Making Cities of Death Terrain for The Battle for Stones River Tournament

The 22 cities of death buildings I built earlier before prime and paint.

About two weeks ago on my other blog, I showed you the buildings I was working on for our local tournament, The Battle for Stones River. I built 22 buildings out of Games Workshop's Cities of Death terrain kits. After sorting through the remaining parts, I realized that I had just enough parts to make 12 smaller buildings. This was perfect as we have 6 snow themed tables that needed a little more terrain. As I sat down to make 2 buildings each for our snow tables, I thought I would share with everyone how I got these buildings knocked out fairly quickly. More after the break!
Before starting I clipped all of the bits off of the sprues and sorted them into different boxes. Once this was done I then laid out my wall sections and sorted those pieces into separate piles. Now I can start!

Wall and floor sections laid out.

Now that I have everything sorted, I started laying out the pieces to make sure that each building had at least one of every type of wall section. This makes sure that each piece of terrain is fair between all of them on every table. Once I got everything sorted, I put all of the parts for each building into individual zip-lock bags. This makes it easier to keep up with and gets everything off of the living room floor! Before I start to assemble all my bags of buildings, there is one last step that makes things go a lot faster. I used a power sander to remove all of the flash and little pieces of debris from the wall sections. With all of the pieces cleaned and sorted, I sat down with my glue and bag of parts. I start by laying out my pieces like the picture above. This allows me get a feel for what the building will look like and I can make sure that two buildings won't look the same.

All the pieces for the main part of each building: 8 wall sections & 5 floor sections. This will give us a building that is 4 sections wide, 2 sections deep, and 2 sections on the top.

I found it easiest to start with the two pieces that would form the corner of my building. This will give you a solid place to start gluing the floor down. These two pieces form the basis for the rest of the assembly.

Put a bead of glue down the left edge and across the top edge where the floor panel will go.

Align the two pieces and glue together. Hold them long enough to get the pieces slightly bonded.

While the glue is still workable, add the floor piece to the two corner pieces. This will let you line the pieces up and make sure that everything is square.

With the corner and floor in place, add the rest of the wall sections. Put the glue in the same two spots as the first pieces.

Add a ruined sectioned to the other side of your corner piece.

Now, add a single section of the ruined floor. Place the glue along the tab on the wall section & the side of the solid floor section.

With the main floor complete it's time to add the second floor. The key here is to line up the two floors using the left edge of both pieces. The two beams should look like one solid one going up the height of the building.

The view from the back side of the second floor. Notice how the tabs on the bottom of the wall sections cover a small portion of the floor. This locks the two levels to the floor, making a stronger joint.

The wall sections completed.

4 of the 12 buildings with the wall sections completed. You can tell that I reversed the way the pieces are laid out so that I would have 6 of each building layout. Now onto the 2nd floor!

The standard floor piece off of the sprue.

Since our 2nd floor wall sections are only two pieces wide, we have to cut the floor pieces in half.

We'll need supports for the floor as well. I used two of these beams for each building's second floor.

Here are the supports glued into place. They do not go in between the floor, but on the outside. You can also use the ladders, but I prefer these.

A different angle of the second floor and supports. Now we're ready for the roof edges.

Same as before, I laid out all of the pieces. I used 1 solid and 1 broken piece for each building.  Depending on your layout, you may have to use the separate pieces like the ones on the right, or you might be able to use the joined pieces like the ones on the left.

And the completed roof edges glued down.

The completed building. 1 down, 11 more to go!

All 12 of the buildings for the snow tables built.

Here's 4 of the buildings laid out to form 1 big building.

All 12 buildings together to form 1 MEGA building!

The buildings glued down to hard board. I cut 12 inch square pieces of hard board, then I cut them diagonally down the middle. Each building was glued down so the when the two boards were place side by side that would each form a large ruined building.

Well, I hope this tutorial will help you with your own adventures in terrain making. The biggest piece of advice I can offer you is to make sure that you remove as many of the mold lines and sprue tabs as possible. It will make the pieces line up better, and make the entire assembly go together smoothly.