Gorram’s Grand Terrain Project

I only have one day off this week and haven’t had any hobby time during the week so Sunday was painting day. I cleared the grown up jobs out the way, stuck on an audiobook and away I went…

In anticipation of a game next weekend, I needed some tents for a camp. Mantic’s Terrain Crate range has a Military Camp box. Oh the synergy! Thankfully the Terrain Crate stuff is largely one piece so, with minimal clean up and blatantly ignoring some mould lines (sorry Gerry!), I got to priming.

I’m sure that there is a way to paint up large, mostly flat, pieces like tents that they don’t look crap but I wanted to focus on done, not perfect so I primed black and then did a heavy zenithal with an off-white. It doesn’t really show up in the photos but in person it gives a slight shadow that breaks up the surfaces. Speed paints and normal acrylics were used on the rest of the items. If I can find them before next week, I’ll use some pigment powders to dirty up the lower halves of the tents a bit but they’ll do as they are for game day.

Now to more walls and fences. I painted up some Terrain Crate stuff a couple of months back but I recently saw these for Games Workshop. At £18, I figured they were worth a punt as there is more variety than the Mantic box had. 

I’m assuming this is an older GW kit that has been retooled for Old World cos they aren’t overly fussy with detail – just enough that with some drybrushing and two or three other colours for details, they look great. 

I primed them all black and then:

• Walls were given a heavy dry brush with Army Painter Deep Grey and then a light dry brush with Army Painter Ash Grey.
• Fences and trees were dry brushed with Army Painter Oak Brown.
• Any metal details were given a coat of Citadel Leadbelcher and a Nuln Oil wash.
• The few plants were painted with a green but I decided that because I was going to flock the bases, it would look better to cover the plastic plants with some tufts
• All the pieces then got some pva and my fantasy terrain basing mix which is a Javis Scenics mix that I bought several bags of so I don’t need to worry about forgetting the recipe in the future

I caught myself a couple of times at the end of the day feeling like I hadn’t achieved much but seeing it laid out together, that is clearly bollocks. Two boxes of terrain painted and ready to hit the table (varnishing will have to wait as we are being battered by a storm right now so spray varnish is not in my immediate future). 

And I finished my audiobook before it had to get returned to the library. 

What a time to be alive!

Let’s start small shall we?

I have two of the Mantic Terrain Crazy boxes (one from 2022 and 2023) and they are filled with a hodge-podge of terrain bits that may or may not see a coat of paint. Amongst them were four of the trees from the Gothic Grounds (https://www.manticgames.com/terrain-crate/fantasy/small-box/terraincrate-gothic-grounds/) box. I like the look of them and when I saw that I had a £10 off voucher for Mantic, I ordered a full box to go with them.

The trees are nice and sturdy – they don’t feel like they will tip over the way most others do. The are all the same height so these eight will be okay but a whole table of them would look dull. The stumps are nice and the wee mushrooms will be added to the pile of basing bits. It feels weird to describe the box as a ten pieces of scenery when the mushrooms are smaller than a fingernail but even with eight pieces in the box, the price is good.

The kit comes with faces you can add into the trees but I only used one for this set – they are being painted up with a specific use in mind but I can easily see me buying more in the future and having more face trees.

• Black prime and a brown (Vallejo Chocolate Brown) drybrush did the bulk of the work. For the stumps I drybrushed a lighter brown (Vallejo Mahogany Brown).
• I need some cursed spider trees for a Rangers of Shadow Deep, five in total. Thankfully we’re getting close to spooky season so getting decorative spider web.
• I used a little Javis Battlefield Field Scatter around the trunks to add a little more interest.
• The remaining trees will be back in another post

I have a terrain problem. I dislike painting it, I find it tedious. That by itself isn’t a problem – when it is paired with the fact that I love a lot of terrain on my tables however, we see the problem. This has come into particular focus recently as I’ve been working on gutting my flat after several years without a decent clear out.

Turns out I actually own quite a bit of terrain, some of it painted and good to go, much of it not. I have buildings, ruins, furniture and scatter galore. Very little of it is well organised. With the Grand Army Project I have been working on getting through my model backlog, now it is time to do the same for my terrain backlog. It would be nice to be able to put together a good looking table for most game genres/periods without too much effort.

There will be different aspects to this project as you can imagine – MDF kits, plastic kits, pre-painted, different scales, different genres/periods and how the hell am I going to store it all. It is also another multi-year project but at least it is focused chaos!?!?