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As always, impressive, most impressive H.B.M.C.

Cheers,

CB

A question for everyone.

Galeforce 9 makes, as part of their Battlefield in a Box terrain, an Elven Tower, pictured here:


They also make a series of matching pillars, both ruined and intact:


Now, me being me, I of course already own the tower and two sets of pillars - bought 'em years ago! - but I've been wondering how to use them. In the end I decided it would be fun to make them part of the overgrown Eldar terrain for my Deathworld board. I've already got a Webway Gate that I'm going to festoon with creeping vines and braken, and whilst it's very easy to stick the same things to that tower and pillar, one problem remains:

They're very white!

It's a very clean and pristine set of Elf terrain, and I'm wonder how I could go around dirtying it up a bit.

So my question to people with perhaps more painting experience than me (which would be most of you! ):

Would it be as simple as going over these with some various brown and green washes? Contrast paints? How else could I do this to darken these down and make them look older and more weather beaten?

Thanks everyone!

Brown ink with a bit of green ink for moss?

I agree with the poster above - moss & a light wash around the base. Vines or other vegetation would add more 'age' and perhaps fragmented pieces or a broken / shattered base would also help you to define the terrainpiece. Just my 2 cents.

I went down the video hole of YouTube for moss and grime effects, and ended up watching stuff on creating water ripples.

I wonder if you can use Woodland Scenic water ripple stuff straight onto Battlefield in a Box rivers...

A quick google image search for Eldar terrain has lots of examples of weathered white tower pieces that you could draw inspiration from. I had to stop looking before I decided to make some for myself! From what I could see of the pictures there seems to be either a watered down brown wash over the whole thing, or a very light drybrush to give the piece more depth.

I'd just play around with some washes and see what works! Normally I would suggest sponging on some battle damage but as it is Eldar terrain I like to imagine it would be a little more subtle and just yellow slightly over the ages.

Vines and grass tufts would obviously look great, maybe even flowers to add a splash of colour?

H.M.B.C.

This is how I did some of my Eldar ruins:



Cheers,

CB

Sweet. That's actually kinda exactly what I'm going for.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Sweet. That's actually kinda exactly what I'm going for.

Vines were just string unraveled randomly at the end, then sprayed with some spray glue and flock scattered over it. Hang it from a clothes line until dry and bend to fit your terrain and secure with glue.

Chile pepper seeds and static grass on the base.

Hope that helps,

CB

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's been a year... hmm...



I

I'm a big fan of the Quad-Bastion + Landing Pad thing at the top of that shelf in the second pic. There's two an a half Bastions and a Skyshield in that thing. Plus some CoD terrain.

I'd love more pics of that bastion landing pad. I'm already planning to steal your creativity given time and money but that looks amazing

Oh boy... here we go again...



Not sure where to begin with this lot. Also add two Dark Uprising sets to this.

So that is where the world supply of floor tiles has gone!

Out of curiosity, if you stretch the gang stronghold, how long a line can you make?

I'd estimate 14 squares long. Each tile is 6 squares long, so you'd need 3 for a single stronghold, assuming no bends and you put something on every square.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'd estimate 14 squares long. Each tile is 6 squares long, so you'd need 3 for a single stronghold, assuming no bends and you put something on every square.

How big is a square?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'd estimate 14 squares long. Each tile is 6 squares long, so you'd need 3 for a single stronghold, assuming no bends and you put something on every square.

How big is a square?

You can't ask that It's a new measurement device used for Killteam. Circles, Squares, Triangles and all other shapes are the new norm.

Squares on the necromunda tiles are 2"

What do you have planned for all of those kits? I could see them all combining nicely to make a giant entrance to the Hive City itself.

 Commander Cain wrote:
What do you have planned for all of those kits? I could see them all combining nicely to make a giant entrance to the Hive City itself.

The idea is to make the front half (or thereabouts) of two different fortresses.

One will be more solid, taller and built up, representing the front of a Enforcer Precinct Bastion. The other will be a little more ramshackle and asymmetrical, being a gang stronghold. Each of these will be spread across 3 tiles, and use two stronghold kits each (plus whatever else I need to make them work). Behind the walls will just be some random gubbinz and bits and what not - barrels, containers, crates, weapon racks, etc,.

The other tiles will then be a collection of various terrain bits - generators, some higher levels - but generally not your typical Zone Mortalis stuff. I don't need this terrain to perform the function of what most people do with Zone Mortalis terrain. I already have tons of the original Newcromunda card tiles (both original and Badzone Delta) plus I have this, and that takes care of Zone Mortalis games. This is for variety and to allow a kind of "2Fort" fight over no man's land between two fortresses.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the stronghold bits...
Mostly to steal ideas

Nice, I was wondering if you were going to build some of these. Are you planning on gluing the stronghold down to the tiles?

That's a great sounding idea! Two opposing forts over a wall/debris strewn field could end up looking like a Unreal tournament/Halo multiplayer CTF style board. That would be a fun skirmish game, both sides trying to infiltrate the forts or something like that.

I'm very interested to see how you work everything in with your extensive terrain creativity.

So... I'm unsure of what to do with some terrain pieces.

Aside from the "Industrial Insanity", there are a few other terrain projects that are part of my overall goal to massively level up my terrain.

