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I am planning on creating my own Kill Team board and the terrain to go with it. I already have an aesthetic in mind, but I would appreciate any insights you guys might have in terms of mechanics and playability. I didn't buy the starter set specifically because I want to make my own terrain.

My general idea is this: My board should be flat and plain with no features built into it so that terrain can be placed anywhere. I'm going to make a few modular structures based roughly on the size and numbers of the Sector Imperialis terrain in the starter set. I'm using that as a guide because I assume GW had an idea for balance when they designed it. Instead of having 5" stories I'm going with 3", however. So I plan to have one double-story building about the size of the largest building in the starter set, another about the size of the second largest, and then single-story structures to fill out the rest. As opposed to the terrain in the set, I plan on making every other wall section LoS blocking.

I also want to put markings on the board to make deployment simple. For example, I plan on marking out a 5" circle in the center, and I would like to mark the most common deployment zones in some way. Anyone have any good advice on where to place my marks efficiently so that I can cover the most ground here, so to speak? Which deployment zones should I prioritize?

Anyone with a few games under their belt care to weigh in with what they would like to play on in terms of terrain?

I am a fan of lots of terrain, especially LOS blocking terrain and things with multiple levels. Also get lots of scatter terrain.

As for marking things, I think if you mark the center of the board that will help a lot. So far many things seem to be measured from that point in the few games I have played.

That said, look at the missions and see what they got. Also remember that if you make your own board you can add these markings later I would think.

I bought two of the Munitorum Killzones to make a container yard / supply depot and just got a load of the Speed Freaks terrain and Mekboy Workshop to make an Orky Junkyard

I don't know about markings but as far as terrain goes I can recommend using foamed PVC as a material. I've used it for my Necromunda terrain and it's been really easy to work with and pretty robust. 3mm thick sheets are plenty strong enough for most applications with 5mm sheets good for self supporting walkways. Examples below.

MDF hardboard makes good base material, for both table-sized and scatter terrain. If you're dedicated, then http://www.hirstarts.com sells molds for plaster/dental stone awesomeness. But keep your eyes open, I just found some cosmetics containers at a dollar store that I turned into decent shipping containers.

Mordekiem wrote:I am a fan of lots of terrain, especially LOS blocking terrain and things with multiple levels. Also get lots of scatter terrain.

As for marking things, I think if you mark the center of the board that will help a lot. So far many things seem to be measured from that point in the few games I have played.

That said, look at the missions and see what they got. Also remember that if you make your own board you can add these markings later I would think.

The center I will mark for sure. As far as the others I haven't quite decided. I might make some 5" long roads along each long edge, with a 1" sidewalk. It's tricky to mark it out in a way that is relevant to multiple deployment zones.

Flinty wrote:I don't know about markings but as far as terrain goes I can recommend using foamed PVC as a material. I've used it for my Necromunda terrain and it's been really easy to work with and pretty robust. 3mm thick sheets are plenty strong enough for most applications with 5mm sheets good for self supporting walkways. Examples below.

My structures will actually be very similar to those. They look great. I've already bought pretty much all of my materials though; I'll be using foam board for the main structural parts, embellished with styrene and card. I have several feet of railings, ladders and trusses

the_Grak wrote:MDF hardboard makes good base material, for both table-sized and scatter terrain. If you're dedicated, then http://www.hirstarts.com sells molds for plaster/dental stone awesomeness. But keep your eyes open, I just found some cosmetics containers at a dollar store that I turned into decent shipping containers.

Spoiler:

I will definitely be using MDF for both my board and to base the terrain. I have always wanted to mess around with the Hirst Arts stuff and I've thought about buying some castings off eBay, but my investment in the terrain materials is already more than the cost of the starter set so I have to control myself and scratch build what I can. I have seen those boxes before and they look perfect! Wish I could find some like that, but I'll probably end up scratch building my containers, too.

Thanks for the replies!

