Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I talked my roommate into returning to the 40k hobby, and now we are trying to figure out how to play at home so we can test out our lists (read: watch a bunch of golden obliterate my Knights) before going into a shop and playing against other humans.

Our issue is that our battles are all taking place on the Forgeword of Progresso ... where giant cans of soup are prepared and sent into the void to feed the forces of the Imperium.

We don't have much in the way of financial support for terrain, but we want to at least attempt to create a mockup of what we will be facing at our local FLGS/Warhammer Shop.

Any advice?

Honestly, if you have old soup cans - buy some rattle can primer, spray paint primer black, then a dark red, then a lighter orange or red (from above). Then you can either make a homemade wash with some cheap black acyrlic paint and water and a bit of dish soap (or brown).

You can do this with any colors of paint too. Check home depot/lowes, whatever for the abandoned paint samples and try and get two that are close or similar. Paint it mostly the darker color, then drybrush the other one. Most recycling that is plastic can be turned into landing pads or what not. talk to friends about having extra insulation foam or even styrofoam (although that may be more trouble than it is worth.

Other good tubes include whiskey containers (the tube type that surrounds a whiskey bottle), long match containers, plus those that sometimes come with popcorn or other things. The more sturdy the cardboard box (not like amazon box, although layers of that can make terrain too - all you need is glue and either paper mache type substance or pre mixed grout.

[b]EDITED: I realized you wanted to do something similar to the mock ups for warhammer official set ups. In that case, thicker cardboard glued together and smashed under heavy books to stop warping, then glued in L shapes and T shapes can be good 'ruins" if covered in gesso/glue paint combo and then painted to look like walls.

Honestly you may just have more luck dropping some money on good foamboard for the same look with less warping worries.

I could go on and on if you'd like. What do you have access to?

Get hold of a copy of "Terrain Essentials by Mel Bose". It's not super expensive and its a massive treasure trove of terrain building methods, skills advice and more!

He also runs his own youtube channel ,but I'd heartily recommend the book itself. I think its probably one of if not the best terrain book out there for models (at least for wargames in the scifi-fantasy market without leaning into the world of, say, hornby railways)

Easiest an cheapest? For me I live in a Condo building with a place where everyone puts their recycling out. Raid the bin for plastic tubs, containers and Amazon boxes. Hot glue and grey spray paint can go a long way. Especially with Carboard boxes cut up to look like ruined buildings.

https://youtu.be/3kZVVOPqwjA?feature=shared

This video show a great base ruin, which can be made with foam board, like in the video, or cardboard (like Amazon boxes).

There is further video to improve on this base ruin if you so desire.

The are quick, cheap and easy and also look good with a spray, wash and dry brush using cheap craft paints.

I build a whole table and they are great for play

Edit - The video is Terrain Tutor, who is Mel Bose as mentioned earlier

Thanks for the help!

I don't have access to a gluegun, but it might be a good purchase in the future.

I'm going to raid a couple Amazon boxes tonight. I can't use most of the soup cans... as they still are full.

I've got a lot of good ideas stewing for our own tabletop battlefield.

Cork floor tiles, sharp blade, ruler, varnish (for stability/fixing) gets you cheap scenery like this...

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/176836722844961771/

stroller wrote:
Cork floor tiles, sharp blade, ruler, varnish (for stability/fixing) gets you cheap scenery like this...

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/176836722844961771/

Cool. We need some if those.

You can make terrain out of all sorts of things with a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking.

The Terrain Tutor videos and the Terrain Essentials book, as previously mentioned, are fantastic resources.

Scratchbuilding and kitbashing terrain from assorted bits and pieces is also something of a passion of mine... You can also find a whole slew of my terrain building ideas on the MEdge website here - https://www.maelstromsedge.com/93/Terrain%20Building%20Articles/

Several quite nice flat-packed card stock scenery sets out there now. While they may be a bit more expensive than the basic construction materials, they tend to come pre-coloured saving a lot of time and effort on the decoration front.

These guys for instance https://battlesystems.co.uk/product-category/terrain/sci-fi/

Plast Craft Games had some great stuff but they seem to have folded.

 Flinty wrote:

Plast Craft Games had some great stuff but they seem to have folded.

Yes, sadly they went out of business a few years ago, although you can still find some of their stuff sitting in webstores.

 Overread wrote:
Get hold of a copy of "Terrain Essentials by Mel Bose". It's not super expensive and its a massive treasure trove of terrain building methods, skills advice and more!

