Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Can't wait to see that same table, but with all that MDF painted.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Well, he didn't actually make them, he just built them. HOWEVER... that was a two week ordeal as many of the pieces had poor or no instructions. It was his way of earning some extra Christmas money... with the added benefit that we get to use it in our games from now on.

There are 3 or 4 different company's worth of stuff. Most (the buildings recognizable from the original Dawn of War game) were from a kick-starter... all the other pieces I just picked up here and there & the awesome elevated walkway was a gift from Solar_lion.


For those who don't keep up with my other blogs, I am painting regularly again after a very long hiatus. Unfortunately my MW aren't in the queue as I've decided I really need to either get some of the other armies painted that I own or get rid of them. I'm just about done with the last piece of my 40k AdMech army. After that I'll be working a bit on my Halloween demon army and then on to my 30k EC and Dark Mechanicus. Luckily all of those lists are very "finite"... unlike the Mantis Warriors or my orks which just go on and on.

The Dawn of War stuff looks like it's from Death Ray Designs. They used to be Brush 4 Hire and they sell the stuff through their website as well.

I'd definitely recommend checking them out. They do good work for all their stuff. I have a bunch of their base inserts that I use for Warzone: Resurrection figs and WISH I'd used for Warmachine.

Can't wait to see all that terrain fully painted! It already looks great!

Terrain looks fantastic, and looking around this stuff is so cheap, makes you wonder if it is worth the time to build stuff yourself. Thing 1 did a brilliant job by the look of things, awesome table.

You guys have seen the work done by Thing 1 on getting my space marine table terrain built. What I've been going for is the ability to set up a few, very distinct tables based on the armies and boards/mats that I own.

I have a standard GW grass mat, a city board, a barren wastes mat and finally a winter mat. The SM terrain looks great on the grass, my ork set looks great on the barren wastes mat, but what about the winter mat?

Well, been working on that too. I've decided to go with lots of trees (which are easy to find and cheap thanks to all the "Christmas Village" stuff out there. Will also probably take the ruins that Thing 1 put together for me and winter them up a bit with snow and such. I wanted some bigger trees and stumbled on these winter birch trees. Not very expensive, very large and they look fantastic once you fiddle all the wire branches out. The branchlets are supposed to be wavy, which can easily be accomplished by pinching the wire between your fingers... I just haven't gotten that far yet. Thought I'd show off one. I have a dozen of these... probably too many... but heck, they're cool.



I've got some large evergreens coming too. Getting this terrain set done might end up high on the priority list just because it'll be a great looking set and something I can do fairly quickly.

Of course, the biologist is going to have accurate trees on his terrain. :-P
That birch looks amazingly like the one I have in my backyard right now. Are you going to do a tutorial?

That's the beauty of it Anpu, I didn't build it... I bought it. All I had to do was tease out all the branches as they were shipped in a "compressed" state. I'm thinking of getting some smaller ones from the same company so I have some variety on the table.

Awww... you make me sad.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
That's the beauty of it Anpu, I didn't build it... I bought it. All I had to do was tease out all the branches as they were shipped in a "compressed" state. I'm thinking of getting some smaller ones from the same company so I have some variety on the table.

Would you mind sharing the link to the company from which you bought the trees?

Birch-pinching, is that a thing now?

@Meph: You go a little loopy when the temperature drops into the single digits... besides, after a few beers, all the trees look the same.

@bogalubov: I'd be happy to. Might take me until tomorrow since I can't post to Dakka from home, but I'll get you the info. I'm really pleased with the quality.

That's a pretty tree! Where do you get most of your scenery? I kinda need some.

You going to weather/stain any of the branches? They seem a bit stark white. Maybe a wash. I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage: "Life’s a birch, then you dye.”

Holy Crap Gits! That's a LOT of painting to do there. That MDF really soaks up the primer too!

Most of the trees I've just pulled off ebay. Search for trees of whatever height you want & either "model railroading" or "Christmas village", that should get you all the hits you need.

And yeah... lots of painting. Going to be experimenting with primers to see what works best. Something cheap.... hardware store primer vs. a "gaming primer".

Having used mdf for furniture manufacture best primer is mix some pva with water based paint. You will struggle to spray it on mind you. Alternative is cheap car primer, first coat will disappear.others may have better ideas. You could try a coat of varnish first. Or pure pva. With this amount of scenery you are looking bulk.

I too was going to recommend mixing some PVA in hardware store paint.

Advice on painting mdf, as I've been doing a lot of buildings lately: car primer. Cheap, quick, very effective and doesn't need pre-sealed with PVA. It's now my go to.

Car primer? Where do you find that? Will it say something like "auto primer" on the can, or is it a brush-on?

In tree news... got another batch of trees, these are large pine trees. Kind of crude at first look but I think I can make them look decent and at least the larger trees are more "tree sized" when compared to the models than the little trees you typically see.

I decided to try putting kinks in the fine birch branches while I was relaxing watching football last night. It's actually very therapeutic and man does it make those birch trees look realistic. I would NOT recommend it as a "sit down and get work done" activity.... it's just too fiddly for that. But... as a relaxing thing to do while watching the tube... it's excellent.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rust-Oleum-Sandable-Primer-Gray/17203470 is the droid you are looking for. They sell it in big, paint on buckets too. Use a crappy brush, cuz this is going to ruin it.

Outstanding! I'll go out and get some. Thanks my friend.

No problem. Try not to get the "Filler" primer. You will have more detail loss/softening with it. Sandable primer does it as well, but less so.

Understood. Right primer, light touch. Got it.

Yup, that's the stuff. Sorry, foreigner, yes Auto Primer

Well, traveled out to my local big box store and picked up a couple of cans of grey primer of varying shades. Didn't look exactly like the can WM posted but I was careful it had the same properties (it was labeled as Automobile Primer btw).

So now all the ruins that will be going with the winter themed table have a two-tone grey paint job. I'll probably add a bit of additional color variation with an airbrush, but I don't want to make them too "interesting" as they're supposed to represent a long-abandoned settlement where only a few meager, broken down remnants of structures remain. I also want my winter table to look stark and bleak... so relatively dull ruins fit that pretty well.

Both primers worked great and gave good coverage. I didn't need two full coats for the base primer... just one plus a few spot applications after that to cover some thin areas. Thanks guys, you were a big help.

Once the airbrushing is done (hopefully tonight) I'll post some pics so you can see my progress. Will also post some pics of the "bent" birch trees. Wow, what a difference that made! I'm going to have to come up with some kind of large-platform basing for the birches as they're very top-heavy and unstable (like a real tree). I'm thinking old CDs will do nicely.

Looking forward to seeing the results.

Real pleased to hear it worked bud. You can achieve surprisingly decent results with just the spray primers, no need to go all fancyshamncyairbrushyzenithally on us

Here's where I am at the moment... unfortunately we have so much stuff left on my home table from our last game that I haven't been able to put my winter mat out to see how everything looks. Having a massive allergic reaction to something so my eyes are completely shot. Can't even keep them open until I drug myself to oblivion. Maybe I'll get the big of extra work done on the buildings tonight... Went to bed last night at about 6:30 because I couldn't stand the itching.

Those are looking nice on the table!

Would you mind passing along a link from where you originally bought the birch trees?

Wow, bending the branches up makes them look tons better! nice job.

Hopefully the allergies get better. My folks ended up getting a fake tree this year, for the first time, because they figured out that a real tree was killing my mom’s allergies. Bah humbug.

If meds don’t work, you can just adjust the booze/eggnog ratio until everything feels fine. Or if you are not a ‘nog kinda guy, rum/mulled cider can also be taken medicinally.