City Tile Update and the Next Step

Last weekend, my girlfriend and I applied tinted Minwax Acrylic stain to the pained CNC Miniature Scenery's Urban Grounds tiles. The results are exactly what I wanted - something darker than the manufacturer's suggested paint scheme, but still having more color levels than Games Workshop's own city tables.

There are still some finishing touches needed, such as metal paint on the sewer grates and manholes, along with gluing some rubble and bones into the blast craters. But they are now ready to be used for a game.

The next project is to assemble enough buildings for a Gamma-level fight. I don't need Omega-level buildings until the rest of the CNC tiles are painted and stained. This seems to be the best approach - I spent two days assembling the City Grounds and Urban Grounds kits, and was immediately overwhelmed with how many there were. Doing them in small chunks makes the project very manageable. So I'm going to try the same approach with my Imperial City boxed set - build just a few buildings at a time rather than using every sprue and bit in the box.

I also want to pick up one more item - a Shrine of the Aquila. Initially I was very unimpressed with this building - it was tall, thin, and lacked detail compared to the existing Cities of Death sets. And like most internet gamers, I immediately complained in the forums. I still think standalone, the kit is fairly unimpressive.

But I saw something this week on GW's site that has completely changed my opinion. It is the cover image for the Focus on 40K Terrain article:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=cat1310001&aId=15700001

It uses the Shrine along with Basilica and Sanctum components to make a building that I can only describe as "solid awesome." I intend to build something almost identical to this and use it as the centerpiece in my City of Death.