Cheapest actual.container models I've found are from Plast craft. They are flat pack foamed.pvc and corrugated paper and I think they look pretty awesome. Also hard to argue with £4 each...

https://plastcraftgames.com/en/scifi/52-scifi-big-containter.html





And at

Those do look pretty nice. I will probably end up building something very similar.

In case anyone finds them useful, here are the templates I've come up with for the terrain I'm going to build. For my solid, LoS blocking walls I'm going to make wannabe Necromunda style bulkheads, but without the ladders. The first picture will be what a finished bulkhead will look like. The solid black rectangles represent 1/8" wooden dowels, and the rest is built of foam core and card. There will be a plain foam core sheet for the wall, with the cross-member detail section on top of that, and then a rim section and central octagonal detail on top of that. The dowels will run from the corners of the rim section to the octagonal detail in the middle and the final details are card (these are blue in the templates). The non-LoS blocking walls will simply be barricades with windows, which are part of the rim section template. Everything other than the walls will be built using styrene and "granny grate".

Also included is my design for shipping containers. What is not shown there are the roof and floor which will be plain rectangles of foam board measuring 2.63" x 5.63" and they will be recessed into the walls about 1/4".

If anyone decides to use these and needs any further explanation or help let me know. Keep in mind that they're not perfect or efficient; you'll have a good amount of wasted paper when you cut them out, and I designed them for the 8"x10" foam board sheets I have.

I have plans on doing something like this my self once i get some more PVC and sheet metal.

personally id mark at least the center and i plan on doing so by scribing and paint up faux concrete stress relief lines to also give the table a smidgen of depth as well enough of them to hide obvious range lines.

id build up some super plain stack able cubes in the form of concrete warehouses or foundations to add verticaility to the table and large LOS blocking lanes. after that whatever buildings and generic pipes i can muster or buy from gw.

thats my plan anyway.

For my center marking, I think I'm going to make an airbrush stencil of caution stripe type lines.

What kind of dimensions are you thinking about for your concrete risers? Much bigger than the shipping containers?

The plan is to make a 3x3 table about 5-6" thick then having 5-6" thick boxs in varying lenghts but 1 foot wide to also have the option to turn the 3x3 into a 4x4.

Sounds like a good plan. Please do post updates somewhere as you make progress. I think I'm going to keep my board to 30"x22" with a second board for four-player games, but I'm playing with the idea of building a table out of it as well.

Yeah was debating that too as i could probably knock out a 30x22 pretty quickly. but i like the idea of having a generic 3x3-4x4 industrial table for all sorts of games like kill teams, munda, infinity and anything else with a general dystopyan theme. just need to keep the skulls and goth to a minimum or only on scatter.

You could always throw on some kind of boundary for standard 30"x22" games on the larger table, so in terms of utility it definitely makes sense to go with a standard, square table with multiple uses. I started out with the same idea to use the table for both Kill Team and N17, but I ended up selling my copy to help fund the purchase of all the building materials and a couple of kill teams.

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm going to make a few modular structures based roughly on the size and numbers of the Sector Imperialis terrain in the starter set. I'm using that as a guide because I assume GW had an idea for balance when they designed it.

I would suggest that the starter set, like all of the kill zones, is about 50% full of terrain so that you can do your own thing with the other 50%.

Doubling the amount of buildings would be about right.

Noted, thanks for the tip. I'm surprised how much terrain is necessary for a 22x30 board, but I love terrain, and I love building terrain so I'm not complaining

 Luciferian wrote:
Noted, thanks for the tip. I'm surprised how much terrain is necessary for a 22x30 board, but I love terrain, and I love building terrain so I'm not complaining

This is what I went with for my Imperialis board.

As one playing surface for Kill Team, I bought a 60"x36"1/8" mat which was "Made from 100% recycled tires." I cut the mat into four pieces, two 30"x22" and two 30"x14".

