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What are some terrain pieces I could fairly easily scratch build for 40k games?

easiest terrain is a couple of cans with some card board and some card board ruins. if your after totally easy. just make the cans in to storage vats by putting some card board around them to make up a gantry and add a ladder. for the ruins it's a case of just cutting out a simple building then cutting it up to make multiple ruined buildings.

I'm looking for something moderately difficult. I am familiar with using the Pepakura Viewer for making an Ultramarine helmet, and I'd be able to make something a little more complex with cardboard. I'm thinking of making some small-ish boulders and rocks for an outdoor/ rural theme. Any suggestions?

Hills carved out of styrofoam, use a serrated steak knife if you don't have a hot wire cutter.

Trees made out of wire twisted together, wrap in masking tape spray brown, add glue and dunk it in some coarse turf if you want leaves.

Buildings made out of cereal box cardboard.

Buildings made out of styrofoam electronics packaging.

Cut boulders from styrofoam. Carve until a random potato shape.

Foam insulation board is a good material for making things like hills and rock spires.

Grimdork is really good at spotting things to use for terrain, it's worth checking out his Dakka P&M blog. Has a lot of pics of them as WIPs which helps. For example:

A plastic bottle of some kind turned into a fuel container tower thingie:


A pill container made into a bin:

Thanks for the suggestions! I guess I'll just find objects to use as terrain and paint/ cut/ glue them into terrain!

Not rural, but 2 bottle caps glued together, maybe with a plasticard strip along the middle, make very simple barrels.

you can get some pretty interesting effects with mixing different types of glues also


the thin spots on this are just a layer of white glue, topped with a layer of superglue while still wet, and the more raised, bubbled up parts are just gorilla glue allowed to bubble and expand

For cheap & easy 40K buildings, use the shaped polystyrene packaging from electronics goods. PC World might let you dig through their bins for the packaging from the display models.