City tabletop/ground - how can it be done?

[darquebus]

I wanted to build a generic "city" table top.
I mean just the ground. So maybe some cobblestones, some pavement to serve as base for houses. A sort of generic marketplace pavement that has no specific features...what do you use. I have seen some nice city terrain here and wondered what was used as a "Base"
  you know what I mean.  Any ideas?

Thanks
D.

[Braxandur]

In my case I just used a MDF plate and painted it with a mixture of black wall paint (latex) mixed with very fine sand.  After that I used a can of white sptay paint and made some quick passes over the table. This gave the table a dark look like asphalt. Here you can see what I mean:



Recently I finally started building loads of smaller pieces to tunr it into a real table, like pavement from foam, which I can put fown around all my buildings. The newest projects are street lights, some low walls and a small park.

My houses are all on 5 mm thick bases, so are the same level as the pavement that surrounds them. So I can rebuild the city however I want.

[Glitzer]

Another possibillity is vacuformed ground. The German model railroad company Noch made one some time ago, but unfortunatly don't do so anymore. You can still get ist at some architects model accessoire sellers. You could also use 0-Scale Pavements made from that foam Noch produces.

You can even glue the stones (cut from cardboard) one by one, but that's usually to much work for me.

For my personal urban project I'll use cardboard to build concrete tiles 3.3cmx5cm for pavements with a 0.7cmx0.3cm rim making the pavement 4cm wide. I'm not sure yet what to use for markets and places, but I think I'll use 1.5cmx3cm stones without gaps (I'll have to cut the tiles from different cardboards to get that patched look, but I don't like gaps, they look so wrong to me)

[Hammers]

I have seen dark grey weave texture wallpaper and carpet used quite convincingly for cobblestones. You get a lot of surface out of a piece of wallpaper and all you need to do is to drybrush it with light trey or tan to make the "cobbles stand out". If you sprinkle and glue patches of fine sand here and there onto it paint it dark and dry brush it you can make the surface look more natural.



Myself I am a bit picky about the look so I use my stock of textured sheet polystyrene (not Evergreen, which is invariably to regular), which comes with natural looking irregualrities like cracks. missing cobbles here and there, depressions. The one in the image below is from an company who sold items like this at Historicon, I cannot remeber the name.

Dressed Cobblestones

Looking at them now I think it wouldn't have hurt to make that surface one tone lighter.

Asphalt can be imitated with sheets of black or grey abrasive papers. Here in Sweden those typically come in sizes of 200 by 300 mm. They need to beworked on a bit with carefull drybrushing or dry, grey pastel crayon and some litter or they will look like the asphalt have just been poured. Lane lines and zebra crossings can be painted stright on it with acrylics.

Asphalt

I think I used P600 density on this one, could have gone coarser.

[DS615]

We bought,adjusted, and printed paper streets from the Streets of Mayhem line. (Worldworks Games)
We then glue them to 1/4" hardboard in 8"x8" squares.
We use the same squares for building bases.
You can see them here: http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y198/DS615/Built%20Stuff/GD_05_19_07.jpg

At first we used 1/8" board and cut strips for the sidewalks, then glued the paper on top.  It gave a nice raised sidewalk.  However, it's time consuming, and quite frankly you can't tell the diffrence between the ones that look raised, and the ones that really are raised at any sort of distance.

[Captain Blood]

Antenociti (a member of this forum), the well-known keeper of an Aladdin's cave of terrain-builder's materials and products, carries a wide range of 3mm styrofoam sheets heat-embossed with all sorts of different road and paving surfaces.
Easy as that, and not at all expensive.

He also turns around his online orders very quickly. Highly recommended.
(Although if you're not in the UK, I don't know what the shipping cost and timescale is like)

Anyway, here's a link to the relevant section of his online store...
 
http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/scratch%20builders%20paradise/sheet%20materials.html

[adlerhobby]

I have seen dark grey weave texture wallpaper and carpet used quite convincingly for cobblestones. You get a lot of surface out of a piece of wallpaper and all you need to do is to drybrush it with light trey or tan to make the "cobbles stand out". If you sprinkle and glue patches of fine sand here and there onto it paint it dark and dry brush it you can make the surface look more natural.



Myself I am a bit picky about the look so I use my stock of textured sheet polystyrene (not Evergreen, which is invariably to regular), which comes with natural looking irregualrities like cracks. missing cobbles here and there, depressions. The one in the image below is from an company who sold items like this at Historicon, I cannot remeber the name.

Dressed Cobblestones

Looking at them now I think it wouldn't have hurt to make that surface one tone lighter.

Asphalt can be imitated with sheets of black or grey abrasive papers. Here in Sweden those typically come in sizes of 200 by 300 mm. They need to beworked on a bit with carefull drybrushing or dry, grey pastel crayon and some litter or they will look like the asphalt have just been poured. Lane lines and zebra crossings can be painted stright on it with acrylics.

Asphalt

I think I used P600 density on this one, could have gone coarser.

Would anyone be able to tell me what those show girl models are and were to find them? (asphalt link)

[YIU]

And what about a Zuzzy mat like their last one :

http://www.zuzzy.com/wc-bb-001-terra-flex-gaming-mat.html

[Citizen Sade]

Would anyone be able to tell me what those show girl models are and were to find them? (asphalt link)

Converted Copplestone Castings bodyguards in bikinis.

[Hammers]

Converted Copplestone Castings bodyguards in bikinis.

Right.

[Red Orc]

Terragenesis - link here - is a very fine site for terrain makers. There are numerous city terrain projects on there in the galleries, as well as a forum for terrain makers to ask questions, swap techniques and discuss their projects. I'd be surprised if there wasn't something on there that you would find useful.

[SBRPearce]

Get some dark gray or black cloth large enough to cover your table, then distress and break up the surface with varying tones of spray paint and sponge-stippled grays and greenish-black. This way, your tabletop is the lowest level and everything can be built up from there. Mount your sidewalks and buildings on 3-6mm MDF or foam, apply traffic markings with chalk on an "as-needed" basis, etc.

Also, it's inexpensive.

The only drawback is that you're limited in options for terrain that drops below street level, like manholes and craters...

[El Comandante]

I have for my little town just use wallpaper.
the structure is a kind of wallpaper.
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=19127.0

[traveller]

I have shared your struggle regarding this. My final conclusion, if you want a fairly big gaming space (in my case 150 x 80 cm) suitable from 1800 to present day, is to use textured wallpaper as described earlier in this post. Buldings can then be mounted on MDF sheets to provide pavements.

[DD-Chris]

http://www.ehobbytools.com/contents/en-us/d53.html

About halfway down the page is a large 'pebble mat'
i used this for cobblestone on my table. it paints up nicely.
and at 36 inches x18 inches you only need 2 sheets to cover a table.
i have not ordered from this site before, my local hobby shop carries them on occasion.