Urban Zombie board Thread: resurrection 2023!

[zizi666]

Believe me, they do an excellent job! Just make sure to not use a water-based glue which may cause the thick paper to warp, almost beyond repair. Very annoying.

another tip : backing the walls with foamboard makes 'em much stronger. I use 5mm thickness.

You might also consider buildings from Microtactix' twilight street. although closed models (no interior) the do look the part.
Here's a mix of WWG & Twilight Street I use :



some more pics in my album : http://s1217.photobucket.com/albums/dd388/zizi666/Zombies/

Careful with the original Twilight street as it is more suited for 20mm, so if you don't want to rescale look for the heroic scale sets.

[Argonor]

another tip : backing the walls with foamboard makes 'em much stronger. I use 5mm thickness.

I've considered that, but 1) I lack the proper tools for cutting the stuff, 2) I just recently unearthed a local supplier of foamboard, so I've repaired a few warped buildings by glueing in some board.

Careful with the original Twilight street as it is more suited for 20mm, so if you don't want to rescale look for the heroic scale sets.

Very true, and, actually, it is one of my griefs with the Worldworks Streets of Mayhem that the 1.5 inch ground templates do not come without the clix-grid....

[Commander Vyper]

Argonor:

As you'll see from my thread, I use foamcore 5mm, all you need is a cutting board, metal ruler and good sharp scalpel blades, worth the extra effort so your building last for the long haul.

I don't use the workworks roads and pavements, don't like em, I use a railway scenics company's, (name escapes me its in the thread) much better and more realistic.

@Zizi666: nice table, be good to see more, you should post up a thread on it.

[Commander Vyper]

Some road layout advice from back in 2009!  

Then I moved onto the road layout…..

Again I wanted something that looked reasonable polished, without needing huge amounts of additional detail that could get damaged or damage the other board when stacked.

I looked at a number of options but eventually went with one of the downloadable pdf road and pavement sets from a railway scenics company called Scale scenes
http://www.scalescenes.com  and got the roads and pavements set (T034):

These were then downloaded and saved to disk for my visit to staples printers.

As they were created  in HO scale, I needed to scale them up so after a bit of playing around and some advice from a friend of mine I settled on between 135% & 144% enlargement, (I say that because I forgot the 135% when I went back a second time and ended up with straight  A4 to A3 upscale DOH!! All look ok together though).







So with the roads and pavements sourced my gaming area was starting to take shape:

Armed with printed sheets and gaming boards, I started to plan/sketch out the layout…but realised that without a decision on the buildings or the width of the pavements I was going to have some trouble in pulling it all together.

Pavements:

For the pavements I first looked at the new plasti-foam boards board that Jed over at Antenociti's Workshop http://www.barrule.com/workshop has started to carry, but didn’t go for it, (though don’t worry, loads of little bits and bobs from Jed found they’re way into the project!)

I decided that the pavements needed to be quite sturdy (as in keeping with the modular nature of the board, a number of them would need to be able to be swopped in and out) and I also needed to make some large open areas which again needed to be rigid and not warp.

So back to the DIY centre and over to the MDF again. I picked up two sheets of 3 mm 4 foot by 2 foot MDF, and got them to cut them down to strips for the pavements, and a number of  7”x7” & 14” x7” sections (you gotta love the first two cuts are free rule!!!) for building bases/open areas.

Being 3mm the MDF could be easily cut using a scalpel and metal ruler/set square to ensure good straight right angels.

The printed sections were then measured and cut with a scalpel. They were measured against the MDF the edges were prefolded before being glued and wrapped around the MDF strips. This gave a good clean curb edge.



Further curb stones were cut out and edging strips were added where necessary.

Repeat this process about 30 times and you have all the pavement sections you need. The trick is to be ultra sharp with your folding and clean with your adhesive. I used pritt-stick (giant stick) for the pavement and road sections, nice even application, no lumps and bumps.

Roads:

The road and tarmac sections were easy to cut and stick in place.

I was also able to add details such as bus stops, taxi ranks, give ways and stop sections quite easily:



More to follow.

The Commander

[zizi666]

Nice.  I visited the Scalescenes site before. haven't bought anything yet (although the factory building is very tempting  )
One question. how about the weight with those MDF plates ?
since mine are foamcore, they don't weigh in and are thus easily transportable (a must since I play at our club our at some friends' place) downside is the slight warping. i've found that by 'cracking' the foamboard I can get the pieces somewhat flat. 

Another trick I recently heard about is to put magnets in the foamcore, so the tiles 'stick' to one another.
haven't tried that, yet.

For the moment I'm painting up some more zombies (and I still have a bunch of hasslefree, Copplestone and heresy survivors to start on) but i'm hoping to host an ATZ:better dead than Zed game in a couple of weeks.

[Argonor]

i've found that by 'cracking' the foamboard I can get the pieces somewhat flat. 

I use that 'trick' too.

