Urban terrain in a pinch...

Just thought I might share an anecdote with the list.

My wife and I have recently begun playing Dirtside (we've had Full Thrust for
years now) and, since we're a little short on scads of money and time to build
or purchase minatures and terrain pieces, we've sort of had to make do.

When we needed to make a city setting to fight in as part of
our ongoing multi-scenario ad lib campaign, we found that our
three year old daughter's wooden blocks make fairly good buildings. Nothing
fancy... a cylinder on a couple of upended window archways becomes a fuel
tank. A pair of short 2x4ish blocks put together becomes a moderately tall
building. A two inch thick, 3x3 square becomes a warehouse. Several long, thin
rectangular blocks set end to end can be an airport runway, or set a little
apart to create more length you can make a passable imitation of a highway.
2x4 blocks with arches cut in them make
bridges or overpasses.  Thinner square-cut long blocks make
taller and thinner buildings. Small cylinders on larger blocks can make
smokestacks on an industrial building of whatever sort. And so on.

We were able to set up a decent sized urban area that covered most of our
living room floor in this fashion, and on top of that, our daughter not only
didn't mind our use of them, but was quite overjoyed to learn that our living
room now had a city sitting on the floor made out of her blocks. (Although
much of the city, I'm afraid, was destroyed by a rampaging stuffed wolf
earlier this evening.)

Don't know how many people would find this interesting, but it's sort of a
testament to the ease of playing GZG games... Micro Machines make excellent
space miniatures, and just a few markers perhaps out of an Axis and Allies
game and some children's blocks can make a convincing army setup in an urban
scenario.

Stilts