City planning
March 23, 2014Work continues on my Pacific Rim board. I recently made the base for the game board by first taping the edges of a 60 x 120 cm Finnfoam sheet with blue masking tape, and then gluing wallpaper (see this post) to it. The operation went fairly smoothly – literally – as there were only a few small bubbles left in one part of the sheet. I actually used a rolling pin to smooth it! The key was in the mixture of PVA glue and water, as it needed to be runny enough to make sure no place was left unglued. There are two seams, and they turned out very neat and tidy as well.
Here’s a look at the board itself:
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And with added buildings:
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At this point it looks nice, but still a bit too sterile and clean, so I figured I’d throw in a bit of (WIP) scenics, a few creatures, a tiny tank and some fire and smoke:
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The buildings are a mix of paper ones from Sarna that I’ve customized, and Monsterpocalypse buildings. They fit together quite nicely, but I still need loads more. I thought of making separate streets, but figured it might be too much of a hassle and create a potentially unnecessary slew of more loose elements. Then again, streets would probably make it look more like a cityscape and less like a grey field. Of course, this is still very much a work in progress thing, but the question of streets keeps bugging me. Do I need them, or will simply adding more variety to the cityscape work? What do you think?
Dawn of the Lead 
I think there’s two things to consider. Firstly, getting the city layout to feel like a city and be good to play in – I think that’s going to involve mixing dense areas and open areas. The other bit is making the scenery a bit more interactive. Assuming the rules work like Flying Lead does – there’ll be times when I’ll want to charge through the building rather than walk around it. There’s also time I will want to just because it’s awesome. That means you’ll need destroyed building scenery.
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Thanks for the comment, some excellent points there!
The mix of dense and open is a good call. I’ve already got a harbour planned, for example, and the harbour area will probably be much more open. Also some park and unbuilt areas would probably be a good idea.
I’ve already built my first piece of destroyed building scenery, as I know my players will definitely want to do stuff like that. I’ve also bought ships and tanks to use as weapons, as they’ll want to do that too. We’re aiming at a cinematic slugfest with half the city hopefully levelled and burning at the end of the battle 😀
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Looks super fun! Great job!
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Thanks Achilles! Love the stuff on your blog, subscribed already!
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