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Armiger84 builds himself a city...

 Post subject: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 4:55 am 
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Yep, exactly what it sounds like. I picked up a set of modular tiles from Uncertain Scenery a little over a year ago. They got sidelined by playing a couple of Kingdom Death campaigns with a buddy, and then COVID and a move, but after I wrapped up my latest two titans for AT, I was sitting at the start of Memorial Day weekend with no project actively in WIP and, well, a closet full of MDF.

Now I have a closet full of MDF that takes up significantly more space than it did a week ago. Such is life :)

So this is my hobby thread for this project, as I try to take these city tiles from bare wood to distressed urban concrete, and then do my best to populate them with apartment complexes, office buildings, churches, power stations, warehouses, whatever I can fit in!

Here's what I finished over Memorial Day weekend:

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...and here's what I finished today with a little downtime:

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That brings me to 22/24 tiles necessary for a 4' x 6' tabletop, and I have a few more pieces coming in the mail (another set of ramps down to the sunken highway, risers and ramps up to "hill" sections, along with galleries for cladding those "hill" sides with), and a few more open space tiles so it isn't all city streets).

Here's a few close-up shots of some of the details:

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Craig's a great guy - he let me talk him into designing a traffic circle tile above & beyond the 4-way intersections he had. I wanted something I could throw a statue onto, get that proper "cyclopean imperial city" feeling to it. He obliged with a set of plinths that can also be converted into fountains, so I popped out the centers, built them as fountains, and kept the necessary parts so I can close them up and pop a statue on top if I feel like it. This way I can open up the board more while still having light cover for infantry in the middle of the tile.

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Obviously this is why I went with Uncertain Scenery's tiles, over just using a neoprene battlemat or the Dropzone Commander tiles/maps these are loosely based off of: depth. Where else can you use the ramp for an underground parking garage to emplace a Shadowsword hull-down? seriously!

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The sunken highway. I can't wait to see how heavily this does or doesn't feature into actual gameplay. Do people avoid it for the open-air deathtrap it is, or take advantage of it to road march across the board in a turn? Do the ramps back up to street level turn into bottlenecks? Do fire teams hunker down on the bridges on overwatch?

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Do people set up field artillery in the courtyard mini-mall? I have visions of IG mortar teams sandbagged down in front of a bombed-out Warhammer store, lobbing shells at Orks on the other side of the highway ;)

More likely, it'll give Dave somewhere to park his Eldar grav tanks for their pop-up attacks. At least until I fill it with MW barrages...

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I like that the designer (Craig Birks) has thought of just about everything - he even included some faux tunnel entrances so you can run the highway into the side of a tile if you wanted to, and have it pop back out again elsewhere on the board. The galleries that wrap around elevated tiles can do the same thing for surface-level roads (more pics of that when they arrive).

So yeah, my goal is to get this fully painted by Fall In/Historicon this year, and to hopefully have a table's worth of city terrain (buildings & ruins) to populate a standard table. Yes, it's scaled to 10mm, but no, it doesn't really feel "too big" for Epic, at least not with the Stalkers I laid out there on the board for scale comparison. Bigger still works - it just fits that over-the-top Imperial aesthetic of building everything a little bigger than it needs to be.

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 3:06 pm 
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Those look really good.
I’m curious how you’ll paint it all up... my one experience with mdf buildings was that the lack of texture makes it hard to do them justice with paint; nothing for the dry brushing and washes to pick up. But those were half-timber buildings so different problem set...

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 4:04 pm 
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That is impressive stuff - can't wait to have a game on that terrain. As far as texture, you could use cheap flat white primer as it tends to have a grainy texture and washes/thinned paint will show that texture. Then use painters tape to block off areas that would have a smoother surface.

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 4:10 pm 
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Spraying primer from 12-18" inches away and letting it settle on the boards will add some texture. You want to give it a chance to partially dry before it hits the surface.

Ya Brad, you need to drag the entire 4x6' to every games day we have from now on. Even if we're not playing EA/AT.

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 9:31 pm 
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At least I won't be dragging it six hours from central PA anymore. This is going to be a beast to transport. It's going to take at least two large tubs to move a full 4x6' setup around - I guess that's one advantage the Citadel RoB boards have over going for depth on the tabletop.

On the bright side, I have ~4" vertical space between each two board sections to fill with buildings if I alternate them, so I can probably transport the tabletop and its terrain in one shot.

Also, I just realized I had a half-started terrain log from 2019 half a screen down in this forum for basically this project. Oops. Can probably close out that old one at this point, if there's a way, rather than wipe this out.

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:41 am 
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that looks amazing, can't wait to see it develop

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 9:53 am 
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Yeah seriously considering getting these tiles as they look amazing but I have very few people to actually play with here and they are both expensive and take a lot of storage space so.... Still they look amazing. I want to know how you will paint the road markings


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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 7:05 pm 
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Oh man it's a dream having a multi layer board like this.

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 4:36 pm 
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Having played on it, I can say it's really sweet

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 10:33 pm 
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Still need to get some paint onto these tiles, but for that it needs to either stop raining, or stop being so terribly humid down here on the weekends.

Working on assembling another round of tiles & components for the city board. Latest additions include 4-way elevation ramps (yes, not realistic, but more useful for wargaming), inner corner galleries for wrapping the elevated tiles in, and a bridge component for elevated tiles.

I spent a little time this morning messing around with potential layouts. Here's a couple examples of what I can do with the board now:

Image


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I like the idea of being able to have subsurface highways, hills, and ground level "recessed" roadways and bridges throughout a layout. This is going to be fun :)

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:01 pm 
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I'm super duper jelly

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 3:56 pm 
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Well, this looks absolutely incredible!

Looking forward to seeing how it develops.


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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 4:25 pm 
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Looking good. I can hardly wait to play on it again

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:35 am 
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This looks stunning! I can't wait to see it painted and in action!

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 Post subject: Re: Armiger84 builds himself a city...
PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2021 5:41 pm 
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Beefy!

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