An unfortunate side effect of playing infinity is the need for terrain, this is the story of my personal terrain addiction, some of it is homebrew for the cost of a few* hours and a couple of quid some is bought in stuff but I generally prefer to scratch build. *This is a drastic understatement Overview: I've never been much for having a single terrain set so I've now got quite a few boards on the go and around 6 64L boxes of terrain for infinity with some overflow: Here it all is waiting for transport down to our FLGS for the last event I ran Storage is a pain but I can run a 14 player ITS event out of my garage given a space with 7 4'x4' tables. So as it's there I'm going to document it and how I do it, maybe it'll be useful to some people and maybe I'll get more tips on improvement as I go. So for a start I'm going to look at what I have about; I try and stick around some basic terrain groups: Urban: The core of any infinity terrain set, almost everything in my urban collection is homebrewed foamboard, this was some of my earliest work and it shows, I did the majority of it for speed, ease of storage and board coverage More recently I've been adding bill boards, posters and greenery to the set to make it look a little less like the grey urban prefabs of Milton Keynes. Inside the buildings are pretty detailed and I'm happy with them, outside I need to so something, probably some cladding. Current project for this set is adding colour and plant life so here is my recent batch of cherry blossom trees Jungle: Operation Flamestrike spurred me on to make some decent jungle pieces as your standard woodland just isn't enough as conventional trees just don't block LoF significantly enough for an infinity board and a jungle suppression zone only works to an extent. therefore most of my jungle is large S7 blocking clumps which can be moved around into different set ups of put on larger bases as actual jungle suppression zone with LoF blocking sections. At the moment it's a bit homogeneous so I'm working on some jungle trees to break it up. Height is added by the Styrofoam hills i made many years ago while playing 40k which are due for renovation. A bush height level photo so you can see what they block, convenient Black Jack for scale porpoises Another one from a CA training exercise the other week: Current terrain project that I'll cover later, is some bigger trees: Junker wasteland: I've always wanted a desert board and I've always liked Borderlands (the company names are on most of my urban bill boards and containers) so I started a wasteland board focused around some backwater junker colony The main star of my desert board is generally the Bagger 288 a big ass foamboard bucket wheel excavator that serves as the urban section of the board. With the interior detail it basically adds about another three square feet to the gaming area, I'll post some more pictures of it later including the WIP and the interior details. Space: I got a space mat to play firestorm armada and a Superheroes game of my own design a while ago which has graduated into use in infinity, I picked up a lot of the spartan scenics stuff for mega cheap at shows or when I was a vanguard (I got the £90 starter for £35 on a black friday deal) I need some more spacey bits but the boards i can put out while time consuming are really satisfying and were great for playing SZ Wotan Other: There is other stuff as well, but frankly at the moment of writing I don't have photos of it on me. For anybody who want to btw, my build photos and general stream of consciousness posting is on my FB blog page Anyway that's enough for a starting overview post, I'll be back soon with some more focused work on certain aspects. If there is anything anybody actually wants to see I'll start in that region. /ramble
brutal! How did you made the buildings from the first picture? They are painteg cartron boxes? Love all your maps!!
Thanks! All the buildings in that picture are foamboard, mostly 5mm thick with a few features from 10mm all the same method as this: just as my initial pieces they're a bit simpler, just nice strong rectangular boxes. I'll drag some pictures out later of the actual construction and detail.
