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- [ ] Hi all.

- [ ] Well the title sorta says it all. I'm going to attempt to build my first terrain and I am willing to but in a ton of time and effort to make it look great! I will be making it with my brother and my dad, my dad has experience with WWII models and diarammas so the team has some previous experience. I have been painting models and warhammer for a while so my paining skills are pretty good.

- [ ] Anyways... Here is my idea:

- [ ] (Picture of rough layout: http://i.imgur.com/Qyk2h2D.jpg)

- [ ] I have space marines and my brother plays with Orks so I am specifically designing the terrain with the in mind. I am planning on building it on a 4' long by 4' wide sheet of plywood as the base.

- [ ] There will be a river running through the centre of the board with 2 or 3 bridges where units can cross. On one side there will be a Space Marine compound, surrounded by steel walls with spikes and barbed wire on top, a country or guard towers with machine gun / light artillery. Inside the compound there is a room for an armoury where I will have shelves with weapons and armor and some weapon racks. There will also be 2 small jail cells, these are mainly for aesthetics but could be utilized in some kind of rescue a VIP scenario,

- [ ] On the opposite side of the board is the 'Ork Mpuntain Range' where there will be 2 adjacent hills, probably around 8-10' tall. There will be 2-3 layers with ladders to provide access and the 2 hills will be connected at the top by some kind of rope bridge. I will include some features such a small Ork fort to make the area appear more like a settlement rather than a staging ground for an assault.

- [ ] I figure that the majority of fighting will occur close to the river as well as in the open area to the left of the space marine compound. I am going to include some features in this open area to make it less boring and provide cover for units. Eg. Barricades, sand bags, craters, trenches, trees, boulders, etc....

- [ ] Here are some ideas of how I will actually build the terrain...

- [ ] On top of the plywood base I will glue on a 1.5"-2" layer of styrofoam, this will allow me to get the depth I need for the river, as well as other features like trenches and craters. For the Ork hills I was planning on making a 1st layer of 6'' tall foam and glueing on top a smaller, 4'' tall piece of foam . For the Space Marine compound walls I was going to use a table saw to cut exact pieces of 1/4" particle board (5"-6" high) and glue on some flat skinny decorative wood strips (think fancy Popsicle sticks) to give the walls a pattern, to make the indent for the river I was going to use a blow torch ( I saw this done by someone else), not sure what I'm going to use for the water. I saw someone use clear calking, but I would prefer something with a blue tint.

- [ ] So that's the jist of it, I want to start working on it tomorrow so I wanted to make this post to hopefully point out any serious flaws in my plan and offer some helpful tips.

- [ ] Anything helps! All comments welcome!

Looks like a cool plan, but I would keep the terrain modular. While I think the board looks great, having the ability to move terrain around is the best, as you'll be able to change up the battlefield and keep things from getting stale. Also, I'm not sure how many points you guys play at, but I would consider expanding the board to a 6x4 to allow your forces to grow. 4x4 is fine for smaller games - 1000 and below typically, but once you start getting up to 1500+ points fitting all your models onto the table, while still being able to place them strategically could become an issue, especially for orks.

I would also consider putting in a forest or two in the large open areas, and perhaps giving the ork side some walls of their own. Currently, the marines are sitting with all the good cover, and you have a large open killing ground that could make life very frustrating for the orks, as they generally need to get to assault, and their shooting is almost all quite short range.

These are just suggestions, so feel free to use them or ignore them. I really like the idea of the river running through the middle, and I've seen people use a sort of clear gel for their water effects. I think they usually paint the bottom of their riverbed whatever colour they want it to be and then just fill it in. I'm not really sure what it is, so you may want to do a quick Google search.

I also really like the idea of you guys making themed terrain. The ork stuff in particular should be fun to do, as you can go really crazy with it without worrying about whether or not it looks like it would really be practical cover. That's how da boyz do it after all!

Good luck with your project, and be sure to post some pics when you're done!

Thanks for the suggestions Gimble!

For the board size, I decided to go with a smaller board because neither me or my brother have a ton of units right now (probably close to 800-1000 points). Obviously I plan on changing this and growing my army, but for my first terrain build I wanna keep it fairly small for quick battles; and for mobility between mine and my brothers place occasionally.

I definitely like the idea of modular terrain pieces, making things easy to change up and keep fresh. I am definitely going to incorporate this but I'm not sure to what extent yet. Would it be reasonable to make the Space Marine compound a separate modular piece?

I like the idea of incorporating forests into the open space (live and dead trees) to fill it up a bit. I was thinking of possibly including a second entrance into the compound on the left side into the armoury that is less heavily defensed by guard towers and such so it encourages an Ork arrack from that side.

I am planning on including some fortifications and walls for the Ork side, just more scattered and sporadic.

Thanks again for the ideas! I may try to sketch something up tomorrow That is more detailed and post it here when m finished.

I would love to see some in progress pics as you build this board. These sort of intricate diy terrain boards fascinate me. If you don't go for the modular approach I would at the least suggest you make some of your scenery loose so it can be moved from game to game

For water I used stuff I got at a model train store, they're my go to for terrain. If you need basic stuff like rocks, trees, grass, water features, etc

Another suggestion for the forests is to try and make the trees removable for ease of moving models through them. at our store we have what we call "forest pads" that are basically a piece of cardboard or something that's all flocked that represents the forests' boundaries, then he have basically bases with trees on them that we can put on or take off at our liesure. It still looks nice without interfering with gameplay so much.

Spent most of Today planning and stocking up on supplies, I drew up a more detailed layout that I will post up tomorrow morning. I have done some practice with some terrain effects the last couple days.


Tomorrow I am going to start constructing the terrain tomorrow.
I will make most of the feature modular, however I'm still on the fence on whether the Mountains/Hills and/or the space marine compound will be removable/modular.

Tomorrow I am going to paint a base layer on the foam layer I glued on the board. I plan on starting to carve out the mountains/hills tomorrow. At the same time I am going to start making modular Bariccades, trees, brick walls, sand bags etc...

If people I'll interested I gladly keep this thread updated with project progress pics!

Keep the advice/tips coming please!

***UPDATE***

Hey all, as promised here is an update on my project (With Pics!).


Here is an updated/more detailed version of my plan.



Here is the board as of today. The river has been carved in and i put some rocks and sand to give the river bed some texture before adding the "water". I have also placed the mountains/hills and painted them. I cut them out of that same white foam with a hand saw and used a combination of saw, exacto knife, and soldering iron to carve texture into the cliff face, and some on the plateau. It's kinda hard to see in the pic but they turned out great. I will post close up pics once I finish the weathering painting.



Here is the plan I have to do the rest of the non-modular stuff and where/what I'm going to do for the ground.



I have also started to make some of the modular stuff as well.

Here is a barricade I made from scratch...



and a tree I made from scratch...



I have made 1 barricade and 3 trees so far... many more to go! If anyone is interested I will explain how I made the tree and/or barricade, just let me know.

I am looking for suggestions on how to and materials for making the space marine compounds walls, walkways, floors etc...

Comments and Criticism welcome and appreciated!!!!

It looks awesome! Keep the updates coming

Hey guys... Haven't posted an update for a while but this is what the board looks like now...



Almost done, just need to build the Ork base (building a little hut and guard tower) and the space Marine compound. Hoping to be 100% finished by Sunday night.

Looking awesome!

Congratulation! It looks brilliant! Also, no doubt you learnt a lot of skills for expanding the set up.