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

Thank you so much to anyone who goes to check these guys out and helps support the channel :)

City Tiles are one of those things that makes me really excited to make terrain for D&D. The realistic look you can achieve with these kinds of tiles, as opposed to flat, shiny printed battlemats is part of what really sold me on making my own terrain!

Battlemats are ok as a starter, but they never inspired me, and always felt (to me!) like it was boiling a cool D&D scene down to a very basic level 😕 They just didn't have enough texture, height and detail.

Making my own means I can control how big the tiles are, where they come apart, what accessories I can add and where as well as how easy it is to add details like dirt, puddles and so on.

This is the sort of thing where its actually harder to do it with a product you buy, because they were designed with a specific system in mind, and if you don't like that system or only want one part of it....tough. You get the same as everyone else.

Or you take back control and make your own 😁

Everything I use should be linked on the equipment list above, so it's also a library of where to find stuff…

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BUILDS FEATURED IN THIS VIDEO:

BUILDINGS

LANDSCAPE

SCATTER AND ACCESSORIES

OTHER USEFUL STUFF:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro/Making the tile
04:12 Adding the top textures
11:00 More on how they work
12:46 Adding Details
15:14 Painting
16:30 Final weathering and details

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[RPArchiveOfficial]

As always guys I'm more than happy to answer questions and hear any feedback! :)

Thank you so much to anyone who goes to check these guys out and helps support the channel :)


MAGNET SAFETY:

Don’t use around small children or animals, if ingested these can be dangerous. Never let very strong magnets slam together, especially thin ones. They can and will smash under a lot of force, and then become very sharp, highly magnetic shrapnel. Not good. Easy to avoid though, just take care.


GROUT/SANDING/WIRE BRUSH SAFETY
Wear a dust mask and ideally have good ventilation or an extractor fan on over your workspace when doing these activities.

I am no medical expert, but the advice I have found seems to be of the mind that a little exposure your body can deal with and expel, but larger and especially longer term repeat exposure can cause problems -all easily avoided with a proper dusk mask.

AIRBRUSH/SPRAY CAN/ENAMEL PAINTS/SUPERGLUE/ISOPROPL ALCOHOL SAFETY
To be clear - superglue here refers to extended use. Quickly using some superglue is, to my best knowledge, harmless, which is why nobody bats an eye at it normally. But if you're in an unventilated room with highly liquid superglue for hours on end? That's a bit different, wear a filter mask!

as a general rule, these things should always be done while in a VERY well ventilated space OR while wearing a fume filter mask, if not both. I tend to use an extraction fan and mask, and open the window in the room when I'm done.

Iso, unlike the others (as far as I've been able to ascertain) can be metabolised by your body, albeit with a bit of a nasty headache. It basically gives you a hangover, which kind of makes sense given what it is…

CUTTING FOAM
The research I've done into the subject points to the standard white fumes being mostly harmless carbon dioxide (the stuff you breathe out anyway). That said, much like hotboxing in a room without ventilation, its generally a good idea to not let CO2 build up in a room you're breathing in, or you'll get a nasty headache as your body metabolises it.

Black fumes from burning foam ARE harmful and should be ventilated/avoided if possible, but these rarely occur when using a hot wire cutter like we do - its just something to be aware of.



CUTTING METAL TIPS AND SAFETY

Steel/nickel is safe enough to use if you're reasonably careful, I cut most of my steel from tin can lids with scissors, though now I mostly use nickel you can buy in strips (see equipment list).

Made sure you're wearing thick gloves when cutting and handling, I use some woodworking gloves.

If you want to make doubly sure the steel isn't sharp, use a metal nail file along the edges to round it off.

Nickel I've so far found to be far less sharp when cut than steel, but being safe never hurts :)


SUPERGLUE AND OVEN SAFETY

Don't bake superglue in the oven, when heated it can become cyanide gas. If using superglue, only use it on pieces that are not going in an oven, OR have already been in and have cooled.

Its fine to use on after that as long as it's not going back in :)


UPDATED PAINTING STONE RECIPE September 2021

equal parts mix of mod podge, tan and neutral grey (or equal tan/neutral grey if using over mod podge and black. If so you'll need 2-3 layers to get decent coverage - it doesn’t need to be perfect coverage though.

paint about 1/2 the bricks in either:
3:1:1 tan, neutral grey and white
or
1:1:2 tan, neutral grey, white

Make sure this layer is strong, not translucent by too much water thinning (glazing)

Drybrush with 1:1:2 tan, neutral grey, white

Drybrush white - make this reasonably strong, or it just won't show through the wash. It's worth doing a test tile until you're comfortable with the result :)

Black-brown wash


UPDATED WASH RECIPE September 2021

Only make as much as you need, the mixture will settle over time. A good shake will fix it, but not so well when it gets thicker over extended periods...

