Desert Temple

Had this Mars terrain set for year and years now! And I was never quite happy with it.

It was just sitting on the shelve gathering dust as I stoped playing warhammer and switched to Infinity. I was about to give it to the local club as all of a sudden our Infinity community decided to make a tournament and I was charged to make a new table.

I immediately looked at the Mars set and knew that I can make a quick job by just adding couple more hills and jobs done. Easy right? Not with me....

While working on the new hills I realised that I am still not happy with how it is turning out and wanted to add something different. it is then when I remembered a tutorial video on youtube by Runehammer called Craft Game: Hell World!. The thing is, I always wanted to try out his tutorial, as I never before followed a single one and his seemed cool, so that is exactly what I started doing.

While cutting and gluing and cutting more it came to me that I was running out of time and have to do everything a bit faster, so cutting out some steps and plans from my design I proceeded to start painting everything up and here is the finished result for the tournament.

Think this set is cursed because I still do not like it! :D

There are two things I can do with it after the vent.
1:
After the tournament I think I will take it all back and make a proper table out of it. Going to add different levels, add tree bark to make it look like a real desert, add more black shading to the desert pieces to not make it stand out as much from the ruins as it does now.
Add 3d printed alien vegetation instead of some mountain pieces which I hope will make the table more interesting and introduce more purple colors to the table, and add tufts with pigments to tie it all up together.

2:
Not make a table and leave it modular. This means I will have to sacrifice the realistic approach with adding tufts, pigments and etc., but keep it easier to store at the same time.
What I can do is to place each separate piece on a base, and decorate the base more to give each individual pice a bit more life and character. Also add more colors to all of the Mars pieces and maybe make more ruins to introduce them to the other side of the table. Maybe an arch would be cool.

Those are the two plans that I need to decide between. I like them both but it will all come down to what I want more, realism or practicality. If you would ask me right now, then I already changed my opinion at least 5 times going back and forth between the two.

 

Yeah, and that is why I am so torn between the two xD

Apparently that was nice timing :D

 

While terrain is on the floor I have a better understanding on what I don't like about the current set up. I already said that colour is one thing but now I also realise it's the randomness of it all that bugs me.

I am a believer that when you want to make realistic terrain it should be chaotic and random as nature is exactly those two things, but when it comes to tabletop gaming it is not alway the case.

So what I will change! 1st thing first is I am going to get rid of some old mountains/hills and replace them with two more arch constructions to give the set a bit more cohesive feeling and also the multiple level playability as I wanted. These two new hills will be playable on different stories as presented on the picture of another table.

Secondly I am going to glue each individual piece to mdf as a base, which I will decorate with tufts, stones etc, this will give me the needed realistic look. With this I am scraping the full table idea in favour of modularity and easy storage.
With this stage I will also put some of the broken ruins on bases and give them a proper "Ruins sunken in to sand" look, this will also give me pieces to use as bridges between some hills and runic platforms.

And finally I will make more runic construction that will go on the other side of the table to tie it all together in one cohesive colour pattern. At the moment I am thinking of some kind of Arch/Entrance piece for not sure about that as of yet.

As for the hills colour scheme I will ad more brown and red washes, beige/yellow dry brushes and dark brown almost black wash in the deepest recesses, corners and more towards the base of the piece. With that I think I will keep the Mars theme and make it more eye catching.

 

Update!

I opted for modularity over a full table.

General build done, need to cover some corners, hills etc. with tree bark to give it a more realistic look. Then comes the filling where I smooth it all out, then the sand and rocks and only after that painting.

Went with a more "Ruins" look then Desert look at the end, filling the middle with ruins that seemed to be some kind of bridge before. Placed the previous platforms opposite of each other and added more character to the ruins them selves.

Some bits also got bases that will allow me to add tufts, rocks and pigments in later stages.