Exeter Inquisition Goes Infinitely Urban

[IJW]

Nobody expects... a terrain blog from a wargames club.

Note that the log was started a few days ago over on the Infinity forums, so to start with this version will be playing catch-up until both are up-to-date.


Our club needs some more terrain in general and a sixth 6x4' table for an upcoming min-tournament so we're having another scenery bashing session. As I'm slowly introducing people to Infinity some of that terrain is going to be a bit more urban than originally planned...

The plan so far is to make eight 600x600mm tiles with roads on using 25mm blue foam as the basis with 5mm foamboard to raise up the non-road areas. This gives us the choice of a couple of 4x4' tables for Infinity, Necromunda & other SF skirmish games, a regular 6x4 for Infinity & 40k/Cities of Death with more options for tile choices, or lastly an extra large 8x4' table.

To make this modular, each tile will have a road entry in the middle of all four edges to make the maximum number of layout possibilities:



5" roads plus 1.5" pavements gives us reasonably wide roads plus 8" blocks in each corner, so buildings and terrain will be in multiples of 8" blocks or smaller:



Construction plans for the tiles:
1. Cut out foamboard raised areas (covering the whole of the tile from road edge to tile edge at the same height).
2. Glue foamboard raisers onto blue foam.
3. PVA + sand on the exposed blue foam road surface.
4. Textured paint covering all the foamboard.

Once all that is dry, the roads will probably end up dark grey + drybrush with some sponge+stencil work for white lines & crossings. Pavements/raised areas will be lighter grey, probably all the same tone rather than painting the 1.5" width a different colour - that way if a smaller building is placed in that corner it just has a wider bit of pavement around it.

Building construction will depend a lot on the people taking part, but I'm going to try and encourage three separate themes:
- Gothic 40k ruins (we play a LOT of 40k and have a tournament coming up).
- More generic urban terrain that we can use for Infinity as well including removable roofs owing a lot of inspiration to Antenociti's Salute table, Bostria's magnet-cubes, low-level versions of Palocles' foamboard condos and panzerkunst's foamboard apartments.
- industrial storage tanks etc.

We'll go for trying to finish six tiles by the end of the month, and enough buildings for a 4x4' Infinity table by some indeterminate time...


Other notes:
- I'm now up to nine iKubes, a couple of cardboard shipping containers and five (unpainted) die-cast cars so we're not starting totally from scratch. Apart from 40k scenery like barricades & barrels that work really well for Infinity.
- I'll also be trying to make road layouts that don't give direct LoF all across the board, so any tips for that would be really useful!
- The road + pavement width was chosen on the basis of getting a couple of APCs/Rhinos side-by-side or a Baneblade equivalent filling most of the space wall-to-wall. For Infinity games it'll be more a case of trying to fill the roads with wreckage and barricades to give everyone enough cover...

[IJW]

My small order from Antenociti just arrived, which is pretty fast given that it was ordered on Sunday. (Editor's note - this post was made on Wednesday.)

The box included a sheet of 2mm and 3mm foamed PVC and it definitely looks like good stuff. I still want to use foamboard for the raised areas as it's easier to cut curved sections with a circular guide and a scalpel blade, but for the buildings I'll look at ordering a couple of 96x48" sheets online, should come to about £55 delivered but last us for ages.


Some clearer sketches of tile layouts:



Apart from the crossroads and the T-junction, pretty well all of these have areas in the middle of the tile where buildings or other structures can be placed, to stop the dreaded 'LoF all the way across the board' situation.

[IJW]

In response to a discussion about different tile sizes:

300mm is fine as long as you don't need to pack them away too often, and make sure that you're using thin material or they stack up very fast.
As far as indenting detail, that's personal preference, we are planning to leave the pavements relatively plain so that it doesn't matter how large the buildings placed on it are, it doesn't look like the pavement stops, then there's a gap, then there's the building. The very edge may get another colour to look like kerbstones, though.

Regarding LoS/LoF issues, another workaround I've come up with is footbridges between roofs, so that even if the street has turned into a fire corridor it's possible to crawl across the footbridges under the parapets. This should also add a nice extra level of manoeuvring to the game.

The bridges tie into some of my rough ideas for building templates - 3" high floors to fit in with our existing GW terrain, with separate roof pieces that have low walls around the edges with some gaps in the walls like Bostria's magnetic boxes - the gaps can then have external stairs leading to them, or join to the next roof, or have a footbridge leading across the street to a corresponding gap in the next lot of buildings.

The roof section undersides will have a little lip slightly in from the edges so that they fit into the walls of the building, that will also allow stacking buildings for more floors as long as the floor plan matches.

[IJW]

Building template ideas (in metric as the PVC is 3mm thick):

Basic cube is 200x200mm (~8x8") and 75mm (~3") high. Basic form has a floor 194x194mm with walls glued onto the outer edge, each wall is the same 197mm long. That means we can do loads of walls all the same size with 3-4 variations on window and door cutouts and be able to put the walls on in either direction for maximum variation from similar pieces. If I get the door positions right it should be possible to put 2+ forms next to each other and have connecting doorways between them.

The roof uses a 200mm square with 197x25mm walls on top and some little ledges on the underside about 4mm in, this will then sit inside the walls and stop the roof section moving around. In the same way, ledges can be added to the undersides of some of the basic forms to make them stackable. The roof walls will probably have some gaps in, to allow for footbridges and links between neighbouring roofs.

Now the deluxe bit, inspired by Bostria's magnocubes - make some more basic forms but using 155mm as the outer dimension, and some more using 120mm outer sides.
The medium size 155mm form can fit on the roof of a 200mm form, leaving a 32mm balcony wide enough for both 25mm slottabase models and 30mm round-edged bases, and for storage will fit inside the large size.
The small 120mm form can fit on the roof of a 155mm form, leaving a 32mm balcony, and for storage will fit inside the medium size.
The small form can fit on the roof of a large form, leaving a 67mm balcony wide enough for 40mm and 60mm bases.

