Urban Battlefields

Urban Battlefields with Chris Townley We've been playing a lot of Team Yankee games around the office recently thanks to the Firestorm: Red Thunder campaign and I've learnt quite a few things from it, one of the most important ones is how much I enjoy playing games with some urban flair. Urban Battlefields - Apartment Buildings...

It has been surprising to realise how easy it was to make my 1940 Flames Of War table look like 1985 with the addition of a few new buildings. Since I'm planning on fitting in a lunchtime game this week (played out over a few days) and thought it might be an interesting exercise to take a few photos of the table as I put it together and share some of the things I was thinking about as I did it.
Flames Of War Buildings Range...	Team Yankee Modern Battlefield in a Box Range...

Buildings (like plants) need space to grow... I started putting this table together using some items that were already 'on the table' from a previous game. Here we see a couple of Apartment Buildings, Cafe, Convenience Store and a pair of European Buildings. They look crammed together with no space to maneuver. So I spaced them out, added a Car Park and removed a couple of buildings. Now I have a really nice space for a couple of infantry platoons to bunker up with good fields of fire for the anti-tank guided missiles. There is also two ways for vehicles to access the area.

Dude, Where's My Car? Next up I started work on adding some European Buildings that I had taken away from the example above and just dropped them on the main road (notice the one on the left doesn't have a front door because I put it the wrong way round!). It looked okay at the time but by the time I had finished dressing the rest of the table I noticed it looked a little dull, so I added a couple of Garages that had be built later. I figure that there was a bad case of 'keeping up with the Joneses' for the couple in the left house because they had to have a two car garage!

Small Town Germany to Small Town New Zealand It really doesn't seem to matter where in the world you are, as soon as you have two houses and a crossroad a few light commercial buildings always seem to spring up. In this case it is our favourite McPizza King and a small Gas Station. Once again rather than just placing them next to the road I've added a small Car Park just to help give the buiildings a little context and tie them in to the table. It also helps to space things out a little and leave some open ground in the middle of the built up area.

We Want Jobs! If you have ever played games like Sim City you know the locals get a bit grumpy without a place to work, and a way to visit their relatives in other towns so my local residents built a Train Station and a small Industrial area. Just like in Sim City I've put the factories off to the side as they don't want to hear the machinery working all day and night. I also got a little cunning and took the second level off one of the Factories and added it to the other one. This meant that whilst the two buildings are the same model, they look obviously different in some way. Of course the added bonus is that it adds to the tactical complexity of the the area. I liked the idea so much I did it to the Apartment Buildings too.

The Finished Table To finish the table off I've added a few extra bits and pieces just to both make the table look a bit more interesting as well as cutting down some of the sight lines. Between the Pine Forests and Escarpment I think I have done a good job of making the non-urban areas interesting to fight in as well as adding some room for tanks to maneuver.

The one thing I would be tempted to do would be to add some more Apartment buildings (if we had any more in the office). Of course if I did that I'd probably need to look at adding a Church... and then maybe repaint a Garage in red to make a Fire Station... and then a Department Store (which is coming with Stripes later this year!). I think I might be heading down a rabbit hole here... time to place an order for another Garage though because 'My Town' needs some more buildings!