Hello, fellow paper modeling fans!

First of all: If you don't feel like reading some background stuff about my personal WWG story, just scroll down to the pictures!

This thread pretty much tells my experiences with WWG terrain before that TLX stuff everyone is talking about nowadays came out. I started purchasing WWG products a couple of years ago because it was the perfect alternative to expensive resin or plastic buildings for which I would never have enough storage place anyway. Well... Actually, the old WWG building sets were pretty large and non-modular, too! But they looked so nice... I just had to have em.

I thought long and hard about how to make them in a way that allows me to just put them apart after a session and store them in a bunch of small cardboard boxes on the attic. After a lot of trial and error, I settled on using 3mm foamcore which was luckily available here in Germany, and which coincidentally is the perfect wall thickness for 28mm scale buildings. Since it came only in white, I painstakingly had to paint every foamcore edge with black marker. I added small 3mm neodynium magnets to just about everything that needed a semi-modular construction (I also got lucky here because these specifid magnets costs "only" 8 eurocents each) plus small triangular pieces of metal I found in a hardware store; They are apparently used by carpenters to build and mount mirrors or something like that.

I still use that magnet-metal combination in my newer TLX-builds (see and ).

With that being said, enjoy my report of building a city from the ground up using my techniques. As those were my first models built, you might notice some small mistakes here and there, such as using far too much glue (some wall pieces are very warped, for example).

Everything that is shown in the following pictures, plus a few building elements more, can be stored in these Boxes. Actually, the one in the lower left contains only half-finished stuff, so it takes even less storage space.



So let's start our own little corner of Hell a.k.a. Mayhem City. First, we will build a gas station. We need the following elements for the gas station itself and the adjacent propane tank. The pink crosshairs show where magnets or metal pieces have been used (in the models or under the textures, obviously). I didn't include those crosshair markers on the other pictures featuring stuff that has already been covered.

I was quite surprised to see Matt planning to re-release this set as a TLX version. A far as the take-apart feature goes: You have seen it here first, folks!

Matt's announcement of the set actually was what motivated me to take all that stuff that has been stored on my attic for years and spend a few hours assembling it again.



The gas station has been assembled. The first customer parked his car immediately out of nowhere.



Let's add a few street tiles so the citizens of Mayhem City can get to the gas station to refill their cars... And tanks... And flamethrowers, possibly.

To add some detail and a nice 3-D effect, we will also put some traffic lights and street lights onto the sidewalks. These elements have a little magnet plus a base made out of flexible magnetic sheet.



The traffic and street lights just snap to the spots on the street tiles where flat metal pieces are hidden below the cardboard texture.



Now we will add the general street layout. Most street tiles actually have two sides, with the other side being a grassy desert dirt road from an old kitbash.



Next, a small park is added so the citizens have a place to rest whenever there's a lull in the constant gang fights, terrorist attacks and zombie invasions that seem to happen to this city every few weeks.



All elements snap right onto the park tile.

Time to add our first building: A small warehouse. The wall textures are from Bits of Mayhem (with some changes, obviously) and Bits of Mayhem: Industrial. Every Wall element has 4 magnets; one at the exact middle of each edge. It is very important to ensure each magnet is mounted with the right polarity in mind, or the walls won't fit. Each floor tile (well, at least the ground floor tiles) have four metal pieces (one at each edge) so the lower magnets on each wall piece can snap to it.





The ground floor.



The first floor. All windows are printed onto transparent sheets.



The completed building, with a 3.5 inch wide concrete tile added.



The second building completed.



Let's add a small garage. What better place to put it than next to the gas station? All required elements for the ground floor are pictured.



Ground floor completed.



Roof added.

Back to our industrial zone, let's spice things up a bit with a large office building. You can see all the stuff we need on the next picture:



Ground floor. The interior textures come from the 1990s FPS Kingpin: Life Of Crime (highly recommended!)



First floor. Note how the walls can stand by themselves as long as two are next to each other. This could make for a nice cinematic backdrop and allows for easy access to any miniatures inside.



Our office building has been completed (I changed the position of the right building later, that's why there is no grass tile in front of it in this picture).



Alright! Now we need a place for the citizens to actually live. A beautiful little apartment building will suffice.



The first floor will consist of a living area and a large terrace to barbeque on... And take potshots at passing hostile motorists.





Another half-floor added. Giving buildings interesting shapes is a good way to avoid repetition in a n urban layout.



The completed building has both a front and a backyard with a narrow tiled path leading to the main entrance.

We need GUNS! And what better place to buy them by the dozen than at your local friendly gun dealership. This building will have a higher than usual amount of magnets due to the added props.



All props snap right onto the floor tile.





The first floor. Note how the floor tile has a small notch cut out to accomodate the staircase.



I'm not sure how to get up there, but that roof sure looks nice, so what the heck! I can already imagine Andy standing there with a sign in his hand reading "hungry" (Dawn of the Dead remake).





A quick building to show how the interior layout can be modified on the fly. This floor will have a wall running through it to divide both shops.



This roof uses magnets and metal pieces to make sure the green vent thingy stays where it should.

This is starting to look like a damn construction manual... Lets see how this whole baby is coming together!

First: Some overhead shots.









Let's go down to street level and check things out...























The truck is built in a way that allows me to disconnect the trailer as well as the container stored on top of it, all by using magnets and metal pieces inside models and between sandwitch folds.

Well done, looks fantaastic

that's absolutely beautiful.

Lovely build. Fantastic !

Question : What card thickness did you use for the build?

Question : Looking at your build, what rule did you use for cutting some of the foamcard away, as I can see you have only done it on one side of the wall.

Ross

Card thickness is 200 g/m² for all props and all matte wall textures. The glossy walls are 300 g/m².

3mm (the thickness of a wall) of foamcore is removed carefully from one edge of each wall, so that another wall can fit in there without any foamcore being visible from the outside.

Awesome I'm jealous lolz

Beautiful setup. Inspiring me to get off my ass and assemble more stuff.

I did not know World Works made a semi with trailer model. What set is that from? I need to buy it asap!

Thanks,
Eric

Semi truck and trailers are part of the Mayhem Industrial set, an older set no longer available here on the main WWG site. However, it is still available over at Paizo - along with several other older sets. For more modern vehicles you may also be interested in Urban Mayhem: Vehicle Treasury.

Others sets no longer available on the main WWG site, but still listed on Paizo, include: Bits of Mayhem, Bits of Mayhem: Downtown Expansion, Mayhem Armory, Urban Mayhem: Streets of Mayhem, [all pre-TLX, all modern settings]; also Siege Works, Village Works, Megabash: Crystal Caves, Kitbash Treasury: Chunky Dungeons (for the 1.5 inch grid folk; the 1 inch grid version is still available here on WWG).

I cannot believe I have never seen this thread. What an incredible labor of love. Excellent work!

...just spreading the cheer that is WWG - one fan to the others...