City Tiles Are Better Than Battlemats - And I'll Show You Why!

so in this video i really wanted to show the benefits of using awesome detailed city tiles over flat printed battle mats this video took me a long time to make with lots of experimentation so i massively appreciate you guys watching and sharing and i really cannot wait to see the cities you create welcome to the archive my name is matt you can use these deeply detailed tiles to do a ton of things you can make narrow medieval streets or dark alleyways which make for some interesting choke point combat wider streets with plenty of pavement space for crates stalls and other things players can throw around to change the environment mid-fight or even wider main streets with enough space for epic fights with larger villains and even more beyond that that i show later in the video keep watching to see all of the tile types i started these tiles as usual using half inch thick xps foam to cut three inch squares measuring in magnets using the free 3d printed jig that you can download on my patreon though you can measure these in using a ruler i added magnets to these as usual with north on the right and south on the left but you can also use chipboard tabs check out my recent getting started video for a more detailed beginner look at this with those basics done i cut an eighth of an inch strip off the top using my proxon and then cut that in two one and a quarter inch from one side gluing that smaller half back on i found this a lot easier than cutting this chunk out carefully especially when it came to the corners which i instead needed to cut according to a curved template to get the right shape for pure road and pavement tiles i cut a full strip off or just left the tile uncut respectively the leftover foam i actually kept because it was going to be useful later for half of these road tiles i also cut the main foam piece of the tile one and a quarter inch from the edge and added more magnets in the same places to these newly exposed sides this later let me add in features like grass and trees using my existing tiles to the edge of the pavement as well as other more exotic features for dwarven settlements for example nothing like a bit of lava street lighting and i guess heating you could even use this to add entire grassy parks in the middle of a bustling city or use the pavement corner tiles to show the features of the land the city is made on by using mountain blocks volcanic tiles or even desert and arctic tiles in the future oh and just so you guys know since the last video i took a one week holiday made and released a full bonus video on patreon and then spent five weeks working every single day on this video just in case you're wondering why it took a while anyway once i had that basic shape i cut out some chipboard shapes to match up one one and a quarter inch wide for the pavement and one one inch wide for the road now you might notice those numbers don't quite add up and you'd be right part of those gaps are going to be filled later with some tasty filthy details but for now those road sections are looking a little bit flat i plan on using a cobblestone effect for these roads and i don't know if you've ever actually seen an older cobblestone road but they don't seem to stay flat forever so to give my roads this realistic slightly undulating feel and to give me room to add puddles later i cut a hole in each section of road in a random spot to be my puddle keeping the surface of the card flush by cutting off any mess incidentally to those who say the hobby is dangerous you might notice during the video a couple of small cuts on my hand those are both from the kitchen i stub my toe on camera lighting more often than i get the slightest nick from working with a knife and terrain all of this basically being further to my evidence that i'm a clumsy man and if i can do this so can you i also at this point added six millimeter magnet holes in the pavement chipboard for accessory attachments which will come later scrap packing foam is actually great here to drill into the card safely i measured these halfway across the pavement in the center these holes i covered with paper as well using a glue stick to make sure that the clay would lie flat on them and leave that space in the hole for the magnets i also added these to the road corners cliff corners and one inch from the edge of one side of all of the full pavement tiles mainly so i can have a row of lights or gibbets pretty much wherever the hell i want to make the road dips look more natural i also added some very slight bumps using milliput in one or two places you want these lumps no higher than about a millimeter or it's gonna start looking weird speaking of putty and clear it's time to work on the top layer i used two green stuff world rollers for this small cobblestone for the road and flagstone for the pavement to get a nice thin layer of clay to use the roller on i picked up a new toy [Applause] so [Music] um yeah like what a cheap ish pasta machine for clay you can absolutely just use a rolling pin but i have more of a deadline than your average crafter i set mine to approximately 1 16 of an inch by changing the setting on some test blobs until it measured about right and then rolled myself some blobs big enough to fit over my roads and pavements i used super sculpey polymer clay i highly recommend polymer clay as it's much easier to work with it doesn't stick to rollers as badly as air dry