A city is mandatory for any NetEpic game. This scenery
provides cover for infantry, obstacles to vehicles and targets for Titan
weapons. Most players have plenty of cardboard buildings from previous
editions of Space Marine, but they are a bit bland because of their flat
faces; and when placed on a gaming table they look like springing up from
the static grass. I decided to do
better.  | A lone Banelord of Khorne
hunting down survivors. |
ShoppingSince I was
looking for realistic buildings, I had to stay clear from the numerous
cardboard versions. Epic 40k, the latest release of Epic scale game by
Games Workshop, provided interesting plastic sprues for buildings.
Unfortunately, they were ony ruins. Creating a wasted city with nothing
but ruins would have deprived NetEpic players of the joy of destroying
buildings - with troops inside. I needed ruins for sure, but also
structures in good shape.  | Enough of
those ugly cities! |
Those ruins are neat looking and one could
produce "brand new" buildings from various plastic pieces given enough
time and attention. I had no time for that, but Forgeworld had. Their Epic
scale scenery has been obviously created from Epic 40K plastic ruins.
Buying some stuff for them, I would have the mix of buildings and wasted
ruins I was looking for with a style matching perfectly.All the items I
write about can be seen on Forgeworld website
here.
I
bought 3 Librarium buildings as basic city blocks. They had the right size
and weren't too spectacular. One Ruined Librarium added some variety to
those city blocks; more than one was out of question, since it's unlikely
that two buildings are ruined exactly in the same manner. I also acquired
a Censorium building, slightly larger and more impressive with a large
flat roof. Finally, an Administratum building was my last choice: not only
it is a spectacular piece, but it fits well on top of the Censorium to
create a tall building. The bill reached £43.5, a bit steep but giving a
decent basis for a decent sized city.
Forgeworld provides more
spectacular Epic scale scenery like the tank factory or the Cathedral.
I'm not fond of them - not only they are pricey, but they are too large
for the usual gaming table and don't mix too well with their other Epic
scenery. If you plan to have nothing but an urban table, maybe the
Cathedral provides a suitable centerpiece but I found it too imposing for
my taste. Finally, I gathered paste, cardboard, plasticard, putty,
gravel for rubble - nothing fancy. I also acquired plastic stems, more on
that later. Basic
buildings | Don't be afraid to sink
it in the sand... |
Forgeworld resin buildings have a thick stand.
If put directly on a gaming board, they suffer all the more from the
"sprung up" structure evoked earlier. I had to base everything. I used
thick cardboard loosely cut with curves, and hollowed a hole to have the
building fit in the cardboard and not on top of it. It helped
reduce the height of the resin base. I used some putty to soften the step
around the building. Once cured, the base received a layer of paste and
was sprinkled with fine sand.
Afterwards, small wall debris (from
plastic ruins accompanying every Epic 40K rectangular base sprues) were
scattered around with additional drops of
paste.RuinsRealistic ruins are difficult to create. Of
course, you can pile up rubble and debris until you are satisfied, but if
you expect a good result some thinking is required. A ruin is a wasted
building. Some parts of the original architecture should remain. Also,
despite being blown off, the building's concrete does not vanish, but
crumbles. Somehow the amount of rubbles and stones scattered should match
the size of the original structure: thus a six-stores building collapsed
will yield a larger heap of debris than a two-stores one.
The damage
should also be considered. The more wasted a structure is, the more spread
its debris, reflecting the violence of the explosion that ruined it. If
nothing more remains than a couple girders, then concrete fragments and
stones should cover a large circle where the building once stood.
This
being said, there are plenty of way of destroying buildings in NetEpic -
from earthquakes to warp holes - so those guidelines are far from
absolute. I wanted not only rubble and buildings, but also something
in-between. The ruined Librarium from Forgeworld was a good example and I
wanted another structure in this half-destroyed state. Mine would be a
symetrical construction, two annexes flanking a ruined tower. One of the
annex would be in a fair state while the other would be barely
recognizable.
 | From start to
finish. |
I started with cutting plastic ruins to get three
components of one level height and three windows width. It would be the
walls of the standing annex. They received a piece of paper to close
windows, as Forgeworld buildings have opaque ones due to resin casting. I
also cut square-shaped and circular plastic stem to create edge columns
matching other buildings, one "stone" after another. Topping the whole,
a roof was made of cardboard, plasticard and more plastic
stem.Sometimes, even a ruin has standing walls and even roof.
Intermediate floors can help giving a good appearance - just don't forget
to cover them with debris as well. PaintingDrybrushing is
the main technique for painting. I decided to use a grey drybrush and
another white for highlighting. Usually one color is enough but using two
really gives an edge to the final result. Since shades of grey are lacking
diversity, I needed to add another color to enhance the apperance of the
imperial city. This color would have been applied to roofs, but I wasn't
sure of the best one to use: red, green or blue. Red helps give the city
block a grim look but does not mix well with infantry bases' color. Green
is okay for industrial, polluted areas. Blue is somehow neutral and
slightly cleaner than red and green. I finally opted for red, washed with
black ink for a battered, dirty look. Even in a city where no battle takes
place, roofs are rarely clean. It's important to paint debris as well.
If the roof of a standing building is red, then a ruins resulting of a
crumbling structure should include some red debris from the roof among
other types of rubble. Addind a small stroke of red paint here and there
really helps, especially if you paint the flat side of a large debris - it
gives the impression that it's a part of the roof showing the structure.
In black, gray stone constructions, if some parts of the building are in
color, it's likely that they have been painted, not that they are made of
a different material with an intrinsic color. Only the flat face of a rock
should receive color. Going furtherA city, ruined or not, is
not made just of blocks. You can add a park, a power plant, a spatioport,
roads, communication antennaes, a missile silo, a construction hangar or a
mine entrance. Not only this expands the depth of your scenery by adding a
purpose to its existence, but it makes great
objectives.  | Urban
grass! |
To avoid once
more the "sprout out" effect of buildings simply put on a gaming table,
I used a built ground. It's simply a sheet of black paper stamped with
grey, white and black paint and cut to give it an irregular edge. The
final appearance of this paper blends very well with the drybrush look of
the city blocks.Altought I've written above that I used Forgeworld
models for undestroyed buildings, it is not entirely true. Just for the
fun of it, I tried - like they did - to create a standing building mostly
from plastic ruins. The result was more than acceptable, matching
Forgeworld supplies. It just took a lot of time. The only challenge was to
make stained-glass windows. Standing building have opaque windows, so I
used a cardboard to obstruct them, and for stained-glass windows a
rectangle of gauze between cardboard and plastic wall gave perfect
results. Finally, I created some ruins matching standing buildings'
floor plan, so I could use them to swap scenery if the building gets
destroyed in a game - unless it is already in use because I wanted a large
city, of course. Pictures of the assembled cityHere are
several pictures of the whole city in different configurations. The first
two pictures show how to transform a clean city into a pile of rubble
simply by switching buildings with ruins of the same size.
published on 04 Feb 2005 |
