new here and love your stuff, and since its been about a year have you worked on it any?, and if so could i sneak a peek?

ps. i think the greensteela klan are awesome! any news on them?

Thanks for the compliments. Unfortunately, nothing new on my terrain. I tried building a cathedral using the windows I cut out as bricks, but I couldn't get it quite right. I still like the idea and hope to get back to it when I've got more free time, but for now, as I've got 3 usable boards, the city is on the back burner.

Some thoughts, though, on the boards now that I've been playing on them for about a year.

-The foam is suitably durable. Though I've had a few accidents, it's very easy to simply reglue the broken part and move on. And the light weight makes up for it- since I've got to lug 3 sections out of the basement everytime I play, I'm glad I didn't do wood bases

-While it looks really cool, nobody uses the top floors of the skyscraper. I figure 3 stories is about the practicle maximum of any of my buildings- we just don't put figs any higher than that. At 7 stories up, the distance disadvantage outweighs the vision advantages. Even a lascannon has a tough time reaching another board section from up there.

-The crowded section is awesome, but it really is a pain for tank armies. Even though all the streets are wide enough for a land raider, all it takes is one figure to completely shut down the street to traffic.

-Our favorite section to play on is the sewage treatment plant. It's really the most characterful section and the open spaces combined with impassible walls make it a real blast to play over.

hello again luigiX i was going to do this project but i noticed that the link you posted to the foam cutter is sold out and when i looked on amazon they had these things that didnt loo right and costed 600$ soo could you lend a helping hand once again? o and did you try the algae idea? it sounds really cool and i am very curious to hear how that turns out...


with curiosity, MJS

I've really just skimmed through it, thougj it is amazing what you have done here. I don't think I could do anything like it if I tried!

Barely in the world and she's giving it the V sign

Gratz to you and partner on beautiful Vivian Mae *wub*

Super terrain work
Like =I= Syphonious have just skimmed through for now, but inspiring stuff so will peruse at leisure.

The sewage plant will be handy for ncking ideas from.
Was thinking of using Johnson's Klear/Future for water.
What did you use for the bend sections of pipe please?

(apologies if I missed it on the first run through)

It's great that people are still getting soemthing out of this project- I'm really glad it's been helpful.

The hot wire cutters can be hard to find, but if you've got alot more technical know-how than me, you can build one. There are lots of tutorials around, but this is the fanciest I've seen http://www.instructables.com/id/Hot-wire-foam-cutter/.
And here are a couple I found like the one I use http://www.amazon.com/Styro-Wonder-Knife-Cutter-Plus/dp/B000PCWKUG http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog/productdetail.jsp;jsessionid=49EEFED2504F7DDDA7DCC254EB6284DB.a4p2?CATID=cat1125&PRODID=prd58087 I'd recommend trying your local Michael's or Joanne Fabrics- any large craft store might have one.

For the pipe, I just walked through the plumbing section at Home Depot until I found something that fit my needs. This happened to be white PVC.

I'm not familiar with Johnson's Klear, but if it's glossy and won't melt foam I'm sure it'd work fine. Heck, if you had a large quantity of GW 'Ard Coat I'm sure that would do the job.

I tried the algae idea on an experimental basis (in an upside-down GW base), and it looked pretty good- I may try it if I do my planned park with fountain.

And I'm very convinced that following my techniques, nearly anyone can make a city like this and probably make it look better. It's all just simple cutting and glueing. The most essential tool I used was the drywall T. It made every single cut sooo much easier.

Been a while since I've done anything with this, but I've finally started on my long delayed 4th board section.

First, a few things I've learned playing on these boards for the last year:

-I'm glad I used foam. It's not quite as sturdy as wood(as you'll see in the pictures below), but the light weight more than makes up for it everytime I lug the sections out of the basement.

-I never use the skyscrapers. They look super cool, they were really easy to build, and I still love the idea of them. But, after the novelty of a 6 story building wore off, it's the least used board section. Awesome building, but tedious to play on. Now, if I ever play Heroclix or some other urban skirmish game, my tune will likely change

-While city fighting's fun, it's nice to have open spaces for typical play. Every time we play, the sewage treatment section sees most of the action for one simple reason: it's wide open. It's just easier to play on than the crowded urban block. The crowded block is still plenty used, but more open areas would be nice(hence the design for my next section)

-Foam is easy to repair. I've had a few accidents, but fortunately the foam was very easy to fix with just a little wood glue.

For my 4th section, I decided on a much more open design. This is meant as the ruined remains of a large building (maybe an imperial cathedral). The "altar" in the middle is something I thought looked cool and works to give a minor point of elevation on an otherwise flat board.

great stuff

Here's the 4th section painted. I went with the easy method I used for the skyscraper section:
1. Base coat of "Krylon H2O" spray paint(safe for use with foam)
2. Coat of flat black primer(the H2O is glossy)
3. Light spray of flat gray primer focusing on the buildings
4. Very light spray of flat white as a highlight

The end result isn't the best possible effect, but it's quick, easy, and looks good on this style of crude city. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays next week.

Wow that is some great terrain, and you've spent way less cash then the GW alternative. I'm gunna have to drive to Pit and steal it!

This is absolutely inspiring to see someone make such awesome terrain i'm gonna have to take a swing at it. Nice to see someone else who balances being a dad and playing wargames. My lil man is 5 Months and sometimes i feel like he could do a better job

Amazing thread! Really impressive stuff... I'm going to give this a try soon. Thanks for taking the time to share a "How-to" with us

Cool terrain. I like the sewage canal.

this has inspired me greatly (why dont you put an ordance wepon on the top floor of your sky scraper and say some imperials put it there or something)

Awesome work! And now i know what im going to be working on while i wait for my DE to get released.

I love it when people build their own stuff. City fight buildings have great detail and all but they all look the same. the universe is not walmart of gw supplied. Your stuff looks awsome. i have been putting together a worker hab ruin set that is modelled after stalingrad WW2. mine are all built out of old milk crates. yours look great though. when i get some pics of my buildings up i will send you some.

Would an air brush work on the foam?

I am considering trying this foam stuff as opposed to my regular foam board.

Ma55ter_fett wrote:Would an air brush work on the foam?

I am considering trying this foam stuff as opposed to my regular foam board.

Some airbrushes may have the same problem. The melting effect comes from the accelerant in aeresol cans, so if you're using an accelerant can powered airbrush(such as GW's) you would need to take precautions to seal the foam first. If you've got an air compressor powered airbrush, you should be fine(though I'll still do a test piece first).

sennacherib wrote: i have been putting together a worker hab ruin set that is modelled after stalingrad WW2. mine are all built out of old milk crates. yours look great though. when i get some pics of my buildings up i will send you some.

Very cool- I look forward to seeing it.

Firstly amazing work.


Secondly i think the canal bit looks awesome even though you say it was a pain i think the "chiped away look" gives it a more realistic look.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Fantastic results!

The best thing is once your child is walking you can play Ghidorah on it!

Fixed.



Ghidorah

Where did you find the Building templates?

Hey dude amazing terrain! I was wondering have you thought of doing a board with hills, lots of open space with ruins looking something like roman arches and crumbling walls? One more question how much in total do you think construction of the board costed and how long? Well thanks

Great scenery, like the craters