My thinking was that I could combine the pieces together to experiment with different sizes of playing surfaces for three and four player games:
- 30"x14" and 30"x14" ---> 30"x28"
- 30"x22" and 30"x14" ---> 30"x36"
- 30"x22" and 30"x22" ---> 30"x44"

For Canadians, I got the mat at Canadian Tire as TECHNOFLOOR ALL PURPOSE F3000-15. See www.technoflexintl.com If you dislike the smell of tires, then do not buy this product. I hope that someday the curl from being rolled for packaging will go away.

 Luciferian wrote:
Noted, thanks for the tip. I'm surprised how much terrain is necessary for a 22x30 board, but I love terrain, and I love building terrain so I'm not complaining

And, in my opinion, you really want another 50-100% more than you use in one single game so that you can mix it up from match to match and not always use the same stuff. Though for purposes like this I find one or two larger terrain pieces really help fill out the board while you are building things up. And then when you have more smaller bits you can switch them in and out.

Also, don't forget the scatter terrain. In games like KT it is as important as the large buildings. Barriers and obstacles that you can add to the table really help it not only look good, but provide cover and difficult/dangerous terrain.

To take it yet another step, create objective markers that fit in with your terrain, too. I usually just use extra bases and create a mini diorama on them.

Again, thank you all for the replies and suggestions. Once I finish the first board I plan on doing a second one for four player games, with a different theme so I can mix it up as you suggest, Mordekiem. I'll probably do ruins because they're cheap and easy.

As for scatter terrain, I have plans to make a bunch of barricades and I'll probably buy a bunch of 28mm barrels because of how cheap they are.

Does anyone know where to get little industrial details like computer consoles for a reasonable price? I could definitely scratch build them but if I can find some kind of accessory packs or something I might buy a couple to save time on the small details, because they are definitely going to take the most time.

I haven't started working on the terrain yet because I've been squaring away my kill teams, but I'll probably take a break from that and get started this weekend. I'll post updates if I do. I'm also considering doing a video series on the process, because I have a lot of video equipment I need to put to use.

https://www.zinge.co.uk/

Zinge has a metric butt ton of industrial bits and bobs. not soo much consols and pannels iirc but definilty pipes rivets plumbing fixtures and light fixtures up the wazoo.

for consols you could use space marine rhino and land raider bits.


its an optional bit so its possible you can find them around on ebay. i know my bits box has a bunch of them.

they are also in storm ravens as well.

Perfect, those Zinge bits are just what I was looking for!

TTCombat have a great range of resin gubbinz for industrial scenery

Consoles
https://ttcombat.com/collections/industrial-hive/products/control-panels

They also have a great set of vents and back alley nonsense.

Those are awesome, too.

It always kind of bums me out that the vast majority of terrain producers are outside the states. I would be buying a lot more from companies like TT Combat and Zinge if the shipping wasn't so steep. You Brits are lucky!

As it is, I ended up ordering a bunch of bits. The Rhino interior control panels are only $1 so I got a few of those, and I'll saw them up and mount them to some kind of pedestal. I also ordered some random vehicle bits like Dreadnought power plants and Kataphron engines. Basically anything that has pipes or wires that nobody else has any demand for.

 Luciferian wrote:

Does anyone know where to get little industrial details like computer consoles for a reasonable price? I could definitely scratch build them but if I can find some kind of accessory packs or something I might buy a couple to save time on the small details, because they are definitely going to take the most time.

I just got a 3D printer about a month ago and it is great for printing out scatter terrain, computers, all those small bits and details you want. You could always drop the money to get one (they are fun, and getting alot cheaper, mine was just over $200) but if you, understandably, don't want to go that route you can probably find a person with a 3D printer who is willing to make stuff and sell it to you. Check out places like Etsy (search 3D printing services), 3D printer groups on Facebook, etc. I know there are alot of people with printers who do this type of stuff. And since most of the files have already been created on places like Thingiverse they can download and print exactly what you want.

Here is an example of a piece I am currently working on. It is still a WIP and being painted, but you can see the details and the extras like the barrel and crate and the terminal on the far right.

I've also printed various crates, ammo boxes, vents and fans, etc. Might be worth checking out.