Another trick I recently heard about is to put magnets in the foamcore, so the tiles 'stick' to one another.
haven't tried that, yet.

Might actually work. Otherwise, maybe glueing sheets/strips of paper to the backside of the boards might keep them straight?

[Commander Vyper]

I use that 'trick' too.

Might actually work. Otherwise, maybe glueing sheets/strips of paper to the backside of the boards might keep them straight?

It's all there in the early posts, I pin and brace the foamboard and have had no warping or bending issues in the last two years +.

[zizi666]

It's all there in the early posts, I pin and brace the foamboard and have had no warping or bending issues in the last two years +.

Yeah, I must definitly catch up on the whole thread.
(Only joined up some months ago so I'm guessing a lot of good threads are still unnoticed by me) 

[Elk101]

Zizi666, nice table, I'll have to check out Twilight Street too.

I think if I get the WWG buildings I'll go with a foamcore structure. I have a load of it sitting in the house so I might as well put it to good use.

Thanks for all the tips and advice guys.

[Elk101]

OK. I know they get bad press but I just bought some Wargames Factory zombies to kick start my Urban Zombie fest. They were fairly cheap on ebay and I figured they would be ok as 'fillers'. I'm also trying to order some Studio Miniatures' zombies from Artemis Black's, but it looks like he's not answering emails again. His prices are really good though, so I will persevere. I'm biting the bullet and going for Hasslefree for the bulk of the survivors plus some EM-4 and Copplestone for biker gangs, and maybe some TAG and Offensive for SWAT types and riot police. The price of Hasslefree figures are more than I've ever paid for a miniature before, but they look, as our American cousins might say "awesome".

You lot have a lot to answer for with your amazing table set ups, fantastic paint jobs and game reports! (I have, however, flogged a large portion of my old Games Workshop collection to fund it!).

[Commander Vyper]

OK. I know they get bad press but I just bought some Wargames Factory zombies to kick start my Urban Zombie fest. They were fairly cheap on ebay and I figured they would be ok as 'fillers'. I'm also trying to order some Studio Miniatures' zombies from Artemis Black's, but it looks like he's not answering emails again. His prices are really good though, so I will persevere. I'm biting the bullet and going for Hasslefree for the bulk of the survivors plus some EM-4 and Copplestone for biker gangs, and maybe some TAG and Offensive for SWAT types and riot police. The price of Hasslefree figures are more than I've ever paid for a miniature before, but they look, as our American cousins might say "awesome".

You lot have a lot to answer for with your amazing table set ups, fantastic paint jobs and game reports! (I have, however, flogged a large portion of my old Games Workshop collection to fund it!).

Arty will get back to you mate, it's show season remember. Em4 will give you a great selection of survivors, first responders, military, suits etc... Yup all good, just not going to say a word on your choice of plastic zeds! (WGF indeed! ) Get some mantic zeds and get creative, (I've got some spare that I'll be selling, so PM me).

Good luck and get your thread up, show us all your progress.

The Commander

[zizi666]

OK. I know they get bad press but I just bought some Wargames Factory zombies to kick start my Urban Zombie fest.

Yes they are somewhat more detailed than melted sprue but I find them to be a good alternative to create that large (modern) zombie mob everyone should own (and no, I haven't got one - still working on it) 
I bought severeal sprues a couple of years ago and handed out some to friends hoping to draw them over to the dark side 
of course, If you have the funds, go for Studio Miniatures and the other manufacturers that create fine minis.

[Argonor]

(I have, however, flogged a large portion of my old Games Workshop collection to fund it!).

Now, THAT's a trooper!  

Really, it makes me happy everytime somebody opens his eyes and discovers that GW is not the only road to damnation  

[Elk101]

I'm definitely going to go for some Studio Miniatures' zombies as soon as I can get my order through. You're quite right Commander Vyper, I had forgotten that Artemis Black will be busy with shows and he is a one-man band, so it's probably to be expected that it will take time to get back. I actually bought a few EM-4 figures last night too so I have some suits and bikers. I was looking at Empress Miniatures' range of moderns for some British army figures (I'm looking at a UK based setting). I'm not sure how they compare size-wise though as I've never owned any (also noticed they have a new New Zealand Wars range - very nice!).

I haven't used my GW stuff for about 10 years as I was 'converted' to historicals so it was just taking up space in the loft. I still have a load more which will also go the journey to fund the urban terrain.

Commander Vyper, I'll drop you a note about the spare Mantics, as I was looking to do some WGF/Mantic conversions.

[Gluteus Maximus]

I was looking at Empress Miniatures' range of moderns for some British army figures (I'm looking at a UK based setting). I'm not sure how they compare size-wise though as I've never owned any (also noticed they have a new New Zealand Wars range - very nice!).

I've got some Empress Zulu War stuff and they are very close in height and build to the Em-4 figures. When I do finally get around to buying some of their moderns I'd certainly use them together with the EM-4s .

If no-one else has any comparison pics, I'll try and get one done tomorrow morning