Dreamwarder's modular Cities of Death/Apocalypse board

[dreamwarder]

Hello,

Firstly I'd like to say I wouldn't have even started this project had it not been for Warseer. I've found the painting logs part of the forum inspirational on many occasions, but particularly the terrain logs, and much of what I've done here owes something to the fab ideas and pics of other cities that I've seen on Warseer and elsewhere. Thank you all for being inspirational.

Now before we all get caught up in a circle-jerk, here's an explanation of what I've been working on the last couple of months.

Ok so around the time Cities of Death came out I went and bought one of those huge Imperial City boxed sets and it's been sitting in my cupboard ever since. So I decided that before the end of the year I would finally do something with it.

The plan is to construct enough pieces for a fully-modular cities of death table, with all the terrain built on modular square tiles. I want to have more than enough pieces to fill a 6' by 4' table, and for each building I want to have a ruined and rubble version so that I can swap them out if they get damaged by siege shells/wrecking stratgems/ whatever. I also want to have several smaller rubble piles as scatter terrain, and stratagem markers for all the stratagems that need them.

To this end, I've split the project into two phases - phase 1 is to build and paint all the ruin versions of the buildings, and all the basic road sections. Phase two is to build the rubble versions of the buildings, the rubble scatter terrain, and the strategem markers. So off I go!

Typically, not even a huge box like the Imperial City set was enough so I added an Imperial sector and some other bits, and bought some CNC city street tiles from a friend who used to stock them in his ebay store before some douche went and signed an exlusive deal with CNC workshop and effectively put my friend out of business. If you've not seen the CNC stuff before it's pretty cool -

http://www.miniaturescenery.com/

They're an australian company who make great stuff out of wood, stocked in the UK by only one company who I refuse to buy from for aforementioned reasons. He doesn't carry all their stock anyway, and there were some bits only available from australia that my friend didn't have so I also put in an order direct from them - only took a couple of weeks to arrive and with P&P was only slightly more than I would have paid in buying it from the english stockist anyway.

So, armed with a whole stack of floor tiles and a mountain of sprues I set to work. Sadly, I didn't take many pictures of the early stages, but here's what I do have of mostly-built, unpainted buildings. Some of them are a bit blurry and they're generally not that well lit - mainly because I was snapping off pics quick whilst in the full grip of hobby madness.

*Cathedral*

Firstly, the obligatory Cathedral. The first thing on my build-list, and also the largest building I planned on constructing. I can't take the credit for the design on this one, I stole the idea from Nezalhualixtlan and just adapted it to my needs. You can find his original version here:
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=235598

*Cathedral from other side*


Next up, the Promethium refinery.

*Promethium refinery*


*different angle*


This piece is actually quite close to being finished - it just needs some of it's rubble and sandbags painting.

[dreamwarder]

And some kind of Admech tank garage. The landing pad and some other details are made of platformer bits -

*Front*


*Rear*


If you want any close-ups of particular bits, just ask.


Next up, A Plasma Generator.

*Generator Front*


*Generator Rear*


This thing actually comes in two halves - the base boards gave me the idea.

[dreamwarder]

And like a pantomime horse, here's the second half of the generator

*Front*


*Back*


And a Propaganda Centre

*Front*


*Back*


The idea is to have a big billboard or screen on the side with some motivational image (gleaned from another warseer thread) and some banners hanging down the front.

[dreamwarder]

A Broadcast tower

*Front*


*Back*


The mast for this thing is frickin huge hence it doesn't fit in a picture. Again some parts were made with platformer bits and the aerial a mixture of platformer bits and the aerial from a bastion kit. Wires are old computer bits. This piece is also mostly painted.


===

A generic Administratum building

*Front*


*Looking Down*

With a larger platformer landing pad, which just holds an arvus lighter.

[dreamwarder]

Finally for now, a smaller Administratum-style building

*Front*


*Rear*



That's all the pics I've got for now, but I've been very busy today painting some of these pieces up, so I should have some more painted pics for you tomorrow - plus some pics of the road sections.

[Daniel36]

Great start. I like your mixing and matching. Would look great painted.

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75247 Here, my old CoD log. Perhaps you might find something of use.

[razormasticator]

That first building is my favorite, although I do like the mix of the hexagonal balcony/terraformer kit.

