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Does anyone know if GW ever produced any scenery/terrain making tutorials for BFG in White Dwarf? If so, what numbers?

Also, if anyone could point me in the direction of some good online tutorials, I would be much obliged. I have my two fleets now and my space mat from Eric Hotz arrived today so I just need the terrain to go on it. I have seen various pictures of moons made from ping pong balls, asteroids made from BBQ lava rock but some step by step guides on how to make it would be good.

I have a useful one for planets and moons.

For planets I used an old tennis ball or similar, stripped it of the fluffy stuff and painted it up and slapped it onto a flight stand.

For moons I just painted up a gold ball attached to a stand

Those hard foam balls they sell in craft stores make excellent planets.

Asteroid fields are easily represented with gravel rocks(or BBQ rocks) scattered about felt strips of appropriate dimensions. Gas clouds can be done the same way, obviously in bright colors.

I'd like to eventually get around to making BFG terrain, but they're far behind all the other terrain I need to make first.

In the interim, I use felt of different colors - grey for asteroids, blue for gas and dust clouds, black for warp rifts, etc. This allows me to cut the felt to the average dimensions recommended in the rulebook, and they clearly outline the borders of the terrain feature.

Sure, it looks 2d, but its functional.

I've seen people take pink foam and cut them into irregular shapes (make em look like rocks and asteroids), carve out divots and holes, and then stick them onto flight stands. I'll eventually do that, and put them on the felt.

The others above covered pretty much the basics of the terrain. I think there might also have been basic tuts in the BFG rulebook and Warp Storm as well as WD.

The best is still 2D images on card. This makes game play much simpler and depending on your images they can look pretty decent. The problem with 3D terrain is that it makes areas were the ships should be able to move but can not (planets most notably).

But you can't move through planets, unless you are using the Low Orbit rules.

Actually you can, its assumed that your moving over/ under the planet. Pg 45 BBB "ships may move "through" a planet (by moving over/ under it). With 3D terrain its also more difficult at times to place the ships withon asteroid fields/ gas dust clouds etc. additionally with templates you can cut them to the exact dimensions which helps my OCD (a 5 cm by 5 cm area should be a perfect square, and i know in nature it would not be like that but this is what i have to deal with! amorphus blobs drive me insane).

I'm using Lego kits from the new star wars stuff for Mobil Frame zero. They come with mini planets and a DEATH STAR. We use them all the time.

filbert wrote:Does anyone know if GW ever produced any scenery/terrain making tutorials for BFG in White Dwarf? If so, what numbers?

Also, if anyone could point me in the direction of some good online tutorials, I would be much obliged. I have my two fleets now and my space mat from Eric Hotz arrived today so I just need the terrain to go on it. I have seen various pictures of moons made from ping pong balls, asteroids made from BBQ lava rock but some step by step guides on how to make it would be good.

For moons, planetoids and asteroids you can buy foam balls of various sizes from most craft stores.

Use a knife or a hot knife to carve out some craters.

Then paint with textured paint to seal.

Once dry you can spraypaint/airbrush/hand paint it to desired colors.


If you are looking for quick asteroid fields cut out some felt shapes and then spray point a handful of real rocks to go on the felt to make an asteroid field(area terrian approach). You can see what I mean here:



If you dont mind 2D you can buy posters or oversized astronomy books (s0metimes found in the discount bin) or print out stellar bodies from the webs and then cut out the planets, etc. You can mount them on plasticard or laminate them for durability.

Found some polystyrene balls in various sizes in Hobbycraft which look like they will do well as planets/moons. Now to work out how best to paint them so they don't look utter crap

filbert wrote:Found some polystyrene balls in various sizes in Hobbycraft which look like they will do well as planets/moons. Now to work out how best to paint them so they don't look utter crap

Im sure you can find tuitorials, but I would paint them a base color and then choose some lighter tones to drybrush around in circular motions to give the impression of clouds/atmosphere.

You can also get nice effects with an airbrush and even spray cans if you careful.

Post some pics of your planets when you get them done.

OK so a quick and dirty update of how my terrain is going. Some (low quality!) pics below:

My moon:



Asteroid clusters - made from BBQ lava rocks - awaiting painting next



And my large planet with the moon for comparison (obviously needs painting too!):



I did notice that some people prefer to cut the large planet balls in half so you half a hemisphere on the table rather than a globe but I preferred to keep it whole and intact.

Nice. Thats a reall big moon . Having half balls makes it easier to determine where the planet edge is for manuvering, grav well, etc... Are your bases going to incorporate some sort of template to determine these?

A pretty cool tutorial for 2D space painting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nOE6g0G63Q&feature=player_embedded#!

AndrewChristlieb wrote:Nice. Thats a reall big moon . Having half balls makes it easier to determine where the planet edge is for manuvering, grav well, etc... Are your bases going to incorporate some sort of template to determine these?

Well, BFG is fairly elastic with scale anyway so I figured it didn't matter that much It can either be a moon or a small planetoid I suppose. Unfortunately, these size polystyrene balls were the only sizes that Hobbycraft did so I kind of rolled with what they had.

I haven't read the rules on gravity and all that jazz yet so I'm not sure how they will fit into the larger game beyond being a bit of scenery so I will have to think about that later. I'm still on scenario one at the moment