The three sizes are also distinct enough that pre-cut pieces won't get mixed up during construction.

P.S. I tried some regular thin superglue on the foamed PVC and it worked OK as long as the butted joint was a good fit. I'll have to see if I can set up the mini saw table so that the cuts are all at 90 degrees...

[IJW]

The blue foam tiles arrived this morning. (Friday morning, before the shipping notification arrived!)

On my travels through the internet, this photo of stacked static caravans caught my eye:
http://thereifixedit.failblog.org/20...s-kludge-city/



Note - it turned out to be an open air theatre set near Amsterdam.

[IJW]

Assorted glues etc.




I finally got around to digging out the Minicraft saw bench to see how it does for cutting foamed PVC:




The results are pretty good:




It's a good thing that I started drawing out a full-scale floorplan of my large/medium/small cubeform as I'd got the dimensions slightly wrong - it's 200mm/155mm/110mm outer dimensions. Now that the dimensions are checked, here's a cross-section:

[IJW]

Now with lips under the roof sections to keep them in place, and a figure on 25mm base for scale:





Lip/locator detail showing how the large 200mm roof could fit on both 200mm and 155mm rooms, the dotted line shows where the smaller floor would fit:



If the locator blocks are made smaller (10mm instead of the 20mm seen above) then the large roof would still fit centrally on the medium floor:



Thinking about that further, it's probably enough to have locators on two opposite corners instead of all four. Note that this bit is just thinking ahead, to start with we'll just have the outer locators.


Overhang scale:

[IJW]

The blue foam laid out:




There are a few dented corners but by the time the foamboard is on top of all the corners that won't be visible.



However we will probably end up adding 1mm foamed PVC to the outer edges to make it more robust against rough handling.

[IJW]

Convoy!



I hit the pound shops again today, there were another three packs left on the shelf when I left but they were yet more of the red & yellow combo which I already have too many of.

On the other hand it's another dozen cars for £6 (about $10 or 7€).


In other news I've marked out the first of the tiles to get a better idea of scale and practicality as a gaming piece.




Plus doubled iKubes which is about 5mm higher than my template to test heights/building bulk. The container-roadblock idea looks like it will work really well for block LoF on the crossroads, and I'd hate to try getting through that gap if it were defended...

[IJW]

Marking out another tile, the one with two angled corner roads. Starting by marking the 12cm-width of the road in the middle of each side, plus lines 40mm in and points 40mm out from that for the pavement to rotate around the corner.



I mislaid my compass, and they're not much use on blue foam anyway, so a 75mm diameter can does for the moment.



Which gives me the inner edge of the two 45 degree corners.



However this still leaves the problem of drawing the outer radius.

[IJW]

One of my test cuts of foamed PVC to the rescue! I drilled a hole for the pivot rod (and also into the blue foam on the cross marks) and then holes just the right size for the pen to stick through, making a nicely accurate compass that doesn't rip up the foam.





Whee!





You may notice that there are two sets of holes - one is for the CD marker pen that I'm using for the foam, the other smaller holes are for a ballpoint pen for when it comes to marking out the foamboard - which is the bit that really matters.


Now the result:



Looking good, but the area between the parallel sections of road is only 190mm so no 200mm square building sitting in there. However it's just right for stacked 100mm iKubes.

[IJW]

The textured paint that I'd planned to use on the pavements is very textured, and also quite wet/watery to be putting on the foamboard without priming with PVA first.





I put a thick layer on the left end, the middle had about the same amount but stippled with the brush and the bit under the Eldar had only a thin layer.

One thing that's sure is that the foamboard will need to be filled on the edges, but one brainwave I had is to use a thickish layer of the textured paint on the road areas, and then use the sand for all the pavement areas on the foamboard. That will also mean less moisture soaking into the foamboard.

[IJW]

Third tile marked up:



There's a 280mm gap in the middle, so plenty of room for a bigger building or a small park. 'We demand... a shrubbery! Nigh!'

Each 'horn' of the turning point has space for a Rhino, a Land Raider (by a few millimetres) or two cars. Alternatively, a Dropship etc.






The T-junction next, because it was simple & fast...

[IJW]

OK, this version of the thread is now up to date, updates should now be roughly simultaneous between the two threads.

[IJW]

Tile 5: the diamond-square. This one was a bit more tricky to mark out...













The angled roads are slightly narrower at 80mm instead of the standard 120mm of the rest - enough wider than a single lane that a Rhino's tracks will fit between the pavements, and just wide enough for a Land Raider's sponsons to fit between buildings placed 40mm in from the road edge.

[IJW]

Now the scale shots:











Pedestrians are probably OK if they duck fast enough. Any street furniture like streetlights, bins etc. on the other hand...

P.S. If you see any models which aren't Infinity, Eldar or Squats in these photos they are probably from upcoming shop stock, PM me with an offer.

[IJW]

P.S. Not to forget the big stuff. Look out behind you!

[IJW]

Traffic jam in Blue Foam City!



Plus the sixth tile, the last to be marked up for now:



The roundabout lane is again 80mm wide, to give more space in the middle of the tile for terrain/buildings. And a 'Welcome to Foamsville' sign.

[IJW]

Next I need to convert the mini sawbench a bit so that we can put larger pieces through.

[IJW]

Unless anyone wants a detailed description (I took photos for one), I'll just add some before and after photos of the saw bench work:







It was quite a bit of work, but the second guide and much wider plate means that I can cut more accurately and with larger pieces.