Makos terrain log

I made some concrete walls from styrofoam, wire and plasticard.



Due to the angles in the bases they can be arranged in different ways.



To make the enclosed areas a little more accessible I added some breakthroughs.



I also added some shelling damage and details to break the monotonous appearance. I might go ahead and also add some posters or graffiti later.

 

I saw a nice video on youtube on how to make transport pallets from coffee stirring sticks.

You consctruct the pallets, load the pallet with styrofoam boxes or barrels and then cover the pile of cargo with some fabric that is then stiffened with PVA glue and you get some nice pieces of scatter terrain.

So I started with the pallets. A razor saw came in really handy. I glued the individual pieces together using PVA glue and once dried I simply washed the wood with nuln oil with varying degrees of water mixed into it.





I also used a nail to punch small holes in places where "real" pallets would also have nails and then I washed those places with sepia to imitate rust from those nails. I am not sure whether the effect is visible in the picture but it is there.

The next step will be to stack pieces of box shaped styrofoam and then to cover these piles with gaze or tissue paper soaked in PVA glue to create the illusion of cargo and equipment covered with tarps. I am still not sure for what kind of fabric I should go, as gaze is tried and tested in this application but the effect often is quite rough and not that of a military grade tarp in this scale.

If anybody has any ideas I am open to suggestions :)

 

So, I am done with the paletts and the cargo. For the tarps I used tissue paper (for cleaning your nose) that I drenched in a mixture of PVA glue, water and camo green acrylic color.

I am quite happy with the result. Unfortunately due to the shrinkage you are sometimes able to see some of the styrofoam boxes underneath the tarp where the tarp ends. But for you average angle onto the battlefield it shouldnt be noticeable. And who knows, maybe the boxes are just white?

 

So I went ahead and started a modular board. I stole this idea and the layout shamelesly from this thread https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/new-modular-table.41440/

Now I started by buying the wooden boards. I thought I chose those least warped, but they still had some bad warping, so I tried to couteract that by using water and PVA glue as well as weights :D
It worked for 3 of those 4 boards, but for some reason the last one wont budge.



Then I marked out the general layout. As mentioned before, I really like the one used in the other thread and just copied it.

Ignore the toe​

Then I went ahead and drilled two holes in each boardside to fit small magnets in each. If you slot in the magnets accordingly it lets you keep the modularity and flexibility of the different combination possibilities but adds some sturdiness to the assembled board. I dont want the individual segments to shift just because I rocked against an edge by accident.

Then I bought some 5mm styrofoam board and glued the shapes of the sidewalks and raised areas onto the segments. DUe to the shape of the styrofoam boards that I had available to me I had to fill in some gaps, but as soon as the glue had dried I was able to just cut the overlapping part off.



And thats where I am at the moment.



The next step will be to add the magnets.
Then I will score the raised styrofoam to simulate pavement slabs.
For the roads I did some research on youtube and I will try and use fine grout. It has a nice texture, finer than fine sand bit still noticeable and I think it might give a good appearance of asphalt.

And then on to painting...

 

Yeah, I actually had a look at some in my local hardware store. They werent available in the 24x24 inches squares, so I would have had to order them probably. However, the main reason I decided against it was that I was afraid of them being to light and flimsy. However, knowing what amount of pain in the back correcting the warping in the boards was, I might go for it next time.
I see this as a trial, I am actually also not really convinced of the styrofoam I used for the walkways. It is quite soft, which isnt a problem if you are a bit carefull, but I dont want to spend building something over the course of 3 weeks and then having to toss it after a year due to bits coming of. But ill see I guess.

 

Soooo, I am finally done.

The next step after my last post was to add the magnets to the holes that I already drilled. I used standard 2x3mm neodym magnets that I also use to magnetize the bases of my miniatures, and for that they are really sturdy I and imagined that they would add some grip and "adhesion" to the assembled board. But to be frank I could have skipped the whole drilling and magnetizing step, as you dont really notice it. Maybe the contact surface isnt good enough or the magnets, though suitable to secure my models, arent really strong enough in relation to the boards. But well, lesson learned.

Then I scored all the boards to simulate the pavement.