and is also more flexible and less brittle once baked i also recommend the beige sort of flesh coloured super sculpey specifically it's softer than the grey colour so it's easier to work with malleable but not crumbly like fimo fimo soft is about the same price in the uk but is far more crumbly and hand picky but it's up to you both links are in the equipment list from there i blue tack down some paper to make life easier as the clay will naturally stick to it but still be easily peelable and then dusted some baking soda on my hands and patted it onto the roller to help it release the clay better before rolling out my cobblestone pattern firmly i found the best way to roll these was to roll very lightly at the start and let it stick to the paper while still thick and then roll heavier shortly afterwards getting all of the detail with the thick bit of the star to hold it in place rubbing it gently with a finger in all directions is something that i would recommend for the cobblestones it rounds off their edges and makes them look more like the rounded river stones that they're meant to be rather than weirdly square roller prints it also gets rid of the weird line texture that comes built into a lot of these rollers for flagstone pavements i'd recommend some slightly different texturing i didn't want it to be completely flat i feel like that doesn't quite work in a non-modern setting so to achieve a stone effect i used a small stone with a slightly rounded flat edge and a nice pattern i pressed this repeatedly against the clay very gently at different angles this not only gave texture it also sharpened up the edges of each slab and added some slight variety of height for even more detail i very gently dabbed it afterwards with some tinfoil and added some cracks using a pointed sculpting tool honestly although this does get a very nice result you could probably get a similar result just as fast or possibly faster by rolling this onto foam and then cutting it in with an x-acto knife and ballpoint pen etc this is all but impossible for the cobblestone but it's perfectly feasible for the flagstone quick question ever feel like this in the run-up to a game this is where i'd put a trophy if i had one yeah me too and it is honestly genuinely the reason why i choose to support epic miniatures every month these are the guys who sculpted these awesome freaks and an insane number of other high quality minis every month unlike some primer clogged minis i can think of looking at you wizkids to the extent that as a dnd player i've always felt that i've got my money's worth every month the sheer variety in every release and the fact that they give two full back dated releases as a bonus every month means that before long you've got a huge range of your main monster needs covered this combined with the fact that they always release multiple poses for these minis is an absolute godsend for a dm oh and on top he regularly releases these bonus sets for free to existing patrons everything from rat and rabbit folk to halloween sets to these awesome villager minis thank you to epic miniatures for supporting the channel and seriously go and check it out sponsorship or not i use this and i can highly recommend it now we have a good texture and the clay isn't going to be stretched out by that sort of thing anymore that means i can lay out the chipboard on top and cut it to just over the size of the card pulling away the excess clay and then peel it up laying it back down on the chipboard and making sure that it dips into any holes that i cut for it for the undulations patting it down at the edges is kind of important here to make sure it all lines up in the end i put these in the oven to bake three times for 10 minutes at 90 degrees celsius which is 194 degrees fahrenheit letting them cool down in between while getting a cup of tea as of course is tradition now they're all baked i super glued them to the card and cut down the edges of the clay sections with an exacto knife cutting small strips close to the edge so any cracking happens on the outer edge i cut one side flush and left the others with a thin edge of clay and glued them to the main tiles with the flush edge facing the inside of the tile where the gutter and kerb will be more on that later and lining up the outer edges with the foam using the cards underneath now just before gluing for any pavement tiles with magnet holes in the card i hot glue poked a hole in the bottom of the foam roughly where the magnet hole would be this basically allows me to remove them entirely if i need the magnetism gone for some reason or even use the same magnets for multiple projects i stuffed up the bottom with some torn paper towels to keep the magnets in place i chose six millimeter by four millimeter magnets for maximum pull but you could probably get away with six by two mil or pretty much anything really they're removable play around see what works i've also started updating my road tiles to use magnetic connections too this sign post for example i retrofitted with a double layer of three millimeter magnets at the bottom and it attaches just fine i do keep trying not to use magnets but they are just so much easier once those are in place i started gluing mostly using hot glue but i did come up with a trick here to make things a bit easier so if hot glue dries too quickly for you to feel comfortable lining these up in time try tacky gluing the center and then hot gluing the sides one at a