Peach Trees Since @krossaks said buildings yeterday I'll start there: Peach trees is part of my "second generation" of buildings, my first generation was all simple stuff and based around the idea of a modular space colony (all linkages etc) my second generation is more of an urban area within the sphere. Peach trees is my first attempt at going pretty much vertical the idea being an apartment block, it's made up of three types of layer Spoiler: Different level types Ground floor office and bar Mid space flat levels And the penthouse level The mid space levels are basically entirely optional so you can assemble it as either a two, three or four floor building, as it's massive with more than three floors I generally tend to use it as a two: Spoiler: two floor Each level nests in the floor below to keep it secure, basically after building each rectangular box which makes up the floor and the external walls I build a Collar around it in 5mm foamboard, I think in this case it's 15mm across with a 10mm overlap on the wall it's stuck to and a 5mm protruding ridge to nest the floor of the next floor into, in this conficuration it's strong enough to stay very permanantly attached to the floor below and hold the floor above enough that it won't go anywhere but can be removed easily, any more overlap and it gets a bit iffy. Interior detail: Mostly the interiors add no strength whatsoever to the building and all stop short of the floor above, other than that what you put in there doesn't matter, I tried to make an interesting and plausible flat layout, mine also features a lift shaft in the same position on each floor (for reasons I assume obvious) to strengthen it up a bit you'll notice that on the bottom two floors there is a wall that runs parallel to the two short ends nearish to the middle, this does add a lot of strength and makes it much more resistant to being knocked, sat on or otherwise battered. The screens are just clear polycabonate/acrylic backed with an anime screenshot (Stand Alone Complex generally) other wall art is printed posters or signage made from plasticard and a fine liner. Overall the effect is pretty basic but I also picked up a lot of interior scatter which tends to make it pop. I apologies the balcony generally has a HVHT (high value hot tub) which was misplaced when I took the photos. Spoiler: Building 360 It plays pretty well, not shown are the fire escape ladders I put on each balcony so there is either the lift or the two ladders (lift is the only way to the pent house) at some stage I do need to cut a hole in the office on the lower floor so there is a through way Painting and prep: Whole thing was sprayed with Halfords textured grey primer then painted to suit, It'll do but i want to revisit it. Spoiler: Improvements I want to make Currently the outside is dull, so at some stage all my buildings want cladding in some as yet undetermined way, or they just need more detail such as exterior power cables, weathering, aircon or other such details, all depends whether i decide on glittering dystopian future or just grey depressing dystopian future. Penthouse roof needs embellishing, the grass will be carved out into a recess and replaced with static grass (the underside reinforced with plasticard) the tiles on the balcony and paving slabs want re-doing in card probably using hexagonal tessellation rather than dull boring old squares. Transparent screen doors for the balconies. The aforementioned fire escape door in the ground floor Lift module, just because. Edge the rough edges of the foamboard in card or plasticard, it'll toughen them up and look better. Lip the roof, the lip may only overlap by 5mm or may be a garden wall, I'm not yet decided, regardless I'm bored of snipers being prone on a corner a 5mm lip would be full cover when prone and no cover when stood. Anyway thanks for reading, C&C and suggestions or questions welcome
ty man, very impressive work here, i love specially the inside furniture from the houses. Very inspiring
Jungle Clumps So having been snowed in all weekend I've been cranking out bits for my jungle board: Most of the green is what I'm calling a "jungle clump" generic blobs of jungle i can scatter about as LoF blockers, or put on a larger base to be an area of designated jungle terrain (along with all the penalties which come with it to movement, suppression zones etc). This weekend I've mostly focused on making larger versions of these which block at around the level of a two story building. Spoiler: A finished clump Method included below: Spoiler: Material required "Aquarium plants" of choice, I get mine from a discount store's garden section in big balls you're meant to hang like hanging baskets 5mm foamboard Clump foliage (note you don't need this for most of the smaller ones I've made) It's actually quite easy to make your own. PVA glue Hot glue gun Chosen paint for a base coat Safety tip: Do everything on a board/tray etc hot glue guns tend to drip and leave strings of glue on adjacent items that you do not with to be covered in hot sticky mess. Gloves also recommended, contact with hot glue will hurt and obviously stick to the skin. Spoiler: Method Base build Cut a base from the foam board and bevel the edges with the knife. Then build up some piles of board on the base (as a guide amount I cut a piece of board 1/3 is the base 2/3 goes into the structure on top. Glue the structure in place with either PVA or your hot glue gun. Paint your base the chosen colour (I've gone for a suitable dark neutral brown) You should end up with something like the one on the right "Aquarium plant" Go wild and hot glue gun as much as you want to the base and to itself, watch your fingers NOTE: The plant I use here isn't that well suited to being "bushy" so I've only glued it the the top surface in an attempt to use some of it up. if you look at the smaller ones in the initial picture or my original post (next to the blackjack) you can just completely cover the base in plant if you have something suitably "bushy"I've not yet found a point where you can say 'that's too much' during this step, I tend to find the more you add the more realistic it becomes and the more it hides the repeated lines of using the same item over and over. Another note: hot glue guns get hotter the longer they are on so your glue will take longer to set, this can be helpful when you want time to adjust things before they set but more often I find it annoying. You should end up with something like this (but with a painted base, I discovered with this one that it's more efficient at the start than at the end Undergrowth Smother every available bit of the visible base with PVA: (and spread it about) Press clump foliage of your chosen colour into the wet glue and let it dry, I tended to do each face one at a time, dunk and then with all faces done set aside to dry. When the first coat is dry try to find any gaps and PVA them again, also put some more 'generous dots' of PVA on your original layer and add a brighter foliage Should now look something like this ^ Fixing If you were suitably generous with the PVA it should soak into the foliage and harden it, if not you can do one of the following Accept that it will shed forever Matt varnish spray Watered down PVA sprayed or brushed on (spray on with an old anti bacterial bottle) Scenic cement used the same way as the PVA.
