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Just wondering what kind of Terrain you guys use for your tables and where do you buy it from?

eBay or pet store; you can check out my 40k and AoS terrain in my gallery for inspiration.

Sometimes you can get creative, for example when I bought commissar Cain from Legiondarion(3rd party), it was slightly bigger in scale, so I went and bought a plinth from dragonforge dot com and made a statue of it; old moonscape: essentially a plastic crater, I painted it and added some debris, then added water effect and let dry in a leveled lidded box to make it into a swamp terrain; fish plants from petsmart: cleaned off mold lines, then based them for jungle floor.

I also highly suggest a couple 6x4 printed mats made from mousepad material from gamemats dot eu or frontline gaming dot org or any mats that might fancy you.

I made a desert themed board (tired of grass fields) and the local pet store helped out a ton. They had sandstone hills, pillars, caves big enough to drive a rhino through, and plateaus. They also had Greek and Mayan looking terrain that blended in well.


Also, a local craft store provided cheap Greek pillars (actually wedding cake decorations).

As for "real" terrain, I picked up some gothic buildings from Pegasus hobbies and some shipping containers from Reaper Miniatures.

Other than that, it's the building ruins and plants from the 40k 3rd edition box set.

A dollar-store. You can get literal armfuls of materials for $20.

Deathray Designs. Their bundles are usually a table worth of very solid functional terrain for about 200$. Best looking mdf on the market imo.

Excommunicatus wrote:A dollar-store. You can get literal armfuls of materials for $20.

the_scotsman wrote:Deathray Designs. Their bundles are usually a table worth of very solid functional terrain for about 200$. Best looking mdf on the market imo.

I love the dichotomy here. Thing is they'll both probably look good.

I used to make it all myself, and I still like to do occasional bits and bobs, but I mostly use the Citadel kits these days, as I have much more disposable income and much less free time than I used to.


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I always think it's a shame when people plough all their time and effort into their armies, then skimp on scenery – personally I'd rather play/see two 1000 pts armies on a beautiful table than 2x2K fighting over a load of books and pop cans.

 UncleJetMints wrote:
Just wondering what kind of Terrain you guys use for your tables and where do you buy it from?

It mostly just accumulates.

I have a bunch of the corner ruins from the 3rd box and the Imperial Guard Battleforce, got a bunch of Miniatures Building Authority stuff at 80% off from a game store that was going out of business in the mid-2000's, built a bunch of Hexagon terrain as part of a group buy from Russia, added a bunch of Sector Mechanicus Terrain from the Shadow War Armageddon box and a Kill Team set, bunch of Imperialis terrain from Kill Team, various foam hills I've made myself, got some forests from Terrains4Games, some stuff is converted out of close-out Christmas Village things I found at Walmart a few weeks into January.

I make it. or rather 3d print it. I bought a Creality Ender 3 for $200 and it has already mnore than paid for itself in money saved making my own zone mortalis terrain vs buying. also have a full Tau city scape and an ork town

The GW terrain is top notch and what I use(d). Though the GF9 Battlefield In a Box is really good and I highly recommend that as well. A friend of mine has some Gamemat.eu terrain and it too is very nice..

Here's my current set:



-Buildings are from Laser Craft Workshop's Sector 38 set. Pretty cheap, good quality MDF buildings.

-Sandbags are from Tamiya, glued to MDF bases.

-Hills are made from 2" sheets of insulation foam, mounted to MDF bases.

-Jungles are a mixture of terrarium plants, aquarium plants, and plastic palm trees from Amazon, repainted and glued to 60mm MDF bases. Those bases then go on larger MDF bases, to allow them to be easily removed so units can occupy the terrain (example).

I think a mix of pre-made (for buildings and other things that need the detail) and scratch-built (for natural surfaces) is the way to go.

Whatever looks cool.

Got a stack of stuff from Gamemat.eu, I have Plastcraft ColorED stuff, Pegasus Gothic buildings, absolutely endless amounts of GW terrain of just about every type, lots of Battlefield in a Box stuff (trees, rivers, rocks).

I try to get as much stuff as possible so I can do themed tables in multiple configurations.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
A dollar-store. You can get literal armfuls of materials for $20.

Hah, I dumpster dive at my employer's IT department. I've hacked dozens of hills and wall segments and ruined buildings out of left-over packing material, cost me nothing but time and paint.

Building sites, to get pink insulation foam board, usually renovations.

Natural terrain is made from upholstery foam, trees from Woodland Scenics.

Buildings? A variety of places - for 40K? TT Combat without exception. Ships free over 100 pounds sterling and is exceptionally cheap compared to other companies

I build my own, that way I can theme it.

I do a lot of Kill Team seek and destroy mission, so I needed detailed interiors that could be revealed one room at a time. My two prototype/ proof of concept buildings revealed that there was a better design, but I couldn't abandon them, so I still intend to finish them. I plan to put up some video of these at some point.

But the new design will be better. Rather than pulling apart, as my prototypes do, the levels will stack. This way I can take them apart without disturbing other terrain. My plan is three ground floor pieces and then ten or so additional levels that stack. Then I can have 3 small building, 2 large buildings or a single sky scraper.

I also built a wych cult arena. I wanted something playable quickly, so I've only built basic tiles yet. They are hex tiles that fit together in various designs. Some tiles are flat while others are tall enough to block LOS. Eventually I'll build a few specialist tiles- some that have gates into holding pens for beasts or other enemies; some will have LEDs and others will be traps.

The key to making cardboard look okay on the tabletop is using cereal box cardboard, nylon mesh screen and drinking straws to build up 3d relief sculpture on the floors and walls.

craggy wrote:

Excommunicatus wrote:A dollar-store. You can get literal armfuls of materials for $20.

the_scotsman wrote:Deathray Designs. Their bundles are usually a table worth of very solid functional terrain for about 200$. Best looking mdf on the market imo.

I love the dichotomy here. Thing is they'll both probably look good.

Ive built and painted about ten tables worth of terrain. The hours it takes me to turn raw materials into anything eben remotely serviceable is not worth the money that buying good looking MDF costs.

I have a dedicated thread for this topic here-

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/782226.page

including links to a variety of companies that make all the different types of terrain

I turned soup cans into a DZC tank farm. Eventually, it was decided that it wasn't a good idea to be using sawed-in-half soup cans as terrain, which may have been sharp and rusty inside.


My terrain is a bunch of plastic hills from a dinosaur playset, plus some barbed wire and sandbags from green army men, plus some painted and carved styrofoam from appliance packaging, and some hedgehoges and towers made from balsa wood.

My terrain comes from every & any source.
*Miniature gaming companies (some make minis+ terrain {like GW}, others just make terrain), assorted toys, model railroad stuff, aquarium terrain, 3e printing....
*Scratch building - materials can literally come from anywhere. Sometimes I'll just take a stroll though an Arts/Crafts store or hardware store browsing for interesting shapes. Though there's alot of foam board represented.

I've taken nearly two years to make two and a half terrain pieces, so, yeah.

I usually build. Check mantic for sales...
But i am eyeing the big new underhive kit now.