Afterwards I applied the grout to the roads. This was quite stressful since it was quite difficult to hit the sweet spot of moisturization for the grout so that I would be able to spread it out wihtout it hardening in the process. To be honest, should I ever do something like that again I will just use the good old PVA glue and fine sand. And the texture turned out quite rough and irregular, for a utopian sci-fi setting the roads of my city are quite bad :D it got to a point where I thought that maybe I can add some effect that will stress this sort of decay and show signs of maintenance of the roads, just like I see it when I look out of my appartment window, like this:




So now the individual modules looked like this:



The I gave the pavement some structure using the tinfoil ball which worked nicely due to the relative softness of the styrofoam. Afterwards I primed tall of the modules using a light grey waterbased spraycan. However, even though I used a matte color this layer of color worked like a varnish, which on the one hand gave the soft styrofoam some needed strength, but on the other hand created a really smooth surface that prevented me from washing the pavement and therefore breaking up the monotonous surface by washing the small holes created by the tinfoil ball. The wash just wouldnt stick but form thick droplets. So I skipped the wash on the pavement and just used some darker grey tone to shade the edges of the slabs. I also added some basic markings to the roads in yellow.



Then I flicked the wash onto the pavement to create some texture effect and painted the "maintenance" areas with a lighter grey and the black lines where pitch was used.

So this is the result:



And here with some terrain:



The next step will be to get my hands on some raised walkways and some vehicles to make some credible LoS blockes to place directly on the roads to limit the long firelanes that they otherwise would create.

 

So recently I started another terrain project. I was inspired mainly by seeing a load of different shaped cardboard boxes in the nearby dollar store. Many of them were the perfect size for building cubic buildings for infinity. So I went ahead and bought some to create a tester.

I had seen this cool tutorial recently where they used baking soda mixed into the acrylic color used for painting buildings in order to give them a concrete texture. So I build a tester using a bigger box and the lid of a smaller box as well as styrofoam sheet leftovers and cheap greebles from the electronics section of the local hardware store. Unfortunately I only have a picture of the finished tester.






I tried to have at least one "thing" protruding from each wall of the ground floor so that troopers can get at least partial cover when pressing themselves against that wall. An Issue that I have with the really flat cardboard-box type of terrain is that an enemy rounding a corner can usually deny the cover of all the troopers standing around the corner due to the wall being flat, provided that there are no barricades or scatter terrain standing there. And with this type of building you always have at least some chance to get partial cover.

I also did some experimenting with the height of the stairs with this one and I am going to stick to the layout of the stairs with the three steps, as you can converse more diagonal distance on them quicker due to the vaulting-mechanic. And I want to build a table that encourages the use of these sort of access points to higher ground to make the enagements more three-dimensional.

So I thought that the tester looked okay and went ahead and bought a whole load of more boxes in different shapes and sizes and started putting them together. I also constructed three sort of plateaus or exhaust-stations of some underground power plant or whatever.



With these four I am already done for the most part.



I will finish the adding of protruding bits and pieces of the the remaining buildings to get the general shape right. Then I will basecoat all of the buildings with the concrete mixture, and then I am going to add further greebles and paint those as well.

 

Thank you :)


I finished the remaining buidlings and I also constructed some type of watertank, you can see it standing on top of one of the buildings.



The next step will be to apply the paint with the concrete texture

 

During the last two weeks I have made some significant progress with this project. First of all I basecoated all of the buildings with the grey texture basecoat. I also painted the powerplant-structures in yellow because I like this particular color. I then went ahead and did some post-shading. I used a slightly lighter grey tone to do this in comparison with my tester model where I thought the shading was a bit too dark.



I then coated some paper straws with PVA glue to make them less absorbant in order to prepare them for painting them using my airbrush. I then continued to do so. I chose a greenish and a more orangy tone.



The again I went ahead and made a sort of tester to see how to attach the pipes to the buildings and how to bring them together with the sort of "clamps" that are there to keep them in place. This is how it looks when put together:



If you look closely you can still make out the spiral structure of the paper straw. There are definately some empty-paper-towel-roll vibes going on here ^^ but in this scale I think its hardly noticeable.

I also bought a battlemat to go together with my desert outpost theme. It arrived today, and while the quality is nice and the size being 48x48in is fitting, the color is a little too yellowish for my taste. I thought it looked darker or more toned down on the website of the online store I got it from. But honestly this was the only desert style battlemat in this format that I could find that didnt have even more fantasy elements in it (the battlemat I bought already has some cobblestones and some remnants of an ancient temple if you look closely :P ) and that was reasonably priced. So yeah, as long as the amount of available battlemats stays kinda restricted as it is I have to live with this one.

So here is everything so far with the pipes mostly in place (but with the clamps not yet attached) and on the battlemat.



I was a bit concerned with there not being enough buildings to cover the braod expanse of a 48x48in field. But honestly I am quite happy with the density. Together with the scatter terrain that I built so far (the boxes covered with tarps and the concrete walls) I think you can create a nice and dense terrain layout with many different angles and so on.