Area Terrain and Embarrassment

I was sitting around procrastinating from painting my Blood Angels and noticed a pile of styrofoam I've been saving for some terrain. I decided to make up some area terrain for my board since it's a simple enough project and hard to mess up. I created two pillars, one having some damage from some ancient battle and some stone walls to provide cover and a boundary for the terrain. The base is a heavy cardboard so it wouldn't flex when moving around or rip apart. I threw on a couple extra Dark Angels icons because I bought a whole slew of em when I first started my marines last year. I based it with black spray paint, then a layer of rough-texture spray that gave it rocky feel. I then painted it with watered down Codex Gray. The icons where painted with Dheneb Stone foundation and then covered with Gryphonne Sepia wash. I hit the edges of all the bricks and pillars with the wash as well to make an aged look from a lot of dirty rain fall. I edged around the stone with PVA glue and flock to give it a bit more character.

(Click for bigger pics)

On another note, I played another Kill Team vs my friend Jason who is still new to 40k. He fielded 7 Necron Immortals and I fielded a squad of normal marines with a Priest and a Razorback with a LC-TL PG. This isn't optimal in the least, but they are part of my 1500pt list and I have never fielded a RZB before. Boy was this one sided. He is blessed by the dark gods of the dice. He consecutively rolled 6s to glance me and 5s on the dmg charge to take off my PGs first, then my LC, then finally immobilize me. My RZB literally did nothing.  He could have had an armor rating of 5+ and still won the game. He was rolling 5 and 6 about 75% of the time, and i was rolling mostly 3s.... And charging T5 units without power weapons is terribly hard. Average to hit, below average to wound, and then they have an average shot to get back up, and of course he was hitting those numbers, but I wasn't. It came down to me only have 3 guys left and he had 5, all of us in assault, and I was rolling low and him high, so we just called it. I knew Immortals could be bad ass, but this was crazy lopsided. I could have taken my normal Kill Team load out of DC with all power weapons, or maybe a Furioso for easy wounds, but that wasn't the point of the game. Right now I'm just worried about the performance of normal marines and RZBs... We'll keep playing and eventually get up to 1500pt games where the real testing can begin.

Ruined Terrain 3 - Tips

This will close out the Ruined Terrain project for now. I got some ideas from others that checked out my work and I'll go back to these to add some age to the concrete and maybe some detail like mossy build up at the bottom. Some tips I wanted to share are:

• Spray paint put on thick will break down the styrofoam. Pull back so it's lightly coated on and it will be fine and quicker than painting with a brush from the pot.
• Pull your blade backwards across the surface to get rough, more natural looking edges instead of cutting away and making it smooth.
  
• Super glue is useful in creating damage marks. A drop with eat a hole into the side of the wall. I like to dip a toothpick with glue after placing a drop on and poke it down to a good depth and then pull it out. This will provide a channel down into the foam and create a larger hole. You can also drip it down the side of a building for different effects. It leaves the crater made a bit glossy and easy to paint.
• Flames from a lighter also make for a quick way to add damage. The disclaimer here is that foam will burn on its own, so do it in a safe location. Hold the flame far away and slowly inch it in and the foam will shrink a bit and wallah, damage from a heavy flamer on your bunker.
• Everything can be used for the next project. I cut out the center of that bunker, looked at it and said, hey, I can build something from that. That's what I created my destroyed bunker from, which is below. Also, the cut out windows make a good start for a brick pile I can add to my bunker, or pile up to make a destroyed wall for more cover. The list goes on.
  

 

On the second picture I carved out a door way to the right, painted it black, and filled it with foam bubble scraps, brushing on watered down PVA glue to stick them together. Then more bubbles and another coat or two of watered PVA glue so it would flow on its own, otherwise the thickness would just pull the foam away with each stroke. This makes it look like the bunker entry point is caved in and unusable. I preceded to hit it with super glue, flame, and my razor and piled on the damage. It will just serve as a terrain piece to block LOS and look more appropriate. It will also get some touch ups with an aged wash and some moss eventually.

