Outbreak City - How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 2

Missed part 1 of this article?

Part 2 of the construction of my All Things Zombie Outbreak City gaming table.

Once I had three identical 2' by 4' battened boards. I lay them side by side and marked the roads and sidewalks.

Measure twice. Draw once. Check, correct and re-draw.

To accommodate tollerances (and my shoddy woodworking) I swapped the boards around as I went, to check that they lined up on every side.

A note on road sizes. I opted for a four inch (10.2 cm) road width, the same approximate size as World Works Games roads, as it strikes a good balance between aesthetics and playability when trying to retain a city-block feel to the table.

Once I was comfortable the measurements I cut to size the second layer sections in 3mm MDF. Being above the level of the roads, this level would represent the sidewalks and hard-standing of the city.

Note: No round corners yets.

I laid out all the sections to check everything was going to fit ok and once I was sure it was within acceptable limits, I cut curves of the top layer into the corners with a jigsaw.

This was also the stage I added a few dropped curbs and cut small notches in the underside of the top layer to represent storm drains. In retrospect, to go the extra mile, I would have cut the storm drains a little deeper and routed small holes in corresponding locations in the sides roads to match.

Finally I fixed the curbs to the base-boards with PVA and, after leaving it to dry for a few days, marked two inch sidewalks onto these sections.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

For A Nickel, For a Dime

In the dark, twisted fairytale of Outbreak City the streets are full of stuff, you know, bits, things, junk…stuff: telephone boxes, vending machines, fire hydrants, park benches, road signs, lamp posts, crash barriers, trash cans, dumpsters and the boxes, bags of trash, pallets and grimy, slimy detritus that fills the rat-infested alleyways and gets sent sprawling across the street in car chases.

Outbreak Alleyway

Having started to build Outbreak City for my All Things Zombie games in the card modelling style I was keen to keep that theme going. What seemed initially daunting wasn’t so much of a problem once I started researching on the intertubes. Here is just a small selection of the many items available; more stuff than could realistically be put onto one table, unless it was a really big one.

The Microtactix range has a number of dumpsters, drinks and newspaper vending machines, air conditioning units and similar items, these come as extras with some of their buildings.

Zombie Apocalypse = Free Vend.

Worldworks Games seem to produce the largest volume of items in their Bits of Mayhem set and whilst I don’t have this yet, it is firmly on the ‘NEED’ list.

Following Bryan and Doug's advice I giddily await the Ebbles back catalogue DVD, more on that once it arrives, but I did find these ‘Harmless Containers’ for free download via their forum, here. I suffered considerable ribbing, from a friend who works with shipping companies, in relation to this photo. Note to self: stack them neatly on top of each other in future.

'Harmless' they said!

TommyGun does what with Paper? Over at WarSeer or the Ebbles Forums TommyGun has made available some fantastic items, from packing boxes to arcade machines and office workstations.

Loot, swag and first aid supplies.

No change? Try hollowpoint.

He also has a full gallery of downloadable printable items available here.

The ‘branded’ goods items are superb and it is all free. He even provides a scale guide to help you can adjust your printer. It is not just ‘bits’ he has created either. He has created an entire shanty town, perfect for a little backwoods sawmill type action, and an amazing range of modern buildings including his take on Andy’s Gun Works from the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Awesome! Thank you TommyGun, thank you very much.

Andy's Gun Works - WIP.

Zombtropolis

Pulling together less than half a dozen buildings wasn’t exactly going to provide a highly flexible gaming environment representing Outbreak City for my All Things Zombie games. I knew that to create something more than just the small town feel that I was going to have to get my hobby face on.

I continued with what I had, among others I added another WWG flat from Downtown Mayhem, this time adding a removable roof so that I could add an interior in the future and I also progressed on to more buildings from the Mircotactix range and even doubled up on one, changing the signs to represent a hairdressers (inspired by Dead Rising Case Zero).

Downtown Mayhem - with removable roof

Microtactix - Re-signed Deli

With inspiration from Vampifan’s interiors I decided to try my hand at removing the windows and replacing with the coloured plastic filing sleeves. Quite a challenge, especially with foam core. As per Vampifan’s comment on a previous post, this took considerably longer than just skinning a foam core box. I made a few simple changes to the build process, such as printing the edges of the foracore in dark grey, so that I could either leave it bare or it would mask mistakes more easily if I was skinning the tops of walls.

Mayhem Biege Brick - This will have the first interior

A little more on MircoTactix stuff - The Twilight Street Basic Urban Environment set is available for $20 and the Urban Buildings Expansion for $15, if card buildings are your chosen route and you are looking for some interesting variety and have access to an A3 printer, they are well worth taking a look. Following on from my previous post, if you don’t have access to an A3 printer, they also produce a Twilight Street Heroic Scale range. Further note to my last post, their free download of Horseman’s Deli is in Heroic Scale and therefore prints onto A4 with no need for scaling.

Their Strip Club and Pawn Shops were fun and the second was a larger building than some of the previous ones. However, I noticed that as the buildings got taller it was going to be more problematic to fit and play in interiors on the ground (1^st in USA) floor.

Microtactix Voodoo Jake's - Opens at 11:00am

Microtactics Pawn Shop

In response to this problem I moved into a MicroTactix apartment and sliced the top floor off, building it as a separate unit so it would be easy to build and use the interior.

