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Hey i am planning on starting an un modular city fight board for 40k, which im planning on being as realistic as i can make it,and ive sort of hit a road block. Mainly, just adding a scattering of sand, and the occasional lasgun really doesnt seem to acheive what im hoping for.

So i asked around on dakka, finding people who were experts at modelling, hoping that they would glean an insight into how they made their boards so damn good. Sadly i was underwhelmed by the response. So, im now throwing it out onto the forums. What techniques help make terrain feel realistic? the board will not be large, and it will mainly be used for set ups and skirmish level games. Also, i know amara plastic mouldings is basically the holy grail for cheap and effective buildings, but does anyone have alternate terrain sites, that sell stuff cheap as chips.

OK i gotta go now, ill post up some ideas of what i want my terrain to be tommorrow.

Hopefully you huys will be helpful enough for me not to drop this idea in favour of an easier option.

tara

Realism is in the details. You have a partially destroyed building. Where is all the rest of the building? Those huge chunks of concrete aren't just going to walk off.
Similarly, anything thats collapsed is going to leave the surrounding area covered in dust. Reflect this on your buildings.
Posters and graffiti are also nice touches to add, as are benches, street lights, bins, etc. Remember details- if a bin is overturned, where is the rubbish that fell out of it?

Hope that helps!

Take a look at this thread.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/260250.page

It lists companies which supply a lot of stuff including terrain detailing pieces such as street lights, telegraph poles, barbed wire, crates and barrels, tank traps, road blocks and the like.

If you want realism then you need to get good source ideas. Find some WW2 footage of urban conflict and see what happens to urban zones in bitter fighting. They don't call it Fighting In Someone's House for nothing. True realism will be a mixture of the detritus of warfare, discarded weapons, etc, and the human cost, i.e. chairs and tables, strangely untouched buildings in the midst of total ruin, childrens toys lying next to dismembered bodies. Posters, propaganda, signs, theatre tickets, barbed wire, furniture, the whole 9 yards.

Ahem... brain dump over.. for now...

The details blow the life into "dead" terrain, so maybe:

- if its going to be a "battlefield", the damage done should be there. Not just ruins and craters but also marks of the used weaponry,
spent ammo ( even casualties? ), wrecks, footprints if the soil isn't hard , ...
- for those really ambitious: electronics, so real smoke, lights as "fire" / "electricity" , sound maybe too?
- weather: represented in water, dust gathering, wind directing banners .....

If you live near a sizable city I would go walk around a bit and look at what is on the streets, food wrappers, discarded news papers, graffiti on the walls etc. Now imagine there is a looming disaster/ terrorist attack etc, What would people drop and leave laying around. Now that you have that picture, put that stuff in.

Okay after reading through your responses, i decided to go look for bits. I was pleasantly suprised by the amount of stuff i had. I have numerous heavy weapons, a small shed load of lasguns, railings, ladders, balsa wood scraps, the list goes on. So bouyed up with this discovery, and your responses, ive decided to start my concept phase.

Now initially i plan on having a small board ( 3' by 3' maybe? ) but include lots of height in the form of catwalks at different levels. I also have had an idea to place a sort of religious place, kind of a large hill in the centre perhaps, with the new space marine statue on the top. Matyrs summit or soemthing. Now the buldings i'll use will be an amalmagation of the Manufactorum set, the amera plastic mouldings factory ( i might get two of them) and also from amera, the administation block, and the HQ block. Thee will be my kep parts on the city board. I also will include GW moonscape craters ( theyre the best, cost effectve ones i could find, if you know any better, please dont refrain to link it ) and any other bits of GW city terrain i can nick from my freind. Now the base of my board will probably me MDF, and ill double layer it so i cant have an indent in the ground, for a river/ road... thanks

Oh heres the stuff ive collected for detailing, still more to go ^^


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and im suprised how well thos photos came out >.>

those might help to inspire a bit more and maybe give some vision.

One of the main thing is to make it look like it was lived in. Also remeber the civilian stuff, chances are they didn't all have time to pack up everything and leave.

Things to include are Vehicles, furniture, rubbish, household, objects, ect...

Those photos are great reference. Watch some good war movies too. Making a good basic scatter mix will help, with lots of different textures and grades

Its all in the detail like others have said. Take a look at Fallout3 plenty of source material there for what a bombed out destroyed city looks like. I would avoid a hill in the middle of a 3x3 board. You don't often get mounds let alone hills just sticking out in the middle of city's. A square garden or court yard would work though.

Agree that the devil is in the details. The stuff that looks the best is all the crappy little things you spend an insane amount of time on for something that makes up less than .1% of the model's mass. The streetlight, the drain/gutter, the little bits of detrius floating in a puddle.

Just don't forget to make it playable. Too easy to make uneven surfaces that look good but balance models for crap.

Details are the best way, and good luck

Good urban boards are the hardest to pull off. I will await your efforts with interest.

You might also want to look at dolls house furnishings. They have all sorts of things that might be useful. Curtains, furniture, posters, "carpets", and all sorts of other things that with a bit of weathering will fit right in your ruined city.

And I also agree that on a 3' by 3' board, a big hill will probably not be a great idea. The best idea I have heard here is the walled park... some nice brick walls (with a few holes knocked in it by tanks and shells of course ), with a few dying trees, perhaps a small pond and the statue in the middle.

Sounds fun in my brain

Hehe thanks for the voerwhelming amount of responses. Now im getting the MDF on saturday, so expect a new thread about my terrain maybe saturday evening. Also, i jsut found a sh*t load of static grass after i made my great desertgrassland board with my dad all those years ago. sooo i was wondering. what would be the best way of incorperating it into the board. If at all? i was thinking along the lines of a small park, or walled garden. Or possibly the entire city is overgrown? i dunno. keep chucking us your ideas, as theirs a high chance they'll end up on the board. Oh and anyone know a good source for plasticard? in england. Maybe textured plasticard aswell (corrigated or metal would be ideal)

thanks

Here is our CoD board.

Pipboy101 wrote:Here is our CoD board.

Your board is awesome!

I'm coming over for a game!

It doesn’t get more realistic then this:

http://images.google.se/images?hl=sv&source=hp&q=pictures+of+world+war+two+city+ruins&gs_rfai=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=OCCpS_WwC4zX-QbQgpl2&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CA8QsAQwAA

Pipboy101 wrote:Here is our CoD board.

that's incredible!

Between AgeofEgos and AshAxe work on these boards for our small gaming group we have become spoiled when going to the FLGS to play games.

Pipboy101 wrote:Here is our CoD board.

Envy... I have it.

Might even look to something more recent like Beirut and Lebanon wars for modern buildings.