 

Ruined Terrain 2 - The Bunker

This post will detail my creation of a 40k bunker, with removable roof, so you can keep your units on the table when you occupy it. Oddly enough the styrofoam block I used for this was perfect in scale and size in that it can easily fit 10-15 men squads inside, and is tall enough to place the roof on top and clear the heads of marine sized models, and it just came out of an electronics box ready to be trashed! The first thing was measuring out the inside cut, which was 1" away from the edges. Any less and it would be unstable walls and any thicker and you could fit a max of 10 models, tightly. I measured the windows to be 1" wide and .5" tall, plenty big to place a lascannon or HB through the window. I also traced out two Rhino doors, one on either side, as entry points. Per the buildings rule, you could claim the doors to be open and gain an extra "firing point" but risk a +1 on the damage table.

 

 The roof was an additional piece of styrofoam, also the perfect size right out of the box. I decided to add a radio tower out of a plastic mounting arm from a hamster cage I have. Odd I know, but it also looked pretty good as is, but I added a Landspeeder antenna to it and a Dark Angels Icon as a sort of radar dish. I also added a small "electrical box." I smoothed down the Rhino door area so it would be flush with the walls, and not just sticking out like a sore thumb. I just used some PVA glue to secure it to the surface.

I also added Rhino head lights next to the two entrances and added two lamps from the Landspeeder sprue to either side of the bunker with no doors, to act as spot lamps. Since they were just lamps with no mounting, I took actual sprue bits to act as a arm from the bunker wall and glued the lamp to that. I base coated it in black spray paint, being very careful with that, and then watered down some Codex Gray and brushed it on. I used some of the styrofoam shavings dipped in paint to give the surface a rough look. Sand would be better, but I didn't have a source of that at the time.

 

I use the same technique as on the walls to wear down the edges of the building and the roof, to take off the sharp edges. The little pipes in the foreground were my test bed for painting rust and it came out well. Plus I now have a stack of rusty pipes to place anywhere to add a bit of flavor. Finally, I added some Dark Angels icons to the doors, including a Dreadnought face plate. I painted the rust on the doors, lights, and roof stuff by starting with watered down Blood Red, followed by watery Snake Bite Leather. I focused on the edges of things, hinges, and rivets.

 

And here are some close up shots for details.

 So, let me know what you think. I'm quite happy with it for being a simple job. More detailed people might put more layers and highlights of paint, but I think it looks fine the way it is. Much better than cardboard buildings we've been using so far and our first actual bunker that units can occupy. Next up will be my tips and tricks I picked up while doing this project, as well as pics of my destroyed bunker.

Ruined Terrain 1 - Walls

So I ran across some styrofoam blocks while throwing out some electronics boxes and they screamed out to be turned into terrain. Currently my friends and I only use some Necromunda buildings and low walls for our games, that are usually just treated as blocking and impassible terrain, only using the roofs if we have jump packs or are skimmers, etc and having to take a dangerous terrain test for them. So I thought I'd spruce it up a bit. With the various size pieces I decided to make 4 walls and two bunkers initially. Two of the walls would be for infantry cover but still get shots off and the other would be for vehicle cover, which we severely lacked.

And here they are (click for a larger image). They started off as perfect rectangles of course, so I worked them down with my straight utility razor that I also use for cleaning my models down in the same fashion, pulling the blade back across it, not pushing against it. This pulled up the foam bubbles individually and gave it an uneven surface on the edges. Next I added the holes on the large walls to show off some ordnance hits. I primed them black and then used watered down Codex Gray, then went back and filled the blast holes with black to give them a shadow on the inside, finally going around the holes with a 1:1 mix of black and gray for scorch marks. Both long sides have these effects and I even did each short side so it didn't look untouched there. All told, done in about an hour or so, including paint drying time and the like.

I left the infantry cover mostly untouched, except the surface of each has a rough top, like piled rocks on top of it. And there we have it, my first set of ruined terrain. I also completed a functional bunker with roof as well as a ruined bunker that is just impassible terrain, but will look more authentic on the battlefield. I'll have more pics of that project in my next post as well as post some tips I picked up while doing all this.