He also runs his own youtube channel ,but I'd heartily recommend the book itself. I think its probably one of if not the best terrain book out there for models (at least for wargames in the scifi-fantasy market without leaning into the world of, say, hornby railways)

I have exactly the opposite advice. I picked this book up and it was ok, but was mostly about making the sort of natural features that are unlikely to feature in a 40k battle. It seemed to tilt toward terrain that is more appropriate for a model railway. I'm a terrain nut and probably the book's intended audience but I sold the book off fairly quickly after it arrived.

Either of the previous GW terrain books (now both OOP unfortunately) had information that was much more useful for 40k.

@Lathe_Biosas

If you're building for 40k, your best bet is to look at the myriad tutorials on youtube. You name it, there's a tutorial there for you.

A few other things.

My personal favorite terrain site is: http://www.ironhands.com/
Lots of great advice and projects on cheap terrain.

Very fast-assembling and affordable terrain kits are here: https://ttcombat.com/
They have relatively simple and very affordable MDF versions of almost all the GW gaming terrain types. It would be relatively cheap and quick to make a version of your local club game table at your home.

Lastly, just about the quickest and easiest terrain project you can do is rocks using mattress foam (I recommend alley couch cushions if they don't smell bad), torn into sections, painted black and then drybrushed and highlighted. A version of that is here...
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2012/08/terrain-tutorial-caverns-and-rocks-fas/
...though I have since changed my advice to say use craft or housepaint rather than spray paint as it's much more flexible and less brittle.

Has anyone used one of those neoprene mats that I see for sale?

I'm thinking of hunting one down so Fort Progresso will look a little cooler.

Neoprene mats are very popular, if you can pay a little more get a double-sided one so you can have two options. They cost more than a single but less than two separate ones.

 Quixote wrote:
Has anyone used one of those neoprene mats that I see for sale?

I'm thinking of hunting one down so Fort Progresso will look a little cooler.

I usually turn up my nose at pricy gaming accessories, but neoprene mats really are nice. They look great, protect your minis from scratches and are nice and flat. I recommend one that has less obvious features. I have several and the ones with obvious features tend to get used less.

For a budget option, a wool army blanket (especially coarse brown or dark green) is a great surface. I use my grandfather's army blanket for gaming often. A tight weave grey wool blanket actually stands in well for concrete.

One of my favorite mats is actually a piece of tie dye pattern fleece from the fabric shop. The tan color is one of the best looking desert mats I've ever seen and the fleece texture really looks like sand. It's also very cheap.
This is the one I bought.
https://www.joann.com/p/tonal-tie-dye-blizzard-fleece-fabric/16905283.html

This is an age old wargaming question...

The easiest is books in order of size stacked to make hills under a non slippery bedsheet. Rocks on top hold it in place and make basic terrain.

From there go wild. Small diameter pipes glued together and sprayed to be those pipe piles you see in so many films. Childrens toys (spaceships) from charity shops, cut down to be crashed/ruined and then sprayed.

Buy cheap long haired teddy bears, spray them a few shades of yellow and green, skin then and you have fields.

Polystyrene. Cool shapes, a hot knife, cooler shapes, cover in cheap textured paint (if you want to get fancy paint with filler to get rid of polystyrene marks), spray. Now its whatever.

Sheets of insulation and a hot knife/wire cutter.

Good for hills, cliffs, crystal/ice outcroppings.

Styrofoam balls and toothpicks; retro-cacti.

Packing stuff makes great found object terrain.

If you want cheap, functional, and fast I think ruined buildings made of cardboard + hot glue is a safe bet. In fact it's so cheap and fast you could use it as a placeholder while you construct nicer terrain, without feeling too bad throwing it out later on.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
If you want cheap, functional, and fast I think ruined buildings made of cardboard + hot glue is a safe bet. In fact it's so cheap and fast you could use it as a placeholder while you construct nicer terrain, without feeling too bad throwing it out later on.

Currently, Fort Progresso is planned to have a very plain (desert themed) neoprene mat (when it comes in) with some spray painted soup cans and some cardboard attached to them.

A stop-gap until we can work on something better. Fort Progresso is mainly for Kill Team and Combat Patrol.

There's no shame in serving tours of duty at Fort Progresso.

Have you considered dressing things up with a Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue or two?



https://www.maelstromsedge.com/50/Terrain/

You could also use some Mantic starship doors (I make good use of these myself)



https://www.manticgames.com/terrain-crate/sci-fi-terrain-crate/scifi-doors/

 KidCthulhu wrote:
There's no shame in serving tours of duty at Fort Progresso.

Have you considered dressing things up with a Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue or two?



https://www.maelstromsedge.com/50/Terrain/

You could also use some Mantic starship doors (I make good use of these myself)



https://www.manticgames.com/terrain-crate/sci-fi-terrain-crate/scifi-doors/

Wasn't really familiar with maelstrom's edge. Didn't know if the setting was the same scale as 40k.

But I'll have to look into it.