Building Vogen City – 01

Posted on by Illumini

After foraging for terrain parts for a good while, I finally found motivation to actually start some proper building of Vogen city. I stumbled across a youtube video from Zorpazorp, which solved one of the biggest issues with a gaming board – how to combine the great looks of a static gaming board with modularity and flexibility. I don’t want a mat and buildings without bases, I want buildings to actually look like they are a part of the board, but I also do not want to play the same setup every time. Zorpazorp’s idea of sawing an imperial sector board into 8×8″ squares is brilliant.

As such, I jumped on the idea and did the same, sawing up my imperial sector. Not a fantastic way to spend a bunch of hours, but rewarding when it was finished and I could try out some different layouts. The big aquila and saint pieces don’t fit in any variation of 8″, so those are not cut yet. I am planning to use them to build some big risers.

One T-section has been made into a cross-section, with another road-piece as a dead-end to give some more options on how to layout the board. For the industrial part of the city, Necromunda tiles work perfectly as the ground level.

The buildings are made up of mainly Rampart terrain, GW imperial sector and Necromunda terrain, with some mantic terrain and various bits. I am currently just getting the main part of the buildings up, saving detailing work for the next step.

Current WIP from bottom left to top right:

  • Factory
  • Manufactorum administration
  • Loading platform (missing crane)
  • Cathedral
  • Administratum / hab
  • Sanctum
  • Imperial Senate house
The inside of a manufactorum, built from a mix of GW, Archon and Mantic kits. The Archon terrain is close to a perfect fit height / width wise with GW terrain. Verticality is an important goal of the board. I plan to gave a bunch of walkways to allow infantry to traverse the board above street level.
A renegade sniper quickly makes his way across a broken walkway after making a kill, ready to take up a new position
The currently highest building at 20″ tall, an upper city hab-block or administratum building
The Archon buildings come with very poor floors, especially the cathedral kits. They are not really meant for building actual floors. I’ve used the floors that come with the kit as a balcony on the outside of the building, and added a plastic card and cork floor between the stories. I am trying to make the buildings open enough to be able to reach minis inside, but the floors are also magnetized for ease of storage and play.
I believe that risers will help to make the board more interesting also at ground level. In real cities, buildings often sit at different levels, with especially prominent buildings rising above the surrounding lands.

My first riser is a small one, just 2″ tall. the siding is made from Legos. Even at just 2″, it can break LOS for infantry, or give cover to vehicles. This one will probably be made into a loading platform with a crane, so it can be a part of a factory complex or a train station.
A tank destroyer cautiously moves toward the intersection separating the manufactory sector from the administratum.
Painting test. Imperial cities are often thousands of years old, built on top of older cities. As such, even cities that are not in ruins are rusting, decaying and grimdark places. I’ve gone for a dirty grey-white base color, which is weathered with yellow, brown, blue and green washes. The metal is rusty, although not to fallout levels.
Another paint test, a pipeline. Cleaner white on this one, but lots of chipping, rust, and some light colored washes to give some more interest to the piece.

My four year old has also taken an interest in Vogen. It is likely that the first action the city will see will include Lego vehicles roaming through the streets 😀

Really looking forwards to getting this stuff ready and painted. It will be a long while, but I am sure it’s going to be worth it. A nice side effect might be some proper grimdark backgrounds for miniature photoshoots.

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