100ml, half of a 200ml bottle:
15 drops carbon black ink
5 drops transparent burnt umber ink
60/40 water-matt medium

I use a few drops of flow improver per half bottle. Adding more didn't really change the result much, and made it run off the pieces a bit TOO easily!


SCENIC SEALANT RECIPE

This stuff is really easy to mix, I use the following formula:

1 part mod podge
4 or more parts water - you can make this as thick or thin as you like, and just use more layers to make it harder.
A drop of dish soap (fairy liquid type stuff) or flow improver - this helps it…well…flow :)

The more mod podge, the darker and more 'wet' the dirt will look when dry. But you can use multiple thinner layers and build up strength that way too.


DIRT AND GROUT RECIPE

Brown and black unsanded tile grout
Dirt cooked in the oven and filtered through a sieve. You want to grind this dirt up with some kind of improv mortar and pestle into smaller grains - it doesn’t need to be dust like the grout but should be otherwise pretty small.

The ratio you want here is going to depend on the colour of your local grout
I just mixed in a bit of black at a time until the colour darkened down to match the original dirt.
I ended up with about a 4:2:1 ratio of dirt:brown grout:black grout

I now add 1/2 a ratio (shot glass) of natural earth yellow pigment to make the reddish tint go away, without turning it grey by adding more black grout or grout mix. I added this to 12 dirt, 8 brown, 4 black grout. So its more like adding 1/8 of a glass to the minimum ratio shown above (4:2:1 then 1/8th of pigment)


ROAD COBBLE PAINTING RECIPE

2:1 neutral grey and raw sienna basecoat
Neutral grey on every other pebble (so basically on as many as possible while having no 2 grey rocks next to each other)
2:1 tan and neutral grey on every other pebble again (so no two tan pebbles together)
Then 1:1 neutral grey and raw sienna as a final colour, painting half the remaining brown pebbles, again trying to keep them not touching.

It's ok if some tiny pebbles touching each other or larger pebbles are the same colour, these are less noticeable and harder to do this with…

[thecartofvideos]

I swear, people keep getting better and better at tabletop crafting. These are absolutely beautiful

[merek]

The painting of the stones/bricks is always the step i get bogged down in, but man you really show why it is worth it. Picking out the stones just looks so much better.

[swnyto]

Once again, I'm without words. You are a true artist of gaming terrain. To think, less than ten years ago we were playing on painted cardboard and now we have you, the Magnet King, crafting realistic cityscape sets.

[Deximaru]

Most underrated craft / TTRPG channel ever. Actually incredible!

[ninjamel_official]

This is the coolest, most detailed, super realistic, but incredibly practical modular tile system that I have ever seen! This should be mass produced and You should copyright it seriously! Imagine these cast in resin... The possibilities are endless!!

[Breezey]

Dang these street tiles look great, looks much more immersive than just having buildings on battle mats. I love seeing your setups get more and more elaborate as you add new terrain and mix and match it with old builds.

[chaineycoyote]

I was sitting down to have my morning coffee before starting my own city streets, when I came across this video. I'm so happy I did, because this will definitely elevate my project to the next level.

[docmnc]

These are amazingly elaborate. It always surprises me when I get to the end of a video and realise I understood the instructions and can actually follow them

[The_Real_Flump]

Oh my god, the craftsmanship and attention to detail is incredible! Dirt in the cracks, tiny leaves and puddles, it's all just amazing

[gamingandgeeking]

Just absolutely blown away. Can't wait to make enough of these so that my dining table becomes a town >.<

[tinyfishhobby]

I’m constantly amazed at just how much information you manage to pack into each of these videos.

[plainlimbs]

Just got to say again, your tutorials are fantastic with such high production quality. Really motivating me to think about my terrain I want to start building!

Please do a showcase of all your terrain in a massive showcase board!

[turmat]

Thats so epic... We didn't even play on battemats when we were kids, we'd just have sheets of paper with a grid drawn on them, held toghether with scotch tape to make the map bigger XD. This is next, NEXT level!

[maninalift]

I kept skipping past this video when I saw in on my recommendations (even though I always love your videos), then I noticed the puddles on the street in the thumbnail. That is such a great detail, which does everything to bring the scene to life.

[photogfrank]

Matt, I finally put my finger on it! What you are is an artist and the school you belong to is Realism! I was watching or re-watching your video 'Modular Cities' and the way you were working dirt into the cracks between the cobblestones of your streets! You Sir are a Realist! And an awesome one at that!

[themanofman]

How have I not seen this before, those textures, color, details, and techniques are all amazing and easy to fallow

[salvation]

Those puddles are very cool, I love how the cobblestones are spread apart from the water eroding the dirt and sand that held them in place. Everything really looks top-notch!

[awesomechainsaw]

I’ll also recommend using Foam Board with pictures of textures glued to it and arranged to look like the setting you desire as a fast and dirty method for your upcoming sessions.

[LeviGratton]

This is one of those things that I'd only do if I had multiple groups to DM for every week, I was rich and had a ton of storage space.