Great and detailed instuccion - and experiecies. I'm interrested when you can share also some gaming experiencies on your jungle board. Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk
@unclesrouce Here's a video of a game from about a year ago, Onyx vs USARF A picture album of Onyx vs Generic CA Unfortunately neither have any of the new terrain I built at weekend but you can get a vague idea of how we set it up. Generally I have two considerations with Infinity boards which are fire-lanes and elevation It's easy to overload a board so you end up not needing anything with a range over 24" so I always try to design boards with that in mind, Elevation is something that Infinity needs, for a start it both helps and hinders models with super jump, allows snipers to get alternative fire lanes and defends models from sniper firelanes, which is why I generally use a good quantity of hills or buildings and have recently moved into making taller trees to block elevated fire lanes. Spoiler: It also mixes well with other terrain sets Like this scrap fort/black market outpost Or this Pano Base (ps totally recommend 600pt games) Or futher intermixed boards I should however be getting a game this evening which will use the new bits as well
Good luck for your next game! Blocking elevated firelanes is a good point. I like your modular jungle terrain - it seems to have the right size and granularity for a nice gameplay. Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk
Acrylic medium or varnish (or even random paint for the places you don't see) instead of PVA. One common issue with PVA is that it goes soft with humidity. I would also go with something harder for the base (bottom layer), plastic if possible. Extra volume can be achieved with paper or cardboard (recycle scraps and cereal boxes), crumpled.
Wow @Aspect Graviton ! All that terrain looks amazing! And I'm very tempted to try a jungle terrain myself.
If you have the space (not just to use it, but also to store it) and the budget, then go for it! Here's a video about planning the terrain for storage by Mel the Terrain Tutor: I also recommend looking at LukesAPS channel as he has a knack for finding cheaper ways to do things while still looking awesome. Then post here so that we can all drool at it
3D printing edition It's been a while since I've posted here but I've been pretty busy, a couple of months ago I picked up a little 3D printer (Fabrikator 2 mini) from seeing a few friends having picked up something similar and having seen Toppos fantastic 3D printed terrain, which ha been keeping me busy for a while. So this is the result: The Urban renewal project My city bits so far are a bit too drab and grey so I've tried to mix it up with some park bits to add some more greenery: Spoiler: City scenics So when making city boards I often want an excuse to put in a bit of what could clearly be coined 'defense line' a few good chest high walls with intermittent higher cover but a line of sandbags would of course look out of place. planters however: planters with a bench make a decent urban defensive position, something which is clearly good cover but still looks in place if you were to find it in a city on Neoterra. the planters are a 3D print I designed myself and my initial run has had a few problems mostly due to the printer itself and the heat requirement of my chosen filament ("print PLA at 180°C" lol more like 210°C for the brand I chose) which is why the one in the picture is quite so grainy With Test tree and Wu-Ming catalogue model And then filled (which would have been unnecessary if the print had worked out properly, I went with some topiary in the end rather than a tree as a more effective LOF blocker. Park bench, also my own design, this one is a near perfect print generic arrangement for the planters. Objective markers Once in a blue moon I run ITS events so I figured some objective markers would be good, and it's an area in which CA are sorely lacking. Spoiler: CA comm unit Spoiler: CA comm unit This is the first iteration of a CA advanced comms node, basically a giant immetron style EI beacon for loot and sabotage etc. Also i did some CA tech coffins (visible top right), the idea being that they either store abduction victims or deliver shipments of unidrons two atop each other also blocks S2 Noodle hut Having used enough of the card terrain I also fancied some noodle huts so I CAD-ed one up, pictures of the first iteration below, the newer ones have signs as well now. Spoiler: Send hot noodz Spoiler: Send hot noodz From the front That Thicc Backside Spoiler: Also I picked up a new mat at UKGE Spoiler: Also I picked up a new mat at UKGE And it looks pretty swanky with my existing jungle stuff, not that it's going to stop me making more.