Two such boards are a very Chaos-themed board, and a Deathworld board. Now the Deathworld side of things is covered by the actual Deathworld plant terrain GW sells/sold, plus a Realmshaper Engine, two boxes of these to bulk out the forest/jungle side of things, an Eldar Web Gate and some Battlefield in a Box Elf terrain that I plan on dirtying up. Combined with a bunch of vines and bracken, I can make them look fine. I think! But the Deathworld board can't just be ancient Eldar ruins, so I want to do some old human ruins, equally covered in vines and whatnot. I have tons of leftover Cities of Death stuff that I could easily repurpose, but I'm not sure it has enough of an ancient look.

So, part of me thinks I could achieve an ancient dilapidated and "reclaimed by nature" aesthetic with this terrain (dirtied up and with a healthy amount of added vegetation):


That's the original Warcry boxed set terrain, for those who can't place it. I have two full sets (because of course I do!).

However, as I mentioned above, I want to do a Chaos-themed board as well with a volcanic style mat to look like a blasted wasteland. Up until recent that board was not coming along that well because it mostly consisted of this and a full ring of Dreadhold terrain. Dreadhold terrain is huge, and if you use too much of it on a single board it kind of dominates the entire table. Luckily I have four of the ruined pieces to break things up a bit, allowing me to keep the full fortress for special scenarios and whatnot, but it means that the rest of the table is decidedly bare.

Thankfully, the kind fools at Games Workshop have seen fit to grace us with this spectacular set of terrain from the new Warcry box:


I have managed to secure two sets of this terrain (and just the terrain), meaning I can do a kind of "Chaos mine" table, with it set up around the ruins of an old fortress wall.

So, do I combine this with the original War Cry stuff to go Full Chaos with everything, or keep that stuff for the non-Eldar side of the overgrown Deathworld board? Or is there a third option, such as taking all the spiky barricades from the set (which I'll have 4 of, as the Red Harvest terrain comes with 1 sprue of this per set as well), and start adding that to regular Cities of Death terrain along side whatever Chaos stuff I still have in my bitz box to make Chaos-i-fied Imperial terrain? It's what I plan to do with some terrain when making an Ork table.

I also think it would be fun, given that it's a mining operation, to spruce up the Chaos table with some GF9 Blood Crystals, as if that was what they're mining, and even a Blood River, as that can work really well with some of the Red Harvest terrain acting as a bridge.

So I need to know what to do with the OG Warcry terrain, because splitting it could leave too little for either table, and I like to be able to make two different tables out of any terrain type I have (eg. I own about two tables worth of desert terrain, of mountain/forest/river terrain, or Martian terrain, and so on), to avoid having one biome always be the same whenever we use it.

Thoughts?

Wow, the warcry terrain is super cool. The ruins look sigmarite in origin, so they clash a bit with the obviously chaosy mine.

However, the mine could of course have been built long after the sigmarite city was conquered by chaos, and it sounds like you need more buildings for that table, so I would go for that option.

Not a fan of the blood stuff, it looks very cartoony compared to the grimdark AOS stuff. Could be salvaged with paint though.

If you already have a realmshaper and eldar buildings in the jungle, a third, totally different kind of ruin might break immersion. A better option there might be an imperial research outpost or similar.

I think you could combine the two sets as a former Sigmarite town conquered by chaos. The bottom of some of the newer set has building parts that match the first set. so start your your board with one side being a river or uncovered vein of the chaos mineral that is being mined and have it slowly transition over to the remains of a Sigmar stronghold. The original warcry set has a lot of building parts that have iron grills on it the doors. That would make a nice "Bank" to store the accumulated wealth, or a prison to lock up the slaves they use to mine the minerals. The more solid features of the first set would provide cover and a good stronghold for the warband running the camp, as well as an alarm/lunch bell for the gang.

I'm not too much of a fan of the other terrain that you showed through the links. Sorry, they are just not to the same quality of style as the other two sets.

Edit: another cool idea might be make the mining set with 4 supports in the corner and maybe a central support as well so that the sigmar village can be on a board above it with lights underneath it to give the lower level a cave-like feel.

Ooooh, I love that second idea with multi-level board. Takes the build difficulty up by a lot of course. A slightly easier option in the same vein would be to have the mine inside a hollow mountain, with the city and fortress outside

And for the record - none of this will be for AoS.

 Illumini wrote:
If you already have a realmshaper and eldar buildings in the jungle, a third, totally different kind of ruin might break immersion. A better option there might be an imperial research outpost or similar.

I don't intend to use them all at the same time in a single game.

The idea is to be able to vary up the terrain so that my "Deathworld" board isn't always "Deathworld with Eldar Ruins" board. It's "Deathworld w/Imperial Ruins" or "Deathworld w/Eldar Ruins".

I agree that these GF9 kits do look a bit naff. All your other ideas sound really good tho. Chaos mine makes me think of the various evil archaeology done in Dan Abnett's books.

Two possible Deathworld boards...we salute you H.B.M.C.

Cheers,

CB

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
I agree that these GF9 kits do look a bit naff. All your other ideas sound really good tho. Chaos mine makes me think of the various evil archaeology done in Dan Abnett's books.

Evil Archaeology is now my official hobby.