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Thought I would show off some pics of a new piece of terrain I'm working on. My city fight table needs some taller pieces with good LOS so I figured a bombed out hab building would be nice. Entirely made out of insulation foam with some Plasticard I beams and pipes, and some wooden trim detailing. Next step is to add window sills and trim and a door for the front.

Excellent work! I miss building terrain but sadly at my LGS they have SO much it'd never get used. Are you going to add some card detailing such as buttresses or trim? How about floor detailing?

I'll defintely be adding some trim around the windows and door, not sure about buttresses. Where do you think they would look good? As for flooring, I'm not sure. I might do some sort of tile like surface or wood floors made from balsa strips. Honestly, I'm totally open for suggestions on that point.

Col. Kurtz wrote:I'll defintely be adding some trim around the windows and door, not sure about buttresses. Where do you think they would look good? As for flooring, I'm not sure. I might do some sort of tile like surface or wood floors made from balsa strips. Honestly, I'm totally open for suggestions on that point.

For buttresses, you may wanna do the flying type that GW loves so much for the gothic look. I'd put one between each pair of windows & bulk out the corners a bit, then bust em up like the rest of the building. Plus, it gives models something to hide behind as they move around the building.

Hmm... beams are not usually embedded in concrete quite like that, but I'll let you off on the basis of actually having thought of the structure in the first place

I really like it. Something I missed about 40K having played Necromunda is the lack of verticality. Are you going to be building more like this?

Yeah, a structural engineer I am not. I also couldn't find anything laying around the house to simulate rebar. On the other hand, who knows what wacky construction methods the mechanicus will be dictating in the far future and Yes, I plan to have several other taller features. not sure what yet, so if anybody has suggestions I'm totally open to hearing them.

Just as a goofy question. Did you think this up from scratch or did you get the idea from Flames of War? Cause there is a corner of a house exactly like this in a Flames of War DIY terrain. Except it was for 15mm and it had rebar not I beams.

I suggest some bridges between some tall buildings, some intact, some severely damaged.

When I say bridges I mean this sort of thing:

I honestly don't play flames of war so this is all out of my twisted little mind. I did some digging around on various forums for inspiration and ideas for detailing and such. I would guess it looks like the flames of war building as I have spent entirely too much time watching documentaries about WWII and the buildings in Dresden and Berlin were most likely unconcious inspirations.

This looks pretty awesome, I can't wait to see more

I really like the execution and the shape is very practical for gaming, but I can't help feel that it's missing a lot. Like, 60% of the building. It's impractical to represent all of the rubble that would hypothetically be present in wargaming ruins, but I'd strongly consider making a few extensions to the walls at the base and at least a few piles of rubble to "sketch out" the original building's footprint. As it stands, you'd either have to place it at the edge of the table, assuming that the reason it ends so cleanly is because the world represented ends (honestly, where do models go when they exit the table? ) or assume that the damage was caused by a gigantic (and probably heretical) space-bulldozer.

Oh, and how are non-jump infantry supposed to scale this thing? Do you plan to add ladders or something? As it stands, vertical movement is only achievable via magic gaming abstraction. It's not a deal-breaker, but those little touches are as practical as they are flavorful.

As for vertical movement, I have lots of left over ladders from 40K cities of death buildings I built for a friends table, so I will be incorporating those. This piece is supposed to represnet the facade of a building that is largely bombed out, and in theory would go back significantly further. I imagined the stairs of elevators would have been in the center of the structure, and therefore were destroyed in the bombing. Hopefully some of the little touches will come out once I am done with the detailing. Oh, and I love the idea of a gigantic heretical space bulldozer.

Have a look at these buildings.

Thanks for the inspirational images, there's some great ideas in there Heres some shots of the detail work I got done last night, window sills and some vertical elements. Color scheme wise I'm thinking the walls will be beige/tan and the trim a red brick look, but I'm open to alternative suggestions. I'm fairly happy with the sills, not so sure about the vertical trim. I might stop by a woodworking store on the way home from work and see if they have any small trim that might work better. I'm also contemplating possibly adding horizontal trim as well and/or trim along the corners. Anybody have thoughts, suggestions, etc.?

I like the vertical trim. Breaks up the face of the building rather well. An option for small detail is uncooked spaghetti (or small diameter plastic rod). Place it right next to the vertical trim - the layers of detail will start to look like crown molding and/or the example building cadbrem posted for you.

I would also cap the corner with a similar piece of vertical detail.

Thanks for the spaghetti suggestion, thats a great idea. I could even use linguine for squared details. Never would have thought of that. I'll give that a try when I get home tonight.

It's looking great although your middle pic isn't working for me.

Thanks, fixed the link, should be working now.

It's working now and looking spiffy while it does so!

Col. Kurtz wrote:Thanks for the spaghetti suggestion, thats a great idea. I could even use linguine for squared details. Never would have thought of that. I'll give that a try when I get home tonight.

Here's where I picked up the idea: http://www.warfactory.co.uk/scenery/gothicruin.php

Wow, thats a great resource. Thanks for the link, I'm totally shamelessly stealing this

Thanks from me too. I don't currently need it but that's a great technique and should be handy if I ever get the space to build mky own Necromunda table, or CoD.

I really like it. Great use of common materials.

Low budget, without looking like it's low budget. Fantastic.

This looks awesome. I think it will be great when it's done.

Minor update. Some scale shots and a picture of some detail work on one of the windows. I tried the spagehtti detailing trick suggested by RanTheCid. I think it looks pretty good. The detail at the top is a couple of layers of thick card.

It's looking fantastic. It's really inspiring me to build something similar but I can't think what I'd use it for.

Looking good Col. K. But, with all those windows, it isn't going to block LOS all that much. It's just going to give cover to everything around it. Not a criticism, just an observation.

Yeah the ground floor is pretty open, but I may clutter it up a bit with fallen masonry and the like. The windows aren't nearly as large and gothic as the GW buildings and it will be harder to draw LOS through them. More than anything this is designed for height as the rest of the terrain on the table is fairly low.

Got some more work done tonight. Finshed the detail work around the windows, with side frames and friezes around the tops.



Next thing to work on is the door way. Not sure if I should make a door, or leave the doorway open. I'm also not sure whether to leave the top squared or make it rounded. Any opinions?