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Hey guys.

Those of you who have corresponded with me since I started posting on this forum know of my situation. Being deployed to a bombed-out wasteland, I really can't justify spending copious amounts of money on polystyrene modeling supplies, or GW's premanufactured terrain, because I have to pay shipping, and I have to ship it all back home once my deployment is over. So me and my cluster of newbs have been basically constructing terrain of of GW's mail-order boxes and PVA glue, toothpicks, packaging styrofoam, and various supplies I can manage to snag from army supply.

I'd take snapshots of what I've got so far (though it's nothing good to look at, I assure you), but electronics die pretty quickly out here, and the only camera I have is on an iPod and it's resolution is really low.

But other than gluing cut-up slabs of flat cardboard for ruins, I've begun to see the need for craters. And now I've got to come up with some homebrewed way to make one. I'm thinking perhaps cannibalizing some disposable bowls from the mess hall, or gluing layered cardboard with each layer cut to give the whole thing a crater look. Any suggestions?

Here's a thread I made whilst I was in a similar position.
and also a quick pic of a 2 minute wood.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/232189.page
Is this the sort of thing you are after? Hope it helps?

Well, there isn't much plant life in Iraq. I looked at your other post, and that's very similar to what I'm doing. I also did some barricades and a Necron Summoning Core. But after a particularly disastrous Orbital Bombardment from my opponet last game, we realized that a crater should be placed to represent him turning a 14 Necron squad into a 3 Necron squad.

I do like your idea with the woods, though. I'll look around and see if I can't find any twigs from the very sparse plant life out here. That, or I could use dried up pidgeon legs from their corpses that litter the gravel fields out here. )

Well if you're doing something similar to Alex's cardboard buildings, maybe cardboard craters would fit...?

- Cut wobby-edged 'donut' out of cardboard
- Make slightly thinner donut
- Make even thinner donut
- Glue all three on top of each other.

If you use thick card, you have a half-inch tall crater there.



.

If you have card and glue, you should be set for making craters.

Cut a fairly circular (or any shape you want - you can make a more abstract shaped crater if you want, like the GW moonscape craters) piece of thinish card (needs to be able to bend fairly easily) as big as you want the outer edge of the terrain piece to be.

You may also want to cut a thicker/more solid bit of card to the same shape and size as this to act as the base at the same time.

Then make a small hole in the centre of the card piece, and cut out towards the outer edge, to the diameter you want the inner lip of the crater to be. Then cut around the inner perimeter to give you a shape that should look kind of like the white part of a fried egg, with the yellow yolk removed from the middle.

Then use the cast of centre portion to make a number of thin strips to build up the inner height of the crater. If you made a circular central hole, the easiest thing to do is to cut the central portion into thin pie slices. Then cut them in half if you want to (makes it easier to get a more contour fitting inner wall, but is your choice and can easily be hidden later on if you want to).

Now, match up the base card layer with your egg white layer, and grab a pen and mark on where your inner crater fits on the base, then remove the egg white and start laying the strips around the mark you have made as if you were laying bricks or sandbags. Glue them in place as you go.

Once you have the height right (it is up to you and you can always add more card if you run out of yolk ), glue the egg white onto the base and the wall section.

You should have a pretty acceptable crater then.

You can also then glue on some sand to hide the horrible methods of construction if you want to.

Hope this helps you get some better games

EDIT: Though ArbitorIan's method is way simpler than mine

Save the tops from any bottled water and glue them together to make cheap and easy barrels

just a thought that crossed my mind: when you are serving in iraq, would it be very difficult to send some bullets through thick card maybe layered eaven?
dont now if you get punished for unapropriate gun use, but that way you would get instant craters of a very dynamic look...

Any suggestions on how I would make sandbags or tank traps?

Sandbags are easily made.

DAS is an air drying clay that is reasonably common in craft shops. It can be shaped like clay (keep it moist though) and it does not require baking.

Roll out 'sausages' of it, and slightly flatten it, then add an indentation every inch or so. Cut into strips of so many "sandbags". Flatten the edges a little more and stack up.

Otherwise, you can buy plastic model kit ones in 1/35 scale that work well (although they do get expensive).

Is it really stupid to ask if you have access to some ice cube trays?
Cutting them up make really quick 'Dragon's Teeth' style tank traps.
Or if there is any building work going on nick yourself some cement and make casts.

For sandbags try making small rolls of coarse fabric (medical dressing would be great) dipped in PVA and water.

Good going, Alex! I can get a BUNCH of trauma gauze from our medic, and do that PVA-Water trick.

I've seen lots of great tank-traps made from sprue. Not sure how well PVA would hold them together, but you could probably pin them easily enough with scrap wire, paper clips, etc. If no drill, heat em up and push them through. Then maybe reinforce w/ the pva.

Plastic or medal sprue? Because I've got plenty of plastic cement.

EDIT: I don't know why I even bothered asking that... It would be relatively easy to take plastic sprue, cement it together, paint it, and make tank traps.

Also! No, I don't have Ice Cube Trays. I might be able to pay to get some air-dry modeling clay out here.

A little off topic, but what type of plate carrier are you issued? I'm a military nut. Lol.

Plate carrier???

Alex Kolodotschko wrote:Plate carrier???

im confused by the random pictures!

@ Diesal - If you want to make some nice looking ruins, all i do, is take some card (best if its relatively thivk, but it can work with thin) draw out an ideal ruin shape, and cut it out with a scalpol. Then fold it down the middle, and you have an instant corner of a ruined building!

Then, add sand and seperate floors, and it works out a treat. If that isnt easily explained, ill post some pics and a step by step on the forums?

I've done some guides before on this subject that you might find useful:

http://foxphoenix40k.blogspot.com/2009/03/foamcore-ruins-part-1.html

http://foxphoenix40k.blogspot.com/2009/04/sunday-terrain-piece-1-easy-craters.html

http://foxphoenix40k.blogspot.com/2009/06/terrain-piece-tank-trap-barricades.html

http://foxphoenix40k.blogspot.com/2009/04/sunday-terrain-piece-2-adeptus-astartes.html

Back when I was poor an 40k was all I did (Late 90's, early naughties) I spamed a heap of 'pipes'

Take the cardboard inner cylinders from toilet rolls.
Glue 3 in a stack like pipes stored for use. Then stick to a base (I used plywood)

I had 30 of the buggers and the great thing was from one way there is no way to see through them but you can easily see through at 90 degrees, so we had to really think about flankings and cover.

Plate carrier- a vest issued in the armed forces that holds ballistic plates (Bullet proof vest). It is usually a MOLLE system.

Hm. I like my definition. Haha.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Back when I was poor an 40k was all I did (Late 90's, early naughties) I spamed a heap of 'pipes'

Take the cardboard inner cylinders from toilet rolls.
Glue 3 in a stack like pipes stored for use. Then stick to a base (I used plywood)

I had 30 of the buggers and the great thing was from one way there is no way to see through them but you can easily see through at 90 degrees, so we had to really think about flankings and cover.

This sounds brilliant... I may dip some rolls in Plaster and once their dry stick them together like that. I like how it is simple but yet adds a tactical element to the game. Props for the idea!

Yeah, sounds good.

Sorry, I thought the thread was dead and didn't bother looking back at it. To the poster waaay back, I just recently got issued the IOTV, which is a significant improvement over the OTV and IBA, but it's still a lot of kevlar.

For those of you interested, I've got a blog thread now running, showing the efforts of me and my pals doing stuff with 40K in deployment.

Here's the link. http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/288363.page