Building the "Imperial Sector" Cities of Death Terrain

After my surgery last December, I had a lot of time to go ahead and catch up on the many Games Workshop products that I had been putting off for... years. Imperial Sector is something I had bought while playing 5th edition regularly at the Games Workshop Battle Bunker in Glen Burnie. Purchased around '08, I've had this thing sitting around for nearly five years with only one building started.



I wanted terrain for my table at home that would be solid, great looking, and somewhat standard, incorporating bases. In addition to the Imperial Sector, I also used the resin "Urban Barricades" set to complete the footprint of some of the buildings. I also had a leftover piece from 3rd edition's scenery, some sort of platform or pallet, so I figured throwing this in would help as well.

My materials...

• Revell 1/8" thick plywood
• Fine black decorative sand
• Gale Force 9 medium and large basing grit, mixed
• Americana paints - Burnt Sienna, True Ochre, Buttermilk, and two variations (dark and light) of grey
• Elmer's Glue
• Elmer's Max Strength
• Imperial Sector
• Extra GW bits
• Cheapest black matte spraypaint I could find

First thing to note is that the Revell 1/8" thick plywood was a bit tougher than I thought to get through. I wish I had a heavy duty saw. I was going at it with a razorblade, mini saw, and some other stuff and eventually got through it, but you should really have something MUCH BETTER than what I used... like a bandsaw or jigsaw or something. This is plywood so changes in temperature or moisture will cause it to warp. That's where the Elmer's Max Strength comes in, because it holds the pieces to the wood so well that the wood can't warp noticably.

The panels themselves were held together with GW Plastic Glue (Thick.) I let the whole structure set in for a day or so, because the next step has a lot of moisture involved. Watering down the Elmer's Glue helps it spread and helps you use a lot less glue, which allows for easy application of the black sand. This stuff ensures that a few pieces of sand chipping off isn't going to make the underside of it look gaudy... exposed unpainted sand is just black! This provides a firm basing for the rest of our stuff that we added.

After all is dry, another wave of dirt comes on -- this time the Gale Force 9 basing materials, plus our bits. This has to sit for a while too. There are two theories on where you can go from here -- you can seal in the rocks with more glue over top, or you can let the paints seal the rocks in. Due to laziness and the fact that these don't get the level of abuse that store or club terrain does... I opted to let the paint seal the rocks in (as best as it could, anyway.)

Next step is spraying the whole thing black, taking care to cover the edges of the base, but not gunk up the rocks or the plastic pieces.It's a little unavoidable with how much spraying you're doing here, and your final result isn't held up to as much scrutiny as your army is, so a little goopy spraying is passable.

The next step(s) are all drybrushing, and lots of it. Burnt sienna is applied to the base, a dark grey is applied to the building pieces. Then True Ochre is applied over top of the burnt sienna to vary the look.  Adding light grey over top of the darker grey gives the building more definition.

Drybrushing Buttermilk (which is very similar to GW bleached bone, a little lighter however) over the whole base gives tons of definition to all of the parts.

Now that these are all done to a basic standard there's nothing stopping us from painting the details as we see fit, but these are ready to game at this point!