Building terrain of Doom

Been thinking that the gaming tables are in need of some trees to dot around.

After watching some YouTube videos and looking through some books I decided on a wire armature covered in masking tape to make the trunk and branches.

This is then covered in a pva glue to hold it together and maybe a bit of sand or filler added to the glue to add some texture.

Over the next few evenings my plan is to build some trenches and bunkers for use in epic 40k.

I’m going to use instructions from a white Dwarf magazine from a time long ago when pva and cereal box buildings were encouraged by gw.

I remember building these years ago with the help of my older brother as I was not trusted with glue and sharp things.

The first step was to hunt out a cereal packet then mark out and make the bases, rather than going with square edges I trimmed the corners so I can set the trenches out I  wiggly lines.

I decided to only do one side of the trench line or as the article points out you get rather wide looking trenches that are hard to move your tiny dudes a out in.

I also decided to mount the card bases on some thin magnetic sheet, mainly to add some strength and to help stop the edges curling after painting.

Whilst the glue was drying in the bases it was time to cut out the walls of the trenches and the teeny tiny buttresses. The walls were quite thin so I doubled up the wall sections and used prit stick to join them together as pva made the card curl.

Then It’s time to stick your fingers to everything, found out the hard way that super glue is great for this as pva let’s the card slide around before it drys

Once that was all dry it was time to splodge on some filler that was then coated in modge podge glue to make it nice and strong

The bunkers were made in the same way, think I messed up my measurements as the bunker is supposed to be as wide as a cavalry base, I just gave the bunkers a lip at the front rather than starting again.

Tried to make some imperial symbols for the top of the bunkers, the wings are just card strips and the circles are the little sticky plastic blobs you can use to stop things sliding around.

Once the buildings were dry I painted in the wood sections as well as adding more colours to the mushroom clumps.

The flagstones were drybrushed grey and bleached bone then the edges were painted in a muddy colour. Once that all dried I gave the models a satin varnish coat then gave the mushroom heads  a nice glossy coat.

Finally some flock and autumn leaves were added to the bases.

Painting the houses got my good lady’s interest and decided to paint up a ghost tree that she snapped up at the selwig show as well as a funky halloween house from the works, that she added some details to including rickety roof tiles made from wooden scrabble tokens from the works stuck on with a jollop if hot glue.

They were sprayed with grey then She used the spray gun to paint them white masking off areas with tape to create a brick effect then  uses the gel based paints from warcolours, think they look pretty cool indeed.

Unfortunately the Elder scrolls online witches Festival event arrived so don’t think the models will be completed fir a few weeks, they look awesome as they are and will fit in nicely with the other moonstone terrain.

Thought some mushroom outcrops would be cool instead of woods, so started on some scatter terrain using some scrap Cork tiles I made the basic shapes.

Next I filled out the shapes with filler and as it was drying I glued the mushrooms in place.

Going to let it dry fully overnight then after work tomorrow I’m going to add some grit to the bases then cover in modgepog to make it more sturdy

The plan is to base it on some Cork scraps, add some filler around the edges and a few mushrooms, before painting it.

Hopefully paint sticks to the plastic as it feels a bit oily only time will tell I guess I should have tried some paint on it before sticking it down as it may need a good old soapy wash

This week’s project is going to be seeing how much scenery I can build for a moonstone table for as little dosh as possible.

Last Sunday my better half and myself visited the selwig show that had a humongous bring and buy where we were able to snap up a funky mushroom house and a ghost tree, making a great start to the scenery needed.

Next we visited poundland and the works looking for supplies and came back with a little house shaped box with a draw that should be easily converted into a second house. Rhi has caught the scenery bug and found a Halloween wooden house and is planning on building it and having a go with an airbrush to paint it.

We also found a pile of plastic mushrooms and some other odds and ends.

Now it’s time to get gluing and see what happens.

The last few years I have been working on some rules for a solo vietnam game based on the mobile strike forces in the vietnam war putting you in control of the indigenous forces helping rescue downed pilots in enemy territory and carrying out ambushes on enemy supply lines as well as patrolling around and protecting their compound.

This required a selection of different scenery including village buildings and sections of jungle to help fill out the scenarios. As well as needing a suitable bord or mat with squares on it for movement of miniatures and line of sight.

This is not the first of the boards I have built as the project started in 28mm but is awkward to get out and play the game because of the space needed, so I tried it in 15mm which was super fiddly so now have settled on 20 mm.

Walking around IKEA I found a box frame in the sale section which gave me the idea of a board that I can hang on the wall. So with that in hand I started collecting bits of card and cocktail sticks together.

The bord is made of a fake grass matt from aldi that I squished cheap brown green and red acrylic paint from the works into with a sponge, the muddy track is a mix of filler and sand mixed with plastic and again squished in with a sponge.

Once the paint was fully dry the lines were added with a shape then a selection of grass tufts were stuck down with pva glue for some variety.

• The fields are cut from carpet tiles from poundand stuck to Cork squares. The edges were built up with Millput then coated I sand and plastic before painting in muddy colours, tufts were then added

To make the buildings I made the basic shape from card from cereal packets, then glued cut up cocktail sticks as wooden beams. To give the walls some texture I used a thin coat of filler. The thatch roofs were made from hessian soaked in pva stick to card.

The board all set up for an afternoons gaming

Having a load of terrain on the table definitely helps with the immersion of the game.