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A few friends and I (mainly me) were getting bored of playing with random junk laying around as terrain. So driving around the neighborhood I found some giant Styro-Foam packaging pieces from a refrigerator. quickly scooping them up me an my friends start plotting on what we will do with it. We decided to make a planet strike kind of battlefield (since everyone's army is about 3000+) out of the over-sized pieces. So a month and about 25 tutorials later we got this. I added some pieces since these were taken but they are very minor (barbed wire, paint, stuff like that). If you guys have any ideas please feel free to comment.

Lots of pictures. hope this helps.











Cont.












The 2 sides together now.














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Some of the problems were that there was allot of bottle necking to the point of were infantry couldn't move up because a tank rolled a 6 and became impassable terrain. also those choke points were being clogged with infantry so tanks couldn't move up.

Try spraying them with textured spray paint from about half a meter back. I think they will look great!

Yeah add texture isn't really strong point as you can tell with the flock fail. But in the second to last picture there is a shoe on the bottom edge. This is the area that is problematic. these choke points are a pain. Basically I was defending against a 2600 point imperial guard army. Deploying 12 inches from the edge of the board would put the far reaches on the ribs of the field. These gaps i made are large enough to fit a land raider or 2 chimeras through with relative ease. But having a chimera explode right in the middle of the gap and the buildings and becoming a giant cork to stem the tide really limited the game allot. I could potentially add something that if knocked down would provide an alternate route through the ribs.

Doesn't the spray paint melt this sort of styrofoam? I could be wrong, but my buddy showed me a styrofoam ball that just shrank into a terrible looking blob after spraying it.

Sweet! Love your styrofoam buildings, glad to see I'm not the only one using them!


//Edge

Most spray paint will eat Styrofoam, but I know that there are some of the textured spray paints that are okay (no idea what kind.. something to play with and try out?).

If you're going to spray, 'paint' the entire area with white glue (elmers and the like.. don't bother with the more expensive 'craft glues'). IF the entire thing is coated in glue, you shouldn't have a problem. With such a large area of foam, you'd probably be better off painting the entire thing with an airbrush. It won't hurt the foam, it's much quicker than trying to coat everything with white glue, and will be quite a bit cheaper, assuming you have an airbrush already.

I'm not sure, but if you do coat the entire thing with acrylic paint with an airbrush, it might give enough protection to then use spray paints without damage to the foam. I don't really know, as I've never tried it, so I would test that out on a scrap piece and then be very careful that you don't miss any spots with the air brush.

I usually don't like foam terrain, but that one looks pretty good. Texture will help a lot.

If you want to have fun with craters, try playing with a little spray paint to melt the foam.. gives interesting effects, but practice on a scrap piece first, as it's not forgiving if you make a mistake, and as always, ventilation is your friend. I can only guess that melting foam and spray paint is going to off-gas some nasty stuff.

Yeah I have used spray paint on the road and all of the craters by the bunker. PVC glue will eat through it like no other but it will leave the whole area coated in glue and melted plastic. I am planning on going and buying lots of glue and putting a layer of fine sand down. after that i plan on putting flock on it for some grass effects. Me and my friends decided that this fortress is a ruin so all of those ribs will get some damage to them so the infantry can hop over them.

Try coating it with a watered down elmers glue then you should be able to spray paint it.

Or better yet you can go get some black crafts paint then cover all of it with that and then you can can spray paint and flock to your hearts desire cause that makes a film on it so you can spray it.

I also found this out the hard way lol.

yeah i have severl options that I learned I could do. but this still doesn't fix the choke points. any ideas on how to lessen the effect of choke points cause by terrain?

Garvil_Loken wrote:any ideas on how to lessen the effect of choke points cause by terrain?

Yeah: Don't build a table with a choke point

Seriously this table is designed to have one, so don't fight it, embrace it and make it a scenario table. Come up with an ATTACKER/DEFENDER scenario that gives more points to the attacker perhaps and some other special scenario rules and have fun with it for a bit.

A fixed table like this is better for special scenario games.

