I got an idea last year about making some modular urban terrain to play with. I thought about it for a long time and made a bunch of sketches and notes. Eventually, these turned into some computer drawings and a list of components. One of the first things I needed was a four foot square mat to represent the streets. I looked around online and settled on a mat from The Terrain Guy made of canvas, textured and covered in rubber. This is a great handmade mat for a good value, in my opinion. This will be the streets of my urban board.
I decided that MDF would make up the ‘blocks’ of my urban landscape. Once I decided on all of the sizes and shapes in my configuration, I had to get some MDF and a friend with a table saw.
A simple grid map
After a lot of sawing, I had a stack of squares and rectangles and whatnot, and then it was time for the sanding and the dremeling, which is probably not a real word. The general idea was to round the edges of the pieces and use them as curbs and sidewalks.
A simple example layout with a few buildings for scale
This will allow for a board with many different configurations. Between the different ‘blocks’ and the ability to put different buildings and other terrain pieces on those blocks, I should have hundreds of variations for my gaming table.
However, I now need to texture and paint all of the ‘block’ pieces. I’ll be using sand and kitty litter with wood glue to do the texturing, and then I’ll be painting the pieces with black latex paint. After that dries, I’ll be spraying them grey and doing a little drybrushing.
We seem to be under attack
So the plan is to document the further work on the modular urban project. I doubt I’ll be able to get much done this weekend, as it is currently very humid around here. Hopefully that’ll be cleared up by the end of the weekend so I can do a little painting outside on Sunday morning. I’ll keep you informed here.
IT NEEDS TANKS!!!