Gaming table: Mancunia in the Albion System

So I wanted a proper, good looking gaming table for 40K. We have a pretty good fantasy one, but with the arrival of 6th, and a renewed interest in sci-fi space elf vs. fishmen gaming amongst our gaming group of 2, I thought it was about time that we stopped playing futuristic shooting in a medieval landscape.

I wanted:

• Something that looked really cool. As far as a wargaming table can ever be cool. But power to the geek and all that.
• Something that was modular, not necessarily for transportation, more for the ability to vary layout.
• Something that could be easily expanded to apocalypse size.

So. I decided on a system of 2' by 2' tiles that could be used to make up a 6' by 4' table, but could be added to later. I wanted to use some GW buildings, because I like them, and I wanted a decayed, abandoned urban wasteland style look and feel. Probably abandoned after an old war sort of thing.#

I decided that very rusty metal buildings on a concrete base would be a good look (and pretty easy to paint too), so that is what I went for. The one thing that I was unsure of was how I was going to tie the edges of the tiles together in a way that made them all completely interchangeable...

Roads! That was the answer. If I edged all sides of each tile with half a road, I would create a sort of city-grid system. Which I thought would be pretty Imperial really. That's how I'd do it if I was Albion's Planetary Governor anyway.

So I used 3mm fibreboard (for the tile bases), self adhesive flooring tiles (for the road sections), and lots of builders' sand and pva glue. I didn't glue the buildings to the board for storage purposes, but I did try and paint rusty stains (as 'twere) on the baseboards to tie the buildings into the base. I think it worked: you can judge for yourself in the photos. Incidentally, on the subject of painting, I bought a GW spray gun to do this lot. Effing useless. I wouldn't bother. I reverted to decorating brushes and saved myself a whole lot of faffing.
The buildings were painted brown, stippled with orange, and then drybrushed with gunmental colour. I used black spray and grey paint on the rest, and found some yellow spray paint to do my road markings...

And here are some WIP's and a final finished shot. Plus an in-game pic of my Killer Space Elves being beaten by Mark's Fishboyz. Bloomin 6th edition shooting. grrr..
Actually, it is probably worth saying that the play experience is MASSIVELY enhanced by having a good bit of scenery. I reckon anyway.