Other than one Micro arts studio mat all my mats are Deep Cut studio, the new one is the swamp mat 4x4 on mousemat, I also picked up their spacehulk one while I was there which i'll picture when I use it
It's generally excellent, I'm always really picky with mats and make sure that they don't have features that'll look wrong when you put terrain or models on it, for example the deepcut martian mat has craters that'd look wrong if you covered them partially so i ordered a custom " badlands with orange filter". This mat passes my test (no ostentatious features that interfere with scale) and it makes the terrain I've put on it thus far 'pop' so I'm very happy with it so far, it's also pretty much spot on for 4x4 (the MAS mats ive seen are 48"x47" which disturbs my inner engineer). As for usage, after a couple of years and considerable time in a garage and other abuses like tea and coffee are as good as the day I got them. Mousemat is also the best for infinity as your models won't chip or even break when you knock models over. It takes the bounce and skitter out of dice and it doesn't slip like the PVC ones. So five stars from me. Think I'll be rebasing my ariadna to make this their 'home mat'
Apologies for not posting in a while as my time has gone down the drain. I may not have been posting but I have still been cranking out terrain. The 3D printer. Goodnight sweet prince! the Fabrikator mini has expired, after replacing the nozzle it worked fine for about a week, after that it had a continual problem on the X axis which got gradually worse where basically it would skip a mm or two (or occasionally 5) each layer leaving me with prints not entirely disimilar to items being spaggetified as they are dragged into a black hole. Either it's a mechanical problem which me and my colleagues should be able to identify and sort out (short answer it wasn't) or it's come sort of defect in the circuit board of the machine which is less sortable. I'm tempted to atttempt to bring it back to life but even though our time together was short I think it made a good trial printer, it's proved the concept for me and now I'll advance onto a more expensive and reliable printer (when I've some cash to burn) Spartan scenics tune-up. Spoiler: Picture I've been wanting to finish the spartan scenics stuff for an age, but recently with Daedelus falls and spiral corps I had the opportunity to record a bat-rep for my friends you-tube channel, which was a good excuse to do more with it. My original scheme didn't really do it for me so i've started re-doing the panneling in dark blue/black and orange which you can see in the middle of the shot above, I also finally got some paint on my singularly printed chichicarra which you can see on the pad. Primordial world table So my mat from Pwork games is in the post at this moment but I started doing a primordial world board out of expandy foam, the idea being to have a mountain terrain board, some WIP pictures below: Spoiler: Merrangue and pringles? The initial lumps of hill done on grease proof paper on some flat scrap wood in the back garden Bonus side view During the knife sculpting and filler work Me trying to work out what the LOS would be like, racey ankle shot included. Starting to build up some platforms What I got out of two cans of expanding foam (around £16) And some images with some other bits of terrain put in as placeholders, the cargocontainers will be replaced with piping, the SC card terrain with something heavier of similar dimensions. So there is a fair way left for me to go with this board, I still want to add detail to the towers to make them less pringles tubey. Addition of yet more ladders probably some 'elevators' which possibly run between towers to increase mobility, I've very cautious about how I'd add that however. Mat isn't here yet The walkways/heat pipes i mentioned above as replacements to the cago containers, which are underway but will take a bit of time to get right (I'm happy with my design however). New Mats So because I hate myself and now have a rather successful gaming cell in our local area I've been looking to expand my terrain set yet further. I've ordered my new Pwork Volkano game mat for the primordial board but I've also put in an order with Deep cut studio who've supplied most of my mats and who are absolutely top knotch: Spoiler: Yesterdays post A city streets mat, I already have another similar one to this on a diagonal with wider roads A winter mat, this was my wildcard. looking at it, it may also do as a lunar surface. The Yu-Jing mat which is way more vivid that the stock photos (I absolutely love it) The Aleph mat, which I'm pretty sure will be the new home turf for my purple CA So I picked up the city streets mat as the other one I find quite challenging to set up in a way that I like, I can do it but the diagonal cuts on the paved areas make dead patches where you can't really put any buildings of value and this mat will look sweet with my JSA The winter one was a freebie from Deep Cut (they do a buy 5 get a 6th free for clubs, and I picked up a couple for some other people and got free shipping) our local has quite a bit of snow terrain but has sand topped boards painted white where metal models go to get chipped, this feels like an adequate solution and one which I can build into later. Also as mentioned it's very moon/astroid-ish which has potential. The YJ and Aleph mats are just pretty, the YJ one I'm planning on using a TT-combat infinity table bundle (also in the post) the aleph mat I'm not sure yet but it's going to be CA themed. MDF stuff So I've also picked up a couple of new buildings, Spoiler: Mid game picture of both buildings Warehouse left, bike bar lower centre TT-combat warehouse, it's great and you can store other buildings in it, got it for my shipping/spaceport boards, at some stage I'll expand into docklands (I have a sea mat from playing Dystopian wars) so there is scope for more, fantastic kit for it's price. Zen terrain Biker bar, So I met Leighbar at Essen who was hanging out with Zen terrain and I picked up this bike bar for an absolute steal. It's a great kit: easy to build, entirely pre-cut so no issues with removing it from the sheet, acrylic inserts as standard and is perfectly on theme. Their buildings are great at some stage I'm fully intending to get a full Zen terrain board. TT-Combat infinity bundle, I've not got it yet but it's in the post (being delivered today I think...) will be posting a review when I do have it in my hands. There is more but I think that's probably enough for one post.
