Kill Team Terrain/Space Hulk

A couple of years ago, the gaming club I was in did 3 linked tables for games day.  A BFG table, a 40k table, and a Space Hulk table, the hulk represented the interior of the space station:

The hulk affected the other tables as follows:  if you controlled one control room you could shoot into the BFG game, the other control room allowed you to do orbital bombardments.   I built the hallways of the station from pieces of vinyl gutters -- an idea I stole from an edition of Black Gobbo (remember Black Gobbbo? Why, GW did you discontinue that?)  My improvement was to take the terrain vertical.  Bridges connected the sections and provided the means to travel between levels.

The basic construction materials are vinyl gutters, with some down-spout sections as rooms in the hallways, the floors as well as the bridges are the plastic grates from fluorescent light fixtures and plastic crochet grid material.  The original framework was masonite and PVC conduit.
   
The idea worked pretty well, but my original design was too narrow, causing the bridges to be a bit steep -- some metal models would tumble down (and off) the bridges to certain chippage.  Also my original means of constructing the framework left a lot to be desired -- over time it had become wobbbly.

Fast forward to now...  My FLGS, Games Workshop Sugarland Crossing, in Sterling VA was having its birthday,  The manager announced that one of the big events would be a three-way linked set of games -- BFG, Apocalypse, and Kill-Team.  I volunteered to bring in the terrain for Kill-Team; but first I'd have to rebuild it.

I started by redesigning the framework;  to reduce the slope on the bridges I made the framework 6" wider -- the hallways would be separated by an 18" open space for the bridges to span.    To improve the robustness of the framework, I doubled the uprights, I connected the uprights with two pieces of 3/4" PVC pipe, this time using fittings to secure the pipes to the framework.  I now had a nice stable frame to work with.   Here's the completed frame.

I also added bits to support the two control rooms.  I added holes to the uprights to complete the look of lightened framework like a space vessel would have:

The whole framework along with everything else was primed with Krylon Fusion black, followed by a coat of Krylon Ruddy Brown  I highlighted with a light spray of gray.

Only one thing was now missing -- the center was kind of bare -- the floor would just be the surface of the table.  I remedied this with a black foam-core floor with some more of the crochet mesh.  Now were ready to play.

It took about half an hour to set up the table once we got to the store.  But I was gratified that once it was set up, I got a lot of compliments and a lot of cameras came out.  A number of folks also mentioned that they would love to use it for Necromunda.

We used the kill-team rules from the Battle Missions book  with 4 forces of order (Imperial) vs 3 forces of disorder players (DE, CSM, and traitor IG).  The imperial players were trying to capture objectives within the hulk to shut down the number of orbital bombardment shots hitting the imperials in the Apocalypse Game.  We (the Imperials) lost, we only took 2 objectives.  It did teach me a few things;  It was way too easy for the defenders to pin down the intruders in the central bay -- it became a shooting gallery.  For the second game, I GM'ed it rather than playing and invoked night-fighting (power failure to the lights) and used some of the rules for boarding actions from Imperial Armor volume 9

What's behind the door?

Vorstroyans and Space Wolves prepare to Infiltrate the station

A lone Vostroyan battles traitor Storm Troopers on the bridge

Future Enhancements
For future improvements, I'm going to add some stairways between levels that should allow players additional routes to reduce exposure on the bridges.  I'm also going to give players the option of using the central floor to cross between the lowest levels and add some more cover on the that floor.  I'm thinking that making it a hangar bay for some games would be cool or perhaps a drop-pod bay or a cargo bay (or a warehouse for Necromunda games).  There are a lot of possibilities.