Microtactix Apartment

Microtactix - Apartment dismantled

My favourite Microtactix build so far is the Twilight Street Expansion Set Theatre, the largest footprint of my buildings so far, it was a fun build and the addition of the all zombie movie posters was an obvious cliché too good to miss. I am looking forward to the interior of this one.

Microtactix Theatre

Slowly and surely the set was coming together and there was now enough for me to play my first game of All Things Zombie in a few years, a quick brush up on the rules to get me back into the feel of things. There was however something missing. The streets seemed remarkably clean and uncluttered and I felt it was time for some street furniture and other urban terrain to give the place a more lived-in (or died-in) feel.

Things didn't look good for Shaun, cheesefeast aside.

Marconi Plays The Mamba

Mullets and moustaches are no place to hide from the raging hordes of the undead and my internet research revealed that most zombie gaming terrain was, unsurprisingly, not built on Rock and Roll but was based on printable card terrain, plastic railway buildings or scratch-built masterpieces. After finding the incredible ZombieTown initially thought I was going to go down that route but the discovery of Vampifan’s Blog revealed the wonders of printable terrain and I figured I would be able to put a play set together a lot quicker that way.

It probably goes without saying that Worldworks Games produce some of the finest printable terrain suitable for modern settings. I decided to tackle a basic ‘flat’ first, something that would look good on a table but wasn’t going to require too much time to create. I settled on the Mayhem Downtown set and with a ludicrously plentiful supply of foamcore at my disposal I decided to make shells and simply print to paper and ‘skin’ the buildings. To keep cost down I settled on Tesco’s Glue Sticks for the large areas and Power Pritt for the edges and details. I printed and cut out the ‘skins’ first and measured and cut foamcore from those. The shells were glued with PVA and I used a little sellotape to keep them in place whilst drying.

Mayhem Downtown - Beige Brick

The first building worked out ok and only took a couple of hours to build and does the trick although I thought I could do better. For my second building I chose to add a parapet wall and simply cut up some test prints to skin the inside of the parapet wall. Note: I did 'miss' skinning the corners, as in the pics below, but I do plan to go back and fill them in.

Parapet Wall

It is worth noting that most of the Twilight Street range is designed for 20mm scale (although they do produce a ‘Heroic’ scale range), great if that’s your chosen scale but a simple trick for me, wanting 28mm compatibility, was to print to A3 and select ‘fit to page’. A3 is 1.5 times bigger than A4, therefore 20mm x 1.5 = 30mm; it worked out fine and what’s a couple of mm between friends? They are a little on the small size, so I ‘sealed’ the roof of Drakes (a bit too tiny for a full interior), but they add some superb character to the terrain set.  I couldn’t wait to move onto other buildings in both of these retailer’s ranges.

Microtactix Free Download - Drake's

Matt over at ‘Too Much Unpainted Lead’ pointed me in the direction of the Microtactix Twilight Street ranges available through RPG Now. Their superbly evocative models have a more cartoony style that Worldworks but I felt they suited the theme perfectly and would bring some welcome variety to the table. Three Buildings, Drake’s TV and Video, Horseman’s Deli and Stinky’s Pizza, are also all available for free download, result!

Microtactix Free Download - Stinky's Pizza, Yum

Beep Beep; Vrooom!

From the early scenes of Zombieland to the overhead wide shot  at the end of Resident Evil movie it is clear that the post-apocalyptic city streets will be strewn with abandoned vehicles. I considered the card route, a la Worldworks, a fine selection of very superb model vehicles, but I thought I would spend enough time making buildings and I knew there were appropriate die-cast models available and ready to play out of the box. I chose 1/32 as is it the most widely available scale, but as long as it looks and feels right, I am happy. A quick Google search for the right scale ‘genre’ vehicles, i.e. US patrol cars and 70’s era Detroit classics, revealed that ‘perfect’ items were going to come at a price. A quick re-think later and I popped a 28mm model in my pocket and promised myself I would check the toy shops whenever I was in town. I will probably add a few special items once the collection has grown, I mean who wouldn’t want to run a scenario to go fetch an old ’69 Mach 1 under the tarp out of that ramshackle garage as a getaway car?


Sainsburys  provided the most expensive purchase to date, a terrifying £3.99 for a single BMW saloon. It does have opening doors, which has lead to the following pose in almost every game it has appeared in.
 

Classic 'Pull up and get out your guns' pose

Toys R US lead to the awesome discovery that was the Fast-Lane Super Emergency Playset for just £14.99, it is now £9.99, so if it is of interest grab it fast. The only things not usable being the helicopter (too small) and the figures (rubbish), that said, my daughter thought the fireman looked like Captain Mack, so she was happy to take them both off my hands. Probably the coolest item is the fire tuck, with  a huge extending ladder, perfect for re-creating the Maller’s siege from We’re Alive. If you don’t already listen to this incredible podcast please check them out now, well worth a listen.

Tesco provided a superb 3 pack of City Vehicles with detachable cargo for just £5 and Poundland provided three more genuine ‘Me no copy car’ marques which ended up being a little on the large size, but they work fine for ‘background’ vehicles.



The Poundland car (left) is too big but works ok on the periphery

Colin of ‘Down Among the Zed Men’ pointed out my most recent acquisition, which I got the day after I read his post, a ‘Load and Go’ Lorry and forklift set for just £4, smashing. Check out Colin’s reviews here for more details.

I unquestionably do not have enough vehicles yet, especially not enough to re-create a true highway to hell scene. I definitely need plenty more ordinary saloons and and will simply add to the collection piece by piece as and when I find something that fits.



I think I need more regular civilian vehicles