Your Tax Dollars at Work
Looking at my so-called city board, something about it always seemed off to me. It wasn’t until this weekend, while cruising what I think of as the Infiniti terrain-porn* sites, that I realized what it was. The board was too rural. The earth and grass speaks more of suburbia than urbania. What this calls for is some urban development.
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| That’s nice. Pleasant even. |
That’s a really easy fix. All you need is a new drop cloth, some spray paint, and you’re in business. So check out the new and improved urban-core.
After a bit of planning on graph paper, what I did was mark out three inch wide roads using masking tape. First I sprayed the roads black, then dusted the whole cloth in black and a light gray color. I moved cardboard blocker boards around to give different parts of the board different shades of gray. Then I gave it a last dusting with a pale blue color, to break up the monochrome a bit. After I was satisfied with the concrete coloring, I just pulled the masking tape up. Leaving the areas covered by the tape completely free of spray paint results in a brighter shade of concrete for the sidewalks.
That’s the stuff. New roads, fire lanes blockable by traffic, and none that cross the whole table. All we need now is a few flattish terrain pieces to fill in a few gaps. Maybe a skate park or a junk lot. Those sidewalks need some additional cracking, too. It ain’t done, but that concrete jungle looks a lot more city-like to my eyes.
In retrospect, it might have been better to build those roads at a more oblique angle. The Infiniti guys swear that it gives you shorter fire lanes from one table edge to the other. I’m not so sure that matter given my play style. Infinity explicitly uses table edges in a way that most of my games don’t. For example – in my last Black Ops game, the defending force started in the corners. This should work out just fine.
Meanwhile…it’s finally time to go back to Castle Meatgrinder! We’ll revisit my fantasy tabletop next time.
* Some of those Infiniti forum dwellers have really got their act together when it comes to building cohesive city boards that are attractive and make sense as urban centers. If you need terrain inspiration, check them out, but be ready to look at the clock and wonder where the last few hours went.
That does look more built up! Having much the same problem I recently purchased a Nuclear power plant from my city scape…makes a nice objective if nothing else. Again nice work here!
Wow, that makes a huge difference. It looks great, very inspiring.
Great work. It is amazing what kind of difference that makes. The cool part is that you now have 2 totally different themed tables by only adding in another drop cloth.
What do you use for the cloth? Is it felt, a painter's canvas, or what?
The field mat is a heavy canvas – you can actually see the weave if you embiggen the first picture. The concrete mat is a cheap linen, and I'm finding that it holds creases too much for my liking. Since you can paint one of these in an hour, I may splurge on the nine dollar canvas and re-do it.