My Modular Urban Terrain Project

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.

Current Work and Skeletal Robots

I’ve been busy with non-hobby intrusions into my time (like working a lot, sleeping a bit, etc.) but I have gotten some hobby-related things done since my last post. I even have some pictures.

The Manhunter, a work in progress

I’ve been painting my Khador Manhunter from Warmachine (Privateer Press) with the idea that some day, I’ll actually have enough figures ready to play without it just being a ‘battlebox’ game (meaning just the warcaster and the warjacks that come in the starter box for a given faction). Finishing some solo characters is a good way to break up the monotony of painting a whole squad of Widowmakers or Iron Fang Pikemen (I dread that day already) so I’ve been attacking this guy. This is just a snapshot taken with my little camera in the window on a cloudy day. I haven’t added any base colors to the gloves, the axe heads or most of the base yet, but I like where it’s going. I’ve always felt that the Manhunters wouldn’t be all decked out in red like most of the Khador army, mainly because of their ‘loner’ status. I might add some red to the three bars on the front of his hat or I may just use some thin red paint and an old toothbrush to make him splattered in blood. I’m not sure yet.

Robots + Skeletons = Awesome

These guys I finished painting quite some time ago, but with the release of the new Terminator movie, I thought I would break them out and shoot them in the old lighting box. They’re from em-4 Miniatures in the UK and they were pretty easy to paint. I did get a little fancy with the basing, which turned out okay. It was one of my first attempts to make slightly fancier bases than the usual ‘glue, sand, drybrush’ technique and I think they turned out rather well.

Lastly, on Sunday my good friend Dave helped me by cutting out a whole bunch of MDF board to my specifications (I kind of helped) so I can start my modular urban battle board. I didn’t take a picture because it’s mainly just a pile of oddly-shaped MDF pieces on my kitchen floor, but as I start more serious work on them, I’ll show you some WIP (work in progress) shots.