city terrain piece

[cjbennett22]

I have always just used singular buildings as terrain but I would love to try my hand at making an actual city/village terrain piece.

I need some help imagining how to build one and what buildings and what scale.  I assume n-scale for model trains and then everything is pretty cheap but I'm sure it will all add up to make a really nice terrain piece.

Any visuals you can share?  Thanks everyone.

how big are the terrain pieces total?

I would need to have removable buildings.....or should they stay static and restrict movement/formations?

[Lex]

Combine both... having larger static (set) pieces in combination with movable jumble.

Make sure roads and squares/markets etc are easy to identify and have plenty of rubble to move around for the wreckage

Unless of course you would want to depict a fully operational city (in which case you still need the streetplan!) and populate it with the housing on Brumbaers site!

Even better......  have a bit of ruins to fit INSIDE the paper houses and you can change the board on a whim
 

[mlkr]

Interesting!
No visuals but some fluff- and rules-connected thoughts:

Considering the danger of units being destroyed when driven back into impassable terrain might make players scared of entering such a terrainpiece. Worst case scenario it's just a big chunk of very-dangerous-to-enter terrain. Maybe it would be both practical (game-opening) and cool if considerate parts of the city/village has already seen battle and the "current" fighting is done on the remnants of razed and burnt down buildings? There would still be standing buildings around but in this way there would be more room for maneuvers and it would certainly look cool this way too.

Or maybe a special rule that units driven back inside the terrainpiece does so straight back onto the nearest perpendicular (is that the right word?) street.

One way of doing a razed version could be to make a big terrainpiece with just streets laid out around flat spaces of ground. These spaces could then be populated with separate terrainpieces of razed/standing buildings, walls/hedges, a citywell and such. Gives you the option of a different piece of terrain every game, lots of diversity in what to build and extra nice looks

Anyways -  That's my 1 swedish krona on the subject

[Stormwind]

I have bought 4 10mm ones from Total Battle Miniatures.

My intent was to have them in a defensive scenario, mimicing the type of 28mm Warhammer scenario with fortified manors:

http://www.gaming-blog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/P1010671.jpg

I haven't tried them yet but I would usually only have them in a kind of defensive scenario, not casually on the board as they complicate things.

As for a large scale village, I might find that too complicated so would aim to have ruins instead which all count as dense terrain on a template.

[cjbennett22]

how about a basic terrain base in any random shape like a woods.....then the same thing as your city scapes pieces you bought, you give a thin layer of a veneer over whatever your usual base is if not 2 layers of that, 1 with your buildings cut out and maybe numbered so they can fit somewhere and you can remove and put them back.....but completely model up a full city or village with fences and gardens and city squares and a market and roads etc etc. and then

heres the kicker

use old z-scale kibri medieval plastic houses made in Germany just like the one in the picture.  They have a very large amount of finished ones on e-bay about 10-20 bucks each. 

skip out on some pizza every week, buy a house every week instead and you can have a city in no time!

The z-scale is the same size as the brumbaer site buildings that I am currently using a bunch of right now (and are slowly becoming delapitated).

[cjbennett22]

I apologize in advance if I sound like a mad man, I am going to playtest this a bit tonight but I'm positive it will work just fine.

make a basic terrain piece as the street level of a city, including fences and gardens and fountains and all sorts of stuff, infantry and machines can enter only.  Make sure the streets are a proper width for the bases to fit and all intersections are chamfered to help out with fitting the bases as well and make for easy game play.  use the road rules to help them move but keep in mind that irregular formations cut your movement to half pace    Fighting street by street, you will be formed up long ways but just like in fortifications and on top of walls, no flanking bonus' and no support bonus' for either side and no "in the open" bonus'.  Earthworks can be purchased to gain defended status bonus'.

Finally, back to the buildings....make it so the buildings are removable but not for your troops, only because they will have structure points like a fortification wall section or siege tower.  now you have a defender burrowed into the city like a tick that you need to get out to protect your flank so just start destroying buildings until the right ones are gone and then they no longer get the terrain bonuses!  Calvary and anything else can go and get them.  Maybe allow infantry to destroy buildings, auto hits like a battering ram, defender can purchase booby traps for the buildings like burning oil or rock droppers in a siege game.

With the individual buildings getting destroyed, think of the scenarios possible, save the city from the orcs!!!! keep at least 2 buildings in tact. etc. etc.

[Dobbsy]

Check this page http://www.totalbattleminiatures.com/bigbattalions/10-15mm/blackpowdereurope.html out and scroll to the bottom for ideas on townships. It's what I'm going to use as a basis.

[cjbennett22]

those are my inspiration but their shipping here to the states makes them not feasible for me 

making the base and flocking everything but the buildings would be free as I have all of the supplies.  But if I purchased as many buildings as those ones came with I guess they would still cost the same.

[Dave]

I was going to say I didn't think the shipping was that bad, but I checked and I ordered from Maelstorm before they folded. The Saxon stuff is great.

I'm definitely a fan of scatter terrain with loose pieces. I did that for forests, and would like to do it to represent build up areas at some point too. If people don't like buildings that move that way, then we'll just play them as static pieces. Either way, tons of flexibility.

[cjbennett22]

The "woods" terrain pieces that I have made are shown here

http://www.architectsofwar.com/Howto/forests.pdf

[cjbennett22]

the woods terrain pieces I made are shown here

http://www.architectsofwar.com/Howto/forests.pdf

I made one large and one small

I used a few less nails than they did to support the canopy for troop base clearance.  In one game way back last year right after finishing the woods my brother and I played a game set up by me and I had hid the troll cave inside the large woods so on a roll of a 6 at the beginning of your turn you would have trolls come into the woods to get you.  He had the right side of the table but never entered the woods, I was really let down  LOL

can anyone measure the width of the roads on the total battle black powder village sets?  do they work for fitting an infantry unit in sideways?

[Draccan]

I know this is off topic, but I was wondering (inspired by this thread) if any1 every did try to make a mini-Mordheim game with Warmaster minis. I have heard about pocket-warhammer and pocket-40 (with Epic) but never pocket-Mordheim Obviously you would need different basing, but imagine the cities you could create! 

[Lex]

I know this is off topic, but I was wondering (inspired by this thread) if any1 every did try to make a mini-Mordheim game with Warmaster minis. I have heard about pocket-warhammer and pocket-40 (with Epic) but never pocket-Mordheim Obviously you would need different basing, but imagine the cities you could create! 

I did....  building scaled down from copies of the offical Mordheim sheets
Used small magnetized plastic cut-out for single characters and the dutch equivalent of a "dime"(dubbeltje) for Henchmen. Henchmen where placed with two or 3 on a stand. Gangs made with anything and everything which was stripable from Empire stands (and other assorted)

it all fitted in a shoebox and saw a lot of travel

[Stormwind]

That sounds absolutely *ADORABLE*

[mlkr]

Oh man
The pretty little pictures in my head ^^