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Howdy folks. It's somewhat obvious I'm rather new here so I thought I'd start with my first major contribution. My roomate and myself are in the process of building a modular terrain board. I've decided to run the thread as a work in progress as we go, and I'll see if I can't get some pics taken at some point to show you guys as we go.

Now on to the materials list!

1 Sheet of 1/2" thick insulation foam 8x4'
1 Sheet of Hardboard, cut into 2'x2' squares. (Allowing for 8 Modular tiles)
3 Sheets of Foamcore (So far)
A multitude of cerial and 12 pack soda boxes as cardstock.
A box full of assorted crap that I've been collecting for years, at some point knowing I'd get back into the hobby.

Planning:
The first step in our little terrain project was planning out roughly what we wanted to do. Since we're building on a budget (Hey, we don't even have armies yet!) we want to make the most of our materials. We decided to go with a mostly cityscape, but some surrounding hillside, giving my completely new to the hobby roomate a chance to see exactly what goes into multiple types of terrain building.

With this in mind we planned for 2 "Countryside" tiles, and 4 "City" tiles. We also agreed that we were going to build a road onto the board, going right down the middle.

For the City tiles we decided it would indeed be a city under siege, allowing for a lot of rubble and a few ruined buildings. He decided that it'd be a fun idea to dedicate two tiles to a sort of Imperial Base Camp, a section of the city leveled down and some makeshift buildings thrown up. To this effect we planned for a Barracks, done in an entirely different style from the rest of the buildings, a landing pad, and a radio tower, along with a "tent city" style staging area.

I wanted to do a big centerpiece so I began planning a very large building. (More on this later)

We've also planned for 2 tiles of bombarded/ruined buildings, and rubble...and a big city wall.

So the table set up will end up roughly like this

Hillsides/Ruined Buildings/Staging Area
Hillsides/Ruined Buildings/Staging Area

With an additional 2 tiles for Centerpiece/Other ideas.

So, any suggestions for my one free tile?

Pics will be incoming soon.

Awesome, will be looking forward to seeing the progress on this. Just for thought, since you mentioned 'budget'. Keep your eyes peeled on the local dollar stores since it's coming around Christmas Time (yeah, I know months away..but stores are already putting the stuff out).

You can probably score some very cheap terrain such as trees etc. when they put out those cheesy Christmas Town decorations. You won't need many but 2-3 in a small piece of area terrain denotes a wooded area nicely.

The remaining tile could be turned into a park of some sort. A nice, lush, green terrain piece amid all the darkness and ruin of a 40 city looks pretty striking, usually.

On the other hand, if you're going to have grassy areas on the table already (which it sounds like you are...), some sort of reflecting pool with a large-ish statue in the middle could be pretty cool. An =][= miniture (one of the more statically-posed Inquisitors) would make a fantastic statue...



Ghidorah

Time for the update!

Ok got the camera up and running properly so we'll be doing two updates today, the first being work done so far, the second being any work I do today.

Not much to add from my last post as you'll see it's mostly just some beginning work and pictures of the materials.

So without further adeau, on to the show!

On with the show.

Some thought has gone into the merits of building a park, and we've decided that'd make a great additional tile. However it's gonna have a HUGE statue in the middle of it, just so I can get rid of a particular piece from my junk box.

Now for more pictures (Cause everyone loves pictures!)

I've also realized I've not described my process very much so far, so I'm gonna rectify that.

For the large hill piece, we started by Hot glueing down a large piece of insulation foam to cover about 3/4ths of the tile, knowing that we wanted to leave roughly 4 inches for the road that'd be running down the center. (Which we are now re-thinking due to the fact that it robs the table of some of it's modularness, however, I digress) After that it's all about the old hobby knife cutting it to a rough incline, adding any curves you want in place. Finish it up with some sanding to smooth out the roughness of the cut lines.

Once the shaping is complete we used a 50/50 mix of water and white glue to seal it, just painting it on. I usually do two coats, to make sure it's sealed fully, and sent it to the priming factory(IE: The Back Yard). I'd personally suggest a cheap primer for terrain work, as GW primer is great, but expensive.

Finally once the primer is dry, I slap down a coat of some cheep green paint, and wait for it to dry. The finishing I'll explain as I finish it!

The second hillside piece is done roughly the same way, save that a lot more time was spent sanding to get the indentation in the middle down. Even more sanding will go in before we're done, as that part is meant to look like a natural dirt trail. (You'll see better as it takes shape)

The Landing pad so far was simple, using my protractor I made an Octagon using 3 inch lines and 45 degree angles. The sides will have card stock glued to them and a ramp will be built to it.

The last picture is some of the junk bits we're planning to use in this project, as some of them are more interesting than others.

The titan was 3 years in the making, and very expensive

Third post of the night. I guess it's because I've been fairly busy today, and the weekends are one of the few times I get to work with any regularity on my stuff.

The Big hill has been flocked and is currently drying. Detail work will be going into it in a few days, but I'd like to get the piece I plan to mate to it done before I spend any time detailing.

Now for something far more interesting....

As I explained in my last post I'm working on a landing pad style building, done in an octagonal shape with a ramp built up one side. I cut the essential frame from insulation foam, as explained in my last post. Something I should note to anyone trying to duplicate the work, as you can see in the picture there's a 1 written on the top edge. It's important to place some sort of mark in order to line up the shape, as unless you're using some pre-programed machinery you're going to have some deviation in the edges you cut, and it can be a real pain to try to line the thing up again.

