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Good morning ninjas,

Was just flicking through a few images of mine on photobucket and thought I'd share a few of my easy and cheap terrain options I knocked up a few years ago. Each piece took between 5 and 10 minutes to construct and paint (excluding drying time).

1. Statues: Great for object markers or just general terrain.

Step 1: Purchase plastics column from cake store. These cost $1 each.
Step 2: Glue a sheet of card to the top
Step 3: Glue old marine on to card (I was lazy and didn't take the bases off - I've had some complaints about that).
Step 4: Scar it with drill and modelling knife. (The broken column is filled with gap/spack filler you can get from any hardware store)
Step 5: Undercoat and drybrush. You could add more wear to them or add vines, bird doo-doo and decay .. but I was just keeping it simple. I opted for a stone look, but brass/bronze or white marble is equally as simple.



2. Rock formations

Step 1: Find rocks (I got mine from a railway - they were perfect). I don't need to remind you about safety, etc.
Step 2: Cut a circle from MDF board, use a DVD/CD ... basically, make a base.
Step 3: Place rock on base and fill around the base of the rock with gap/spack filler
Step 4: Glue sand (with PVA/wood glue) to the gap/spack filler.
Step 4: Once dry, undercoat and drybrush. I used black, dark grey, light grey, white on the edges.



Cheap, fast and easy. Have fun.

Nice. Thanks for the tips.

Really loving those columns. I'll have to look for a cake store in my area selling such things

I agree about the rock formations. It's an excellent use for scrap foam. I stuck some guitar string in mine so that they would look like urban rubble with rebar sticking out.

The statuettes on columns look completely terrific. Would you mind posting your paint recipe? I'd love to know how they got that faint bluish tinge; i presume a wash or glaze?

Thanks for the comments sirs.

Re: Foam, I had minor difficulties with it. You have to either paint it with PVA before spraying an undercoat OR just brush acrylic paint straight on. But the brush didn't really get into all the nook and crannies quickly. The guitar string idea is sweet.

Statue colour scheme. I don't recall the exact shades of GW paint I used but am 95% sure they were undercoated black then dry brushed with a Shadow Grey, Fortress Grey and a touch of Skull White on the edges. I think the Shadow Grey gives the blueish colour.

Rock on.

A lot more helpful and concise than many of the "quick tips" terrain tutorial flotsam that seems to periodically float to the surface. While it might be old news to most people that have built more than a few pieces of terrain, this is the kind of stuff I could see getting really new players into terrain building, or turning the "hey look guys at my spruce and paper tpwel roll itsa tree!1!" crowd into producers of actually attractive terrain. Thanks for posting.