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Hi All, recently I've been thinking I should put my modelling skills to the test and start producing custom wargame terrain for people but before I start focusing all my time and energy on single commission pieces I would like to produce some terrain pieces which can be easily reproduced which will provide me with a fairly decent starting point.

So a quick couple of questions to all of you:
1] What sort of terrain would you regularly use in your games?
2] What kind of size would be perfect for an average terrain piece?
3] What type/size of models would you usually use and how many on average would there be in a squad or retinue?

Thanks for your time, hopefully this will give me a good idea of where to start

Ok, started a bit of a new project specifically for Deadzone modular scenery, its still early days and I'm currently working with a fine cast plaster mix which I'm hoping to upgrade to a plastic resin mix after i have all the base configurations worked out, for now here is an example of a single 1 x 1 square building.









And here are a few Test shots to show how the base appears with models and scenery.

Without the base unit


With the base unit.


I was wondering:
1. what do you think?
2, Are there any changes that can be made to the actual cast (not the colour or foliage)?
3.Would this be something you would be interested in to add more realism to your Deadzone scenery?

If this is something you would be interested in could you please let me know and also let me know what your favourite configurations of the Deadzone scenery tiles are so I can look at making specific shapes for the most requested, thank you for checking this out and for any comments

It looks good, but definitely has an 'outdoors' look to it. For your tower that is probably not a bad thing, but for a lot of what I plan to use for DZ, interior type tiles/flooring instead of outdoor type stone would be useful.

not a problem, I want to look at different materials to do the internal floor tiles to look more like metal grates and panels, I'm assuming you mean just the inside tiles and not the outer borders right?


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If anybody has any suggestions about the base section please let me know, ideally I want to create a decent generic base which people can modify to suit their own board and colour scheme.

Attempted a new style for the scenery base tiles.

That's pretty fancy. Can make your interiors more interesting and even if it's sitting in a field it looks finished.

I like that a lot better. It looks more 'interior-like' than the first one. You can picture some poor slob with his bayonet trying to pry up a tile to patch into the colony's fiber network to get his comms up.

You've got me wanting to do this now lol.

go for it, with a bit more time I should have a few more variations which I should be able to reproduce pretty quickly if you want a couple made for you to experiment with?

Ahh probably not worth it to either of us for the shipping I think I could come up with something similar and I've got a basic casting kit laying around that would let me try it out. Don't worry though, no competition, I make things too slow

Might be cool to establish a feed-back loop though.

The one thing I'm seeing about what you're doing right now is what will you do for rooms bigger than 1x1? Is the internal tile piece it's own entity that was inserted into the larger 3x3'' surround or is it all one solid piece? For instance, if you put two of those next to eachother, they wouldn't line up with a 2x1 tile deadzone building. If you were making molds perhaps you could make a series of 1x1, 1x2, 2x2, maybe an L shape, etc, sections. I think the part that goes around the deadzone tiles is nice and should be preserved, but it gets in the way of making them modular.

 CptJake wrote:
I like that a lot better. It looks more 'interior-like' than the first one. You can picture some poor slob with his bayonet trying to pry up a tile to patch into the colony's fiber network to get his comms up.

Hopefully one of the variations I'll be doing will have a tile removed to show cables etc.. underneath.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 GrimDork wrote:
Ahh probably not worth it to either of us for the shipping I think I could come up with something similar and I've got a basic casting kit laying around that would let me try it out. Don't worry though, no competition, I make things too slow

Might be cool to establish a feed-back loop though.

The one thing I'm seeing about what you're doing right now is what will you do for rooms bigger than 1x1? Is the internal tile piece it's own entity that was inserted into the larger 3x3'' surround or is it all one solid piece? For instance, if you put two of those next to eachother, they wouldn't line up with a 2x1 tile deadzone building. If you were making molds perhaps you could make a series of 1x1, 1x2, 2x2, maybe an L shape, etc, sections. I think the part that goes around the deadzone tiles is nice and should be preserved, but it gets in the way of making them modular.

I'm in the process of making larger base sections which will be for buildings 2-5 squares large and might even vary in height to save on scenery tiles.

Very cool project. I enjoy watching the progress.

Ok, just finished the Double square building.

Very nice.

cheers next one will be a 3 square L shaped building unless you have any other suggestions for me to try?

I tend to favor 2x2 buildings rather than L/corner bulidings. You use up 11 BZ tiles to make the smaller L-building and it only takes 12 tiles to make the larger 2x2 (or four square, in your nomenclature) structure.

Just my 2 cents, L-shaped buildings *do* exist and they're interesting, just less efficient by my reckoning