"What Ultra-Modern Terrain is (most) missing? " Topic

Do a search for terrain in any scale, and you have no problem finding WWII period buildings, trenches, bridges, etc… all the way back through the Bible!

Finding anything more recent thatn the Vietnam War is an entirely different story! Most wargamers who game "ultra-moder" over the past few years have had to home-brew city buildings or pillage from railroad sets.

Heck, there is even more Sci-Fi terrain these days than "Modern" terrain!

If you could pick a top 5 things needed for a post 1991 to present day enviornment (scale neutral), what would they be?

Mine are:
1) Modern Western Houses in any upscale city (LA, London, etc…)
2) Shopping Mall,
3) Small City Govt Building (Mayors office, Post office, Police station, etc..)
4) Nuclear Plant,
5) Modern hi-rise apartment housing blocks.

Assuming Affordability, as there are some made, they are just too pricy..

but for me.

1). Vietnam town houses, french style, for Hue, etc.
2). Vietnam hooches.
3). European/USA Modern generic "city" style buildings, 1980's to present day types.
4). Modern Road bridges.
5). Modern Aircraft Hangers/Air Control Tower.

The problem with most modern buildings is that they are notably 'bigger', which makes them more problematic to make, more fragile and more costly.

But we are looking into it ;-)

Geoff
totalsystemscenic.com

Ultra moden is available as long as you fight in 10mm and large 15's (18mm). Just go hunt out the Model railway HO and N gauge stuff.

Hi Goose, the poll choices were all supposed to be after 1991, but yours are duly noted Mate ;-)

Model Railroad building kits pretty well cover everything except for 6mm.

Gas stations and fast food joints, especially in 15mm and 28mm.

Interior furniture…..

Plenty of these things in card models already. Plus Plasticville, plus railroad stuff. You just ain't lookin'…

Buildings for Afghan! Apart from Snapdragons Adobe buildings which sort of work there is nothing else unless you scratchbuild. I also agree that modern apartment blocks and city buildings are the next thing I'd like to see done – especially for Middle East scenarios (Beirut 82 for example). Fieldworks did do some 28mm buildings but they were a swine to make (apparently) and nobody bought em!

when you get to 28mm city buildings they tend to end up realy large and therefore much more expensive or far too small to realy look right.
we make a whole load of 15mm city frontages, but gamers do not like to build even a simple 5 part kit of them and we have started a range of similar ones in 20mm, but once you add postage the cost can soon add up.
gamers do not want to pay the 'right' price for large buildings, which is why there is so little about.

i'm thinking 6mm…
bridges and large office/apartment towers (card)… monorail station and track… modular terraced plaza with stairs, planters, kiosks, sculpture/fountain.
Civilian cars… need more 6mm civilian vehicles to clutter up the roads.

Porta potties/Portaloos, ubiquitous these days.

N Scale porta-potties:
link

HO scale porta-potties:
link
link
link

G Scale (1/24):
link

Venusbouys3 – There are lots of Battletech and DP9 card skyscrapers and apartment buildings out there for download. Old Crow make a good monorail and good city buildings.

6mm civilian cars:
TMP link

Multi-story car parks that come apart so you can have car chases on them.

Oh, I like the Old Crow stuff… I didn't notice they had a monorail… thanks!

There is actually a lot not available in model railroading for HO/15mm. Most of the stuff made in HO is geared towards 50's Americana (with the exception of some European manufacturers), and since I rarely do paper buildings, vastly prefer resin. A few needed buildings for 15mm IMHO:

Soviet style concrete tenemant buildings, these are ubiquitous throughout the former Soviet bloc and even useful for parts of the Middle East. Perfect for the Balkans, Chechnya, Cold War Eastern Europe, Georgia, you name it.

Example:
link

Small office buildings, these can be modular and stackable with a base story and add-on floors. Just your modern squarish building with large glass windows found worldwide. These can even be useful SF.

Example:

These are just off the top of my head.

Edit: Just to add, one other useful thing about these types of buildings, they are not so unique that you can't easily have multiples on the same table.