[dreamwarder]

Ok, I've been a busy boy the last couple of days, painting everything up as my holiday draws to a close. There still a fair bit of detail work that I can do on these pieces to break up the grey a little more, but I'm happy to game with them and call them pretty much finished for now.

Incidently, I quite like the the colour contrast effect of playing with brightly painted armies against this rather bleak looking urban background. It feels like a movie that's had the colour saturation played with in post-production - some striking flashes of colour against a largely monochrome skyline.

There was a table I saw once at Salute for a 'film noir' themed demo game that inspired me at the time - the whole table and all the models for the game were painted exclusively black and white and shades of grey - it looked really awesome. I didn't set out to copy that, but this table has something of that same effect on me.

Anyway, here are a ton of photos - this concludes 'phase 1' of the project as outlined in the first post. Give me a few weeks to recover and I'll start on 'phase 2' which will involve producing a rubble pile to replace each ruined building (for when they get hit with siege shells and the like), some scatter terrain, and some strategems.

First up, a painted road section - the road itself is textured with some fine black gravel I got from the train section at Hobbycraft.


Secondly, an overview of the whole table in one of many configurations. I haven't quite done enough pieces to cover 6'4' yet - I have a park to build which I've shifted to phase 2.


Next, a couple of street level shots

[dreamwarder]

[dreamwarder]

[dreamwarder]

And finally, the Warmaster Lee driving up the road - painted by a good friend as an awesome gift.

Sorry about some of the slightly shaky photos - I'll see if I can get some better ones on Wedsnesday with a tripod when I'll be playing my first game on this table.

[bugbait_nz]

Love the group shot, I also think blacks and greys are Ok as long as there is a small splash of some other colour, you do this with the posters and sandbags, very nice.

Bugbait out

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Nicely done, I like your interpretation of my design for the Cathedral. I like those pillars on the inside too, I actually got the Arcane ruins set and have been trying to figure out how to incorporate something similar into my design with it, as those corners seem to need a little more support, plus the broken columns are cool looking. Your stuff is definitely looking good.

[dreamwarder]

Thanks guys - I love what you've both done so your appreciation means a lot.

[The_Blind_Anarchist]

Awesome terrain so far! I'm really liking it. I have one question; the non GW terrain what are they and where did you get them from? I'm looking to make a Fortress and city and some of those bits will come in handy, especially those

[dreamwarder]

There's lots of different bits and pieces in there - mostly from the platformer and hexagon ranges - you can see the different kits here:

http://www.thewarstore.com/IMEXPlatformerHexagon.html

quite a few independant stockists have them. The landing pads were made from these.

I also used some architectural i-beams and pipe cylinders in different places to spice up the GW kits a bit, and most of the rubble is made up of small bits of sprue - I ground up a whole bunch of old sprues using a beef mincer, but you could also chop them up by hand using clippers if you can spare the time. There's also some bits and pieces from my bits box mixed in with the rubble, as well as some chopped up platformer/gw bits, and then of course there's the sandbags which are sculpted from miliput - there's a great tutorial done by miniwargaming for that - they gave me the idea to texture the sandbags using a bit of material from an old pair of jeans.

I think that's all the spare bits I used - apart from a cardboard tube to make a big smoke stack... oh and some sheets of plasticard and a bit of granny grating (chopped up cross-stitch mesh).

[dreamwarder]

This table saw it's first action this evening - My Crimson Fists versus a friend's Tyranids - we had to finish after four turns as we ran out of time, but it was a marginal win for the Crimson fists, holding one objective with the other three contested. A fifth turn might have seen a different outcome - anyway, here's some front-line pict captures.

The Crimson fists spread out on the balconies of one objective building - Pedro Kantor issuing orders to the units in the street below from his vantage point.


An armoured column advances warily, followed by a deathwatch unit (sternguard) led by an Ultramarine sergeant.


Dorn's heirs brace themselves for the coming onslaught


Turrets turn to track movement in the buildings ahead

[dreamwarder]

Something big is moving through the ruins ahead...


The trap is sprung


'What the hell is that?!?'

[PsyberWolf]

dreamwarder,

The table looks awesome! Very impressive.

I suggest you create some rubble piles and craters. I made some craters based on old CDs and the ability to move it around for different board configurations or to represent battle damage really works well.

[New Cult King]

Man this is phenomenal. I've been collecting Hexagon/Platformer and GW bits for a while now with a mind to building something like this. Thank you for the inspiration!