time this means you're only focused on a small area of hot glue at one time and the tacky glue will hold down the middle just fine honestly with this build you'll probably be fine with just doing that without the tacky glue in the middle but sometimes you need that hold in the middle so i thought i'd mention this technique for other builds anyway once glued i used the flat edge of the tile to carefully trim away the last bits of clay leaving it as smooth and 90 degree as possible and testing this against the other tiles if you do mess up and don't worry i did in the first round you can just fill in the gap that you made with some milliput and cut it down again with a knife no stress no fuss i also super glued the edges to make sure that they're held in place and don't catch and break but do not and i repeat do not put super glue into the oven when baked it turns into cyanide gas and you don't want any of that on a brighter note that's the clear pretty much done there are several main tile types i made here all are briefly on screen and labeled including how many i made initially the core straight and corner road tiles let you make basic streets where the modular buildings can be placed all the gaps are on black tiles and their walls nicely overlap giving a narrow medieval street that perfectly fits in miniature but you can widen these with pure road tiles for a wider road or widen the pavement with pure pavement tiles giving plenty of space for market stalls crates barrels and all kinds of cover i mean extra details you can even make a full town square using either the pavements or the roads and raised areas using stair blocks you could also use these pure pavements and road tiles as an easier alternative to the other roads that i've shown if you wanted to save some time using a similar technique you can use them with grassland tiles to make a city road stretch out into the wilderness as a large trade highway or just have it merged with the dirt road tiles that i've shown before they line up perfectly at the same height and are totally compatible making these corner tiles is easy they're literally just full pavement tiles that i made using the free template that i gave away in my grasslands and mountain blocks video which lets you use mountain blocks to make multi-layered cities built on layered plateaus like i showed earlier the only extra bit needed here is to make stone edging from these tiles from 1 8 of an inch thick foam textured with tin foil you can glue this onto the larger corner pieces like these for using them on high placements or for the flat pieces you can add magnetic materials cut to fit the side magnets of flat tiles i use nickel strips they're my new favorite they're linked in the equipment list and they cut a hell of a lot easier than steel tin can lids using hot glue oh and cutting bricks into these before gluing is advised i learned this the hard way now for some details i wanted my roads to be authentic but not necessarily realistic because d d takes place in some kind of weird time warped universe where bronze and iron age tribesmen visit renaissance cities with common functioning sewer systems that didn't arrive until the 17th or 18th centuries but cannons don't exist yeah it's weird so i decided to focus on making my streets look sort of right in a fantasy setting like that and that pretty much means gutters and drainage at the edge of the streets in places to achieve that i went back to those 1 8 of an inch thick off cuts and cut in half inch thick strip of foam for the edge of the street and then cut a full line down the center of the whole strip breaking up each line by about a quarter of an inch to look like stone set paving at the edge a bit like this to get a nice slope at the edge i cut with an exacto knife and then pushed the foam underneath it in at an angle using the back end of a paintbrush and once i had all of that i beveled them with a ballpoint pen textured them with tin foil and glued them in place once the curbs were in speaking of which to do these i cut a strip using quarter inch thick xbs this time cut it into three quarter inch long bricks and textured it to stone with tin foil before again hot gluing it in place the curved curbs are slightly harder to cut with a knife as the foam is thicker here to get around this i glue stick to the template to the foam and cut it by hand on a hot wire at the lowest temperature which is a neat trick to get the most control and then peel the template off i made some variant versions of these which serve as the sewer runoff tiles again i cut these from quarter inch thick xps this time using a different free template i couldn't textured it like the other foam pieces and hot glued it into place on just a few of the tiles just to add some flavor i did start planning to do a movable sewer grit for the pavement tiles but ended up significantly running out of time i might do it at some point in the future as a patreon bonus video or something like that let me know if you'd like to see it speaking of which there's a new bonus video up for a magnetic version of my interior walls along with a bunch of other upgrade videos so check that out if you like the system and you want to help keep the channel going patreon is absolutely the main way it does that we also have a discord now which is busy practically every day and is a great place to share projects ask advice get ideas and talk to me thank you so much to my patrons you are the only