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This thread has been going for years with only occasional posts, so here's a handy content section....

Pg1 - 2010 - Polystyrene hills, Necromunda terrain respray, Barricades, Simple craters, Amera trench set arrives
Pg2 - 2010 - Amera trech set finished, Bases for Necromunda terrain - 2012 - Complete remake of Trench set, New textured gameboard, barbed wire sections
Pg3 - 2013 - Industrial/Necromunda Gas Towers and pipelines, Blasted forests and Wrecked Vehicles

Current status...



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[b]Original Post

So with Panic's gaming room out of action we've been playing lots of battles on my hastily assembled terrain board from earlier in the year. Here's a few pics of the board in use. Currently I have...

- A 6x4 board, painted grey with lighter and darker patches.
- A collection of hills, made from 1" polystyrene, painted grey with brown and green flocked areas
- Some standing stones (instead of forests) and stacks to break up LoS, made from the same polystyrene.




But after four games or so, it's getting a bit samey. I'm also realising that I need more TALL stuff, to break up LoS more. Problem is, it ALL has to fit into two 2'x1.5'x1' Ikea chests. Everything. And the hills already fill one completely. So whatever I make has to pack down really flat.

Suggestions? I'm currently thinking...

- Dig out my old, battered Necromunda terrain and give it a grey respray
- Make a 'tar' river and lake in multiple sections. Polystyrene grey banks and black/PVA tar.
- I've got some really fine wire mesh. A system of fences, some blown up, some blown open, with the odd watchtower.

How would the wire fence work? Could this be cover, or just for effect?

So dug out the Necromunda terrain. It was looking a bit battered (and a bit cartoony, like all GW stuff from that period) so it was time to give it a RESPRAY! I got three different shades of grey spray paint, masked over all the cool hazard stripe bits, and went to town....!






One thing that always annoyed me about the original terrain was how the side of the walkways would flatten out, rather than staying at the right angle. Some square balsa wood solved this...

Sell some your hills maybe? You look like you'd be fine with about half of your current hills and the Necromunda terrain.

BTW, the Necromunda terrain lokks great, if a bit cartoony.

I love the necro sutff, and the hills look good too. I would agree wtih agove that the table you have setup had too much on it, but its probably just to show them off :-P

I agree the Necromunda stuff looks really cool.

yeah/

Pherion wrote:...I would agree wtih agove that the table you have setup had too much on it, but its probably just to show them off :-P

---> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/254695.page

Dude, with all that new urban terrain you do realise you are verging on starting a new necromunda campaign?
If this happens I call everyone to here to witness, that I have called that in ArbitorIans necromunda League, I have Claimed first dibs on Spyres or Escher.....

Panic...

Lots of edit: I'm Drunk...............>

So, the Necro terrain is looking great, I think. I really like the simplicity of it. But there's an awful lot of flat, open space on it, so I got my bits box out and started to assemble some barricade/cover sections that should fit on the top levels.





I also had my first go at using the wire to make fences. These are low ones for use around the edges of buildings. The ones for the ground will be twice the height.

Nice use of mesh, was it expensive, everywhere i can get it from it is like £10+ for a A3 sheet.

orange1095 wrote:Nice use of mesh, was it expensive, everywhere i can get it from it is like £10+ for a A3 sheet.

Thanks - I got it from CassArt, but i think they're only in London. I think it was around £7 for around an A3 size area. Though, to be honest, that much mesh is probably going to do all my fences, barricades and maybe some bases with some left over. An A3 sheet is quite a lot!

If you look around enough, you can usually find a deal on sculptor's mesh. Comes in a variety of materials (steel, brass, aluminum most common I've seen), textures, hole sizes, etc. I found a 2 foot wide roll of the stuff on a clearance rack at a craft store. US suppliers may be different, but if you aren't opposed to shopping online, you can find it cheaper. Go in with a friend to cut costs, since you'll NEVER use a roll of this stuff just for grates and fences. Might use it all if you decide to start making paper mache mountains. Hey, that's not a bad idea...

Well i have only been able to find 'perforated zinc' mesh, discarding online. i could try online i suppose, just never have for that.

I got my last lot of mesh from a car spares place. It was pretty cheap, iirc. Worked nicely for fences and camo netting.

Very cool-looking stuff. Should make a great addition to your board.

- Blackbone

So, we've been finding my lack of craters annoying recently. When vehicles blow up, you can replace them with a crater, which gives the models who were inside a cover save. But only if you've GOT craters. I could buy the GW craters, but they have a rather large footprint, which means you end up moving other bits of terrain to fit your huge crater in whenever a vehicle blows up. Rubbish.

So, I decided to make my own craters with a bit of polystyrene and some CDs. A CD is roughly that same footprint as a 40k tank, so it should work wonderfully. Here they are, and here's the tutorial. http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/ArbitorIan%27s_Very_Simple_Craters

And now....complete! Badly painted! Useable in games when your monstrous creatures blow up all those pesky Nurgle Vindicators!

Necroagogo wrote:I got my last lot of mesh from a car spares place. It was pretty cheap, iirc. Worked nicely for fences and camo netting.