I would paint the whole thing in wood glue and texture it with sand, etc. for durability and then you can go to town painting/drybrusing/washung/weathering it, etc.

Nothing like finding perfectly shaped chunks of styrofoam. As for the choke point, could you perhaps turn those 2 bunkers sideways then carve away some of the sloping wall section to widen the gap? I also recommend painting with watered-down PVA before spraying. Craft paints will also cover, but they don't protect the surface quite as well. Just make sure you do end up texturing everything, otherwise it will always look like styrofoam packaging, no matter how nicely it's painted. I've had good luck using spackle/drywall filler in a thin layer, then texturing it with a coarse brush or sponge. Paint watered-worn PVA over it for strength and you're ready to prime and paint. Sand will work just fine for the ground. Broken wall sections add character (sprue rubble FTW!) and give infantry a bit more flexibility in their approach. Good luck!

I think the best bet would be to give the Styrofoam a thin coat of Spackle/Joint compound. It will give it a nice concrete texture and let you spray or paint to your hearts content. It's easy and inexpensive to do.

@ Shellfishguy: Spackle/ joint compound? whats that?

@CT Gamer: yeah I guess that's my fault. my fortress is just so successful at keeping at enemies out.

@Oadie: Yeah I'll give it a try. Those bunkers were really filler so guys just didn't mowed over from fire. But one thing you said was to use sprue rubble. do you just use the left over sprues as struts or collums or something?

Very creative and easy terrain, nice job

Nice job on the terrain, hopefully it looks awesome when it;s painted. But, if I where you I would get either blue or pink insalation foam for your next prject its a lot cleaner then the white stuff and it will look a little better.

Yeah but the price was right for the styro-foam. yeah I am looking forward to painting it. still I am trying to figure out how to lessen the number of game debilitating choke points.

Actually come to think of it this would probably be great for a Death Squad table.

You've done a great job recycling Styrofoam from trash into cool terrain.

All you need now is a quick paint job to make it sparkle. There's no use doing anything elaborate because that ruins the point of making it quick and cheap.

Sp you want to spray paint it but first you need to seal the surface with something or the spray paint will melt the plastic.

The surface can be sealed by painting on a layer of cheap acrylic craft paint or household paint (emulsion) mixed with PVA glue thinned with a bit of water, and some fine sand added. This gives it a texture.

Slop it on all over and smoosh it around with a cheapo house painting brush. The sand will help fill the little crevices between the styrene granules. Try to make it as smooth as possible, or else use the brush drag marks as part of your design.

Leave it to dry 24 hours then you can spray the whole lot really quickly using whatever spray you want. If you choose the base cost and the spray colours well, you will be able to give it some shadowing and weathering just by the way you spray the top coat. For example, two shades of grey, or two shades of desert yellow/brown.

If you want to get fancy you can do roads and designs by cutting out a stencil and spraying a second colour.

Finally you can paint on any details like craters and road markings by hand using ordinary paint.

Make sure to post your results in the Gallery!

If you neatly cut out some sections of the dividing walls, you can make them removable. Say a hit from a heavy weapon or two, or a ram from a large tank, breaks it down so that you can carry on through. Also with a wrecked vehicle, maybe make a rule that special grenades, demo packs etc can destroy the wreck sufficiently, and vehicles with dozer blades can move wrecks?

@kilkrazy: Thanks for the info. I might just do some of that. I think I have a bag of fine sand laying around here somewhere. I am going to try and get my friend to help me with putting the glue and sand on. In some of the tutorials I have heard that you put an ink layer over the sand to help strengthen the glue. Since I don't have any ink paint what can I use instead. Spray paint? or just go over it with a thin paint?

@Million: That's a great idea with the grenades and stuff. The situation that happened to me was that I destroyed the only vehicle with a dozer blade. But the grenades could work. I was possibly looking into making some of the wall section into gates that are bared on the inside and could be broken down but I don't know really how I would do it. I must think more on this subject.

@Dysturbed: Whats a death squad table? I have never heard of this before. But then again I am still learning the finer details of the game.

If i put a layer of sand and glue down and paint it would i need to seal it as well as the rest of the board?