Suburbia Under Siege: Building Modern Neighborhood Terrain

Most wargamers start with the same two boards: a fantasy field and a sci-fi industrial sprawl. But some of the best skirmish games happen somewhere far more familiar — a quiet street of two-storey houses, a gas station on the corner, a church at the end of the block. Suburbia is a fantastic tabletop setting precisely because it feels ordinary. When the shooting starts, that ordinariness turns into tension.

This guide walks through building a modern neighborhood table from unpainted printed terrain kits: what to buy first, how to lay it out, and how to make it play well rather than just look good. It's written for anyone who has never built a modern board before, but there are a few deeper layout notes near the end for experienced players.

Why Suburbia Works So Well on the Table

Suburban terrain solves a problem that urban downtown boards often struggle with. A city of tall office towers creates long, dead firing lanes down every street and huge blocks of impassable terrain. A suburban street does the opposite: it gives you lots of small, low buildings, spaced apart, with gaps between them. That means more angles, more short-range engagements, and more meaningful movement decisions each turn.

It also fits an enormous range of game systems. Zombie survival games, modern military skirmish, superhero games, post-apocalyptic settings, monster-hunting horror, and near-future agency games all take place in exactly this kind of environment. One suburban board can serve half a dozen rulesets — which is a very good return on a single terrain investment.

Start With a Residential Core

The backbone of any neighborhood table is houses. You want at least four to six residential structures before anything else, because they establish the scale and visual language of the whole board. The Modern Suburbia Terrain Bundle is built for exactly this job — six buildings sized for both 28mm and 40mm heroic scale, which covers most modern skirmish games without committing you to a single system.

If you play at the larger end — superhero games and heroic-scale miniatures where standard 28mm buildings look cramped — the 40mm Heroic Modern Suburban Terrain bundle gives you six buildings proportioned for chunkier miniatures. Oversized figures need doorways and rooflines that don't make them look like giants, and this is the set that solves it.

For a broader small-town feel, the Urban Suburbia Bundle adds the landmarks that make a neighborhood read as a real place: a church, a gas station, and a mini mart alongside the houses. Those three buildings do a disproportionate amount of storytelling work. A gas station is instantly an objective. A church is instantly a last stand.

Adding Conflict: Ruins and Authority

Intact houses alone give you a pleasant neighborhood. To make it a battlefield, you need two more ingredients: damage and institutions.

Damage comes from ruined structures. The Urban Ruined Buildings Bundle gives you four collapsed and partially destroyed structures that mix into a residential street beautifully. Placing one ruin among five intact houses tells a story on its own — something happened here, and it happened recently. Mechanically, ruins are also better terrain than intact buildings: they offer partial cover and blocked line of sight without fully removing a footprint from play.

Institutions come from civic buildings. The Urban Police Station is a large 28mm structure that anchors a corner of the board and gives scenarios an obvious focal point — a defended objective, a starting position, an armory to raid, or a place characters are trying to reach. Big buildings are worth having exactly one of. Two competing anchors on a small table just crowd each other out.

Laying Out the Board

Here is a layout that consistently plays well on a 3'x3' or 4'x4' table:

Run one street diagonally. A road that crosses the board corner to corner creates a natural dividing line without giving either player a clean shot down the table edge. Diagonal streets are also more visually interesting than a grid.

Set houses back from the road with yard space. Don't push buildings up against the street like downtown storefronts. Suburban houses sit back, and that setback gap is where miniatures actually maneuver. A two- to three-inch gap between building and road edge is enough to move through.

Break up the middle. The center of the board should never be open ground. Put a ruin, a cluster of vehicles, or the gas station forecourt there. If the middle is empty, whoever shoots first wins, and the game becomes a dice-off.

Keep the large building off-center. Place the police station or church a third of the way in from one edge rather than dead center. Off-center anchors create asymmetric objectives, which produce more interesting scenarios than perfectly mirrored setups.

Assembly and Painting Notes

These are physical printed kits that arrive unpainted, so budget a little time before the first game. Dry-fit every piece before gluing anything — printed parts sometimes need a light pass with a hobby file where a support left a nub. Plastic cement won't work on resin or PLA; use superglue or a two-part epoxy for structural joins.

For painting, suburbia rewards restraint. Real neighborhoods are not colorful. Prime everything grey, then use a limited palette of beiges, off-whites, muted blues and soft greens for siding, with a single darker tone for roofing across every building. Keeping roofs consistent is the single fastest way to make separate kits look like one coherent street. Add a brown or grey wash over everything to settle the details, then dry-brush the roof edges and window frames.

Save your color for one or two buildings only. A red gas station sign or a single bright yellow house becomes a landmark players actually refer to during the game — "I'm moving behind the yellow house" — and that's a sign your table is working.

Where to Begin

If you're starting from nothing, buy one residential bundle first and play a few games on it before expanding. Six buildings on a 3'x3' table is already a playable board. Add ruins next, then a single large civic structure. Building a neighborhood in that order means every purchase immediately changes how the table plays, rather than sitting in a box waiting for the rest of the collection to arrive.

Browse the full range of modern and urban terrain at Northern Foundry to put your own street together.