@Cold Warrior – the closest I know to the glass buildings are the JR Miniatures 6mm range link and the Old Crow one:

Andrew

Andrew,

Won't help me for 15mm……

Most of the ultra modern buildings kits are Japanese N scale (1/150)

Kato: link
Tomy: link

Atlas had a series of High-Rise kits that were discontinued back in the early oughties, but still pop up for sale occaisionally.

For basic glass box buildings, I've made up a bunch of them fairly quickly for kaiju gaming. Got some clear plastic boxes in various colours at an arts & crafts store. Then spray painted strips of styrene and then glued them onto the box for the structural framing. Sheet styrene with clear gel layered on top, and framed with strip styrene also works quite well. These are all cheap and quick options!

Gee, thanks for the market research, all.

Seriously, modern suburban buildings--banks, strip malls, and track homes to name a few.

I don't think people appreciate how big a neighborhood block would be in 28mm (my modest track home would be six by six inches with a four to six inch separation between houses with the same footprint), though, nor how wide our suburban streets are. Challenger Way, my cross street,is four lanes with a turn lane, plus sidewalks, plus whatever space lies in front of the buildings. When I design I try to reach a compromise between "real" size and "table size," the latter being quite a bit smaller.

Oh, and also Green Max for Japanese N Scale:
link

I cant agree more with Coldwarrior. I have looked at the model railroad stuff and the houses all strike me as 1950s to 1970s. I dont and wont do card buildings. Call me a snob.

Id be willing to pay for big 28mm modrrn buildings if done well. No prob on size, I have a 4x8 table.

What-evv, snobbishness only hurts the snob.

WorldWorksGames makes a bank and a mall and a police station and a victorian manor and downtown buildings and a gas station. Fat Dragon does modern buildings including fast food. I can mix in some of TVAG's 'Mean Streets' and Microtactix's 'Twilight Street' buildings for variety.

I shall enjoy gaming with all of these 28mm modern cardstock creations whilst you gnash your teeth in the outer darkness.

Oil wells and associated facilities. Some of those could double up for SCI FI.

Oil derricks in N, HO & O scales: laserkit.com/laserkit.htm

Derricks and oil refinery kits get pretty expensive and time consuming to build. The most economical approach for gaming would be to make up an approximation using Plastruct parts but without going for all the detail work that would go into a full model.

Low cost street junk in 28mm, mail boxes, trash cans, power poles, street signs, parking meters,dumpsters, vending machines,etc etc…

Low cost park and street details:

N Scale: link
link

HO: link
link

O: link

Medium but very fairly priced for resin-casting:
Model Tech Studios has lots of detail bits in N, HO, S, and O scales
link

1. Strip malls
2. Office/warehouse properties
3. Airports
4. Parking structures
5. Petroleum Refineries

Air bases is another good vote.

I'm looking for "Mars" type terrain … like I posted here – link It might be considered Ultra-Modern … on Mars …

VERY cool art work Legion!

Airport control tower and Soviet style buildings, the latter ideal for WWII to moderns. Oh and all in 28mm!

I didn't paint'm … I just saw them on line … and that's what I'd like too see in 6mm. Two companies recently released some 6mm Gothic terrain. And a lot of guys seem excited about it … But …IMO … there is enough Earth/Human type terrain. WE really need more "alien" stuff like these Mars paintings.

Low cost street junk in 28mm, mail boxes, trash cans, power poles, street signs, parking meters,dumpsters, vending machines,etc etc…

Definitely, but let's also add the rooftop details like HVAC systems and skylights. I'm willing to scratchbuild structures, but I'd rather pay for the detail bits.

An airport? Seriously? How big a table do you have? Even a fairly small airport like BOI (that's Boise/Gowen Field, for the non-aircraft types) has a pair of 10,000ft runways. Yep, 2 miles of paved flat, and from fence to fence is about 3 miles by 1 mile. At a 1" = 100m groundscale, that's 48" by 16" or so. There goes most of your table in what amounts to a great big killzone.

I'm thinking of an 28mm airport building, as used in the film "Wild Geese". So a small control tower for a dirt airstrip, ideal for modern scenarios. The runway needn't be modelled, just enough room for a taxi-way, for the aged Dakota waiting for your team to extract themselves!