Now on to the progress. I've got some thick card that my fiance got for me, and used it to cut out the raised edge shown in the picture below. I used my previously cut octagons to trace the shape onto the card, then being careful to cut on the INSIDE of the lines (To avoid deviation) cut a third octagon from the card. Then moving 1/2 inch from each edge, I drew a straight line in order to create an internal octagon, which I then once again cut out.

The results can be seen below.

Hi,

Just starting out on all this stuff, so will have a few dumb questions!

How are you intending joining the tiles together when you are playing? Looking at starting a similar project with some off cuts of MDF that I have got knocking about from a DIY project earlier in the year.

Looking good so far man! Looking foward to seeing more as it progresses.

rupert wrote:Hi,

Just starting out on all this stuff, so will have a few dumb questions!

How are you intending joining the tiles together when you are playing? Looking at starting a similar project with some off cuts of MDF that I have got knocking about from a DIY project earlier in the year.

I'm planning to get a piece of plywood or similar hard board to serve as the actual table, and the tiles will be just set on top. Preserves some of the modular ability of the table.

Progress will be slow going for a few days as I work Graveyard.

smoking and working with foam?
not a good idea, dropped mine last time through one of my poly hills XD

JD21290 wrote:smoking and working with foam?
not a good idea, dropped mine last time through one of my poly hills XD

It's a far worse idea to deny me my smokes.

Ok, so far we've got One section with a large hill. It's shaped, glued, primed, painted, and now flocked. All that's left for this particular tile is detailing, which may end up being extensive as I don't want this section of the project to be TOO simple. Chance has been working on this tile as it's his first work on any terrain.

The Landing pad has had it's raised lip glued down, and sides are having cut sections of card glued down. Next we'll construct a ramp to the side of it, and possibly a bridge connecting it to another building. I'm considering cutting a raised Imperial eagle motif on the top, but am not too sure of my sketching skills to make whatever template I make look right. We'll see how that goes.

The second hill section is coming along nicely, tho I need some heavier sand paper before I continue any work on it. Eventually the section between the three hills will be detailed to look like a trench/trail with some heavier sand and rocks., and a few scrub bushes.

Next update probably won't be until day after tomorrow as I'm working until friday and don't have a whole lot of free time to work on this.

Little more work done.

Started detail work on the big hill, starting with a little static grass. I personally use some untwined rope cut carefully and glued down to make static grass, but everyone has their own method.

Started doing a ruined building today, made a foam base and cut up some walls I was experimenting with earlier.

Finished the sanding with the trio of hills, but I want to lay down some of the pre-priming detail work before I continue on to flock.

Ok, little more progress to report. I've started the pr-priming detail on the trio of hills, as well as laying down the road and some more detailing on the large hill.

The ruined building is moving forward slowly, but well. No real difficult work to report or describe, just laying glue and waiting for it to dry...

Nice stuff so far. Not too complicated...but it looks great.

Blood

Been doing some work on the ruined building base, and some additional work on the second hills tile.

Pics attached, I'll have more this evening as it's my night off of work and plan to get quite a bit done tonight.

those are really nice.

Been a while since I updated, so I thought I'd toss up a few photos of the work so far. Things have slowed down due to my new Tau models arriving, so I've been a little focused on painting those.

Update Time. Been a while no?

Work continues slowly as I try to convince Chance that unsteady hands and clumsiness isn't an excuse not to work on terrain.

The two hillside sections have been heavily detailed, and are about finished. The Construction work on the gate and wall is done, and awaiting a bit more work before it's going to be ruined, primed and painted. Did some detail work on my stand alone ruined building that I did as an example for Chance. Added two rubble piles/ruined buildings to the first of the city tiles, began work on a multi-level building that will be on the board, and have the planning of a few other things in work. Here's the pics, enjoy....

Board's looking decent.

I like the scheme on your Tau.

One question, though.


What's the deal with those pants?


Eric

Seriously, I think I had a pair like that back in the 80's.

Nice terrain though.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Just some cheep hobby paints for terrain work. I don't use my good model paint on terrain, as I end up making a lot and it requires a lot more than I'd use for painting models.

Now more updates as I personally thought this piece was coming out particularly cool. The concept is a slightly damaged building with multiple floors. The thing about it tho is I wanted each floor to be able to be played on, so I figgured out a way to construct it fairly solidly without actually gluing it all together. Tell me what you all think of the sliding floor concept....

MagickalMemories wrote:Board's looking decent.

I like the scheme on your Tau.

One question, though.


What's the deal with those pants?


Eric

ZOMG I totally thought you said PAINTS.....

The Pants are his, I don't question how he dresses, otherwise I may go insane. Chance is what we call...style impaired.

looks like it will be a blast to play on that table...
nice work so far...

RaGe-at-Random wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:Board's looking decent.

I like the scheme on your Tau.

One question, though.


What's the deal with those pants?


Eric

ZOMG I totally thought you said PAINTS.....

The Pants are his, I don't question how he dresses, otherwise I may go insane. Chance is what we call...style impaired.

Those are my pyjamas--my mother thought it was funny to give them to me, as I'm a big comics fan. And they're comfortable.

The giant Chaos beast is also mine, and took even longer to build--about six years.

Wow. Been flat forever since I updated this. Sorry for the massive delays, been playing WoW and painting a lot. I'll be back with some pics within the week.

Got this new idea too...any of the other WoW players out there think it'd be cool to make a table based off of Icecrown?

Table tutorials! I love it.

Let me know if the article system is a bit unwieldy for reposting the material. I think
I can manage it myself.

I'll see if I can slim down the info into something a bit easier to make into an article and PM it to you. On the update side of things...I swear it's coming. Holidays have just got me busy as heck.

Wow looks good so far! liking the crumbling bits on the structure ruins. Cant wait to see it all painted! keep it up!