A Weekends Progress So My TT Combat bundle turned up and it's a whopper: Spoiler: THE STACK [/IMG] Just a few kits Building by building as I'm going: So in the interest of attempting some sort of review I've tried to document as much of the process as possible with each individual kit Spoiler: "Hex Building" As it comes straight from the celophane on the sprue Built So to start off I've posted a building I didn't actually build, this was built by my friend who came around to give me a little assistance for a couple of hours to my knowledge he's not worked with MDF kits before. It seems pretty easy to assemble, it's a good size and a solid box and the roof attachment is just right with four pieces to hold the roof on, it comes on and off easily but it's going anywhere you don't want it to. After this I gave it a blast of Textured grey and white and this fit works fine. As well as the basic kit it also comes with all sorts of filler detail such as hanging cables and vents which I've not attached, you can see them in the sprue picture. Spoiler: Objective Room Kit on the sprue Sub assembly 1 Corner connectors Completed corner connectors Fully assembled So while my friend was over I cracked on with this kit which really impressed me it's quite innovative. It can be set up as an objective room but it has cunningly constructed corner pieces built from laminations which slip over each other before being held captive by an end piece, these then insert into the ends of the walls in any of eight positions so you can make a fence rather than an objective room giving it a lot more versatility. It's rather visually striking as it incorporates the neon green acrylic. Once the acrylic windows are in place and the top is on it's extremely sturdy. Words of warning with this kit: The end of each wall wants to have the long slit in the same orientation (all up or all down) you can confuse them and it will mean that the corner connectors will dry fit fine but won't lock together. Spoiler: Send Hot Noodz Every terrain set I make will probably have a noodle hut, and I will make this pun every. Single. Time. The kit makes 4 fast food huts and 4 benches, by this stage I was in a building frenzy so I'd already cut one of the huts out before I remembered I was meant to take a picture. A completed noodle stand Every urban terrain set should be rated by it's access to streetfood. This kit produces four stands and four benches. The neon pops, the huts are occupiable by S2 models (the roof comes off each hut) and the benches provide quite nice bits of S2 cover, onve acgain comes with a lot of additional bits, in this case small vents which I've used later. Spoiler: Prefab As built, by this stage I totally forgot to take pictures of the sprue Configured as shown in the instructions, So This appears to be TT's answer to the sector 9 MAS buildings which are generally 8"x4" and can stack. It's a good building and I can certainly see multiple kits being good to add togetehr to make reasonably in depth complexes, the windows are particularly nice in my opinion. This kit didn't go together as well as the others, there seemed to be some sort of tolerance issue between the long walls and the floor plate of about .1mm so you have to trim them off or chamfer them to get them on. there is also a sprue of greyboard which I've not figured out where I'm supposed to be adding the embelishments yet, I'm assuming internally as the exterior is already pretty swanky. Finally the instructions show the Cool L shaped set up I've gone for in my assembled image, the issue being that the kit is a 4x4 ceiling short. This may be remedied by another kit in the box I'll have to wait and see. Extras this time were vents and a 4" walkway which will definately come in handy. Spoiler: Tri-building Annoyingly I did take a picture of the sprue but it's corrupted This building is just great, the image above doen't even have glue it's just dryfitted together (it's now glued). It's detailed, it comes with extras (vents and cables again) there are two other kits like it in the bundle but they are not the same, I look forward to building them and seeing what configurations it can make. Spoiler: So far Storage so far Well I'm about a tenth of the way through the build (and today my fingers know it, they ache from cutting MDF with a scalpel) more to follow. Thus far I'm extremely impressed, the quality is much higher than other TT kit's I've built and the cost is mad Primordial board So every now and again I'd get bored and move back to the other project I'm working on the primordial board, I received my shipping notification from P-work yesterday for the mat and with the spare TT bit's I've embellished the towers a bit. Spoiler: Geothermal towers Lava time So this project is now moving on at a reasonable pace, I've still got my walkways to manufacture but I should hopefully have a playable board by the end of the week now.