reason i can focus on making these videos as detailed and in-depth as i do rather than feeling rushed to release by youtube ads you are incredible people anyway on to painting and details i started by giving the whole thing a coat of mod podge and black paint to hide the bright clay undertones and then started on the stonework the flagstones and curves i painted in the exact same way as my standard stonework i've updated this method a bit since my original video using less tan and more tan grey mixers mainly because i feel like tan gives good guy vibes which make pieces a little bit harder to use for evil factions i think personally the full new paint scheme for this i've shown how to do in my upgraded magnetic walls bonus video on patreon but it's also in the pin comment below for the gutter i used a similar technique but used a single color for the base coat neutral grey to give it a cooler dank tone to these recessed areas dry brushed them with the same dry brush colors as the standard stonework and then gave them both the same black brown wash finally the cobbles got a completely different treatment with them being smoothed down river rocks i really wanted to sort of imitate that look and went with a mix of neutral grays tangrays gray browns and gray red browns this might seem like a lot of work but because of the final weathering step it's pretty much the only painting they need so you can use all the dry version wash time that you would usually spend painting all these little tiny stones or you can just paint them all one color it'll probably look okay to seal this in i map varnished over the top and added some much needed final details the cobblestone and gutters got covered in my dirt and grout mix which i brushed off the top layer with my finger while dry leaving the cracks and curb edge full of dirt now this is where the trick comes in i tried a few different techniques for this but the best one ended up being spraying the whole piece in scenic sealant in a decent coat but not drenching it and using the palm of my hand to rub off the dirt from the top of the pavements wiping it on an old wet towel rubbing more off and so on until the original pavement colour shows through with dirt only in the cracks i did a similar thing in the gutter with a finger wiping off the dirt from the outer edge but being careful not to touch the cobbles the cobbles you actually want the grout pigment left on it's what tints the colours that nice realistic dull end result on top of all of this i added some mossy effects in some areas between the stones and in the gutters i used two different methods for this the first was by using thinned down pva and a fine brush to add the glue into the cracks using the capillary action of the water and grout to keep the glue from the tops of the cobbles or flagstones and then sprinkling burnt grass fine flock over that dusting it off once dry for the second method you can use either burnt grass coarse turf or fine flock they both give different effects but both are good for different looks for both i mixed them with watery pva glue and applied them to the gutters you want the fine floc mix to be more liquid than paste but the coarse flock is fine with less glue i also played around with a new material these micro leaves from green stuff world these seem slightly different to the other leaf flocks out there and seem to have shredded birch seeds in the mix which is a nice touch the colours are really nice so i sprinkled some into the gutters for a bit of extra contrast and then sprinkled a little bit more dirt over them to blend them in to lock it all down i gave it all a second coat of sealant using a brush to add it on thicker in areas with more dirt and leaves to add that last little bit of flair i used some uv resin to add puddles in the dips that i made earlier using a cocktail stick to spread it out flat the nice thing here is if you leave it for a moment before curing it the capillary action of the dirt will help us out again sucking the resin out a bit and making it look like the puddle is slowly drying rather than it just being a pristinely perfect pool that looks a little bit odd money saving tip we aren't the only hobby to use uv resin in small volumes you can save money by buying small bottles of resin meant for making jewelry because there are more suppliers more supply competition means more sweet sweet bargains the final step is the street lighting i realized during editing that adding it to this video would make it a bit too bulky so i'll be releasing that tutorial separately tomorrow so you can make your own removable bright street lights that you can use for some seriously atmospheric night encounters and even spread light to about the right distance for lanterns in the game please subscribe like comment and share and until next time i'll be in the archive

Channel: RP Archive

Views: 840,330

Keywords: D&D City tiles, Battlemats, modular d&d terrain, Modular D&D tiles, D&D modular walls, Modular dungeon tiles, Dungeon tiles, Basic terrain, How to build terrain, Simple terrain projects, Dungeon terrain, Magnetic terrain, Terrain, Magnetic, Realistic, RP Archive, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, D&D, Dnd, Tutorial, Craft, Crafting, Building, Making, DIY, XPS foam, 40k, Age of Sigmar, AOS, lord of the rings, Warhammer Fantasy, Warcry, tabletop gaming, Wargaming, city, tiles

Id: K_vR2wQlzFo

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 18 2021