Yes, this is the trick. Aluminium mesh is used to repair rust-holes in cars. I pay the swedish equivalent of €2.50 per A4 sheet in the right stores. An A4 sheets is enough for a lot of nice things, including some easy to make bases that look very industrial/space hulk. These ones are combined with leftover pieces of sprue.




ArbitorIan: I love what you have done with the necromunda terrain. I have a mate who has promised me I could have his old necromunda stuff if I could find it in his basement. I just got inspiration to go have a dig about.

Looking good so far!!

So I've been purchasing away - I came across these guys online - http://www.amera.co.uk/product.php?range=z - while searching for trench sets. They do an astonishing range of vacuum-formed terrain, are based in the UK, and it's all pretty cheap. I ordered a load of their trench, river and rubble products and it arrived this afternoon.

I must say, I was surprised how big all the pieces were - much bigger than expected. And a lot stronger, too. The plastic is actually quite sturdy.



This is 1 x Trench Set (4 corners, three straights), 2 x Bunkers, 1 x T-Junction and a spare straight section.




The trench walls are wooden slats and the floor is just bumpy ground. My plan is to spray primer the whole thing, then spray the walls brown, then pain the earth sections the same blue/grey colour as my table. I'll then wash the brown sections, put a thin line of flock along the top of the ramparts, and do some detailing on the trench floor. The bunkers, as the only plascrete sections, will be sprayed the same grey as my Necromunda terrain and drybrushed Codex Grey.



And the best thing is, it all packs away into this little pile, which makes the most of my tiny amount of storage space.



I started by trimming off all the plastic flat bits, leaving a 5mm rim around the edge



And then i took my spare straight section and cut it into four. I'm going to make these into 'end' sections some buttressed, some collapsed, since at the moment my only end sections are the bunkers or the table edge...

Amera rocks; I bought one of their big hab-blocks and the factory. Needed quite a bit of work to get it looking good, but they were dirt cheap!

Those trenches look great Ian! Top stuff! Looking forward to seeing this progress..

I'm interested to see how it goes with the trenches, I've seen their stuff around a bit and have wondered what it would end up looking like on a proper table. Glad to see you are taking the plunge

Thanks, I'll update as I get more done. I've started painting the main pieces in my basement. I've given them the brown/dark grey spray, then painted the earth ramparts light grey and the earth floor dark grey.

There's no clear deliniation between the top of the wooden slats and the earth rampart, so I'll be hiding this with the brown and green flock. The impression should be of a trench that's been there for ages, so that vegetation has started appearing on the tips. I might also give the rim of each piece and the corners of the trench floor a bit of grey gravel.

Please can we have some comparison pictures with models to get an idea of scale?

Oh, ok. Here you go. This is the only remotely dry one so far. It's only a corner section but should give you an idea of scale. Very rough painting at the moment with by BIG brush, but that'll all be turned into detail laters....



As a side note, I've discovered after taking the models outof my dimly-lit basement, that the light grey is a little TOO light. I'm debating matching the outside grey to the inside grey....

wow! that website is amazing! thanks for pointing it out ^^. as for your terrain, its pretty impressive i think your necromunda style stuff seems a bit "clean" but thats jsut my oppinion. otherwise, a crackin' job!

So, the first batch of Trenches are mostly painted. I redid the outsides to the darker color, which now matches my gameboard. I've then washed the corners and wood and applied the usual green and brown flocking. I still need to do some hard highlights on some rocks and the wood uprights, but they're coming on nicely...

TRENCH TRAGEDY!

I have flaking! It's rather strange, and there may be a number of different culprits. I sprayed the insides of the trenches a mixture of brown and grey, but left the outside earthworks bare, then painted over with a nice thick mixture of artists acrylics (then highlights and gluing). Now, the flaking has only occurred in the unflocked areas on the insides of the trenches - every piece has some flaking there, but all of the outside earthworks are fine and all of the areas which have flock on are fine. Strange

I'm wondering if it was the sort of spray i used on the base, or maybe the varnish, since the nozzle was crap and more went in the trench than on the earthworks. Also, this has only happened since moving them from the cold humid basement to inside my warm, dry house. Hmm.

Anyway, it's not TOO bad, and I can always cover the whole of the trench floor in more brown muddy flock. I have a second batch of trenches to do, and Panic has suggested giving them a wash first (though I don't think vacuum formed trenches USE release agent) and maybe a quick going over with a sheet of sandpaper to roughen the texture of the plastic.

(Will upload photos as soon as the Dakka Apache thing starts working again)

Can't help you with the flaking but recently I've been making a bunch of terrain for the club and I've found that the foam bases shrinkwrapped pizzas come with is great for terrain it sticks well with Bostik and makes a good cheap wall material. Beer Can fuel tanks also work well......

Here's those flaky pics

yeah,
Dude I had a similar problem with some of the eldar terrain I made, the bunker type buildings are made from vacformed plastic (hard drive pacakging,) they had the same paint peeling off problem, I figured it was the flex in the plastic. I sanded the plastic and repainted the area... no major problems since.

I also agree, I don't think vac formed stuff have release agent problems. But from the amear website,

Before paint is applied, the whole moulding should be washed in water with a small amount of washing-up liquid. This will remove any traces of grease and make the paint adhesion that much easier.

Go for the washing/sanding prep for the next batch.

They look awesome and go great with the ash waste terrain you've made so far.

Panic...