GawFang's terrain log

[GawFang]

I'm about to start a big terrain project so I thought I would try and make a log of my progress.

Background
 

I'm a big fan of the GW terrain sets and over the years i've built up quite a collection including the generic realm of battle that I did in a grass land theme so that I could use it for both Warhammer Fantasy Battle and 40k. A group of us try and play a big Apocalypse game once a year and for the last game i made a load of ruins. Since then i've played a few games on my friends Forge World realm of battle board using my buildings and they look so much better than on my grass board.

 

Seeing this made me really want to make a 40k board and with the release of Shadow War that gave me the excuse to do it.

 

Having completed my Deathworld Forest and Relicos Militarum i'm now ready to make a start on my 40k board.

 

 

The Kits

 

Over the past couple of years I've being buying the odd terrain set and had some parts left from building my ruins. Today I took delivery of the final bits and for the first time I got everything out of hiding, it turned out I had built up quite a lot!

 

 

I've got a gaming weekend planned for the end of August that I hope to have things ready for but I feel that I might be hard pressed to get it all done by then. Also I don't want to rush things .

 

[Jolemai]

Hmm, I recognise those red Marines..

[Space Truckin]

Wow thats quite a stash of terrain!    Take loads of build pics!  

[Jolemai]

Gaw, are you sticking to the instructions or making a couple of large pieces to give your Phantom a cover save?

[GawFang]

Gaw, are you sticking to the instructions or making a couple of large pieces to give your Phantom a cover save?

Bit of both. I'm hoping to make the Shadow War stuff quite tall but try and use the fact its modular let me mix things up a bit. Will try and make it so that there is enough to fill a 4x4 board then use the ruins to fill the other 2x2.

I'm sorted for Phantom titan cover buildings also unless they change the distort field and macro rules I think the phantom will stay in its case. As cool as it looks on the table its simply not worth all the hassle just to take it off on the first turn!

[GawFang]

I decided to start off with something fairly easy last night and built the first of my Void Shield Generators. I've not stuck all the parts together due to painting.

 

Building the 4 pylon things is a bit time consuming due to how many parts they have but I've got to say the kit is really nice and goes together very well. Pretty much all the parts are designed so they can only fit in one place, sometimes the way the parts key together is hard to spot.

 

Its also quite nice having a plastic kit that you build and use every part rather than having a million little bits left over to add to your bits box.

[GawFang]

I spent some time over the weekend working on my terrain.

 

I cut out all the Shadow War stuff and had a go at putting something together.
 

 

I wanted to try and get some height so had a play around at making some towers linked with walk ways. The terrain is really very cool and the way it clips together is real nice but i'm torn was to glue parts together or keep it all in bits and build it up for games. Some of the connections were quite weak and I worry that a knock during a game might see it all fall down but its also possible once all the barriers and its painted structure will be stronger. The other downside is that its harder to make best use of all the pipes because you really need to glue them. I did play around with putting magnets inside but I'm not sure if they will be strong enough.

Currently i'm leaning more towards keeping it all in bits because that way its super flexible and I can always glue to together after. Has anyone else used the new Shadow War kits much and if so did you keep them in bits or glue them?

Due to the size of things my hobby room was just getting too small so I moved things onto the kitchen table so I could start placing stuff on the board to see how it looks and fills the space.

I wanted to try and build a line of sight blocking building so decided to make use of the load of door panels I had and made a start on this.

 

It fits over the big floor hatch on the realm of battle. My thinking is that troops get sent up via the hatch and the many doors allow them to quickly deploy.

 

To start with I had the floor made of the cities of death floor tiles but because they don't come in large flat blocks I just wasn't happy with how it looked so just before the glue had fully set I ripped it off and replaced it with some plastic sheet. This made the structure much stronger and has a nice flat top. I have some textured plastic that I will put over it.

What i'm not sure about if what to do next. Do I build up the walls and make it into a ruin or line the top with the small walls and keep the area flat so that I can maybe just place things on? Any suggestions would be welcome.
 

 

I built up one of my container kits and I have to say that if you only buy one terrain set I would recommend this one. The 3 containers over a fair bit of LoS blocking and you get a good amount of boxes and barrels which always look good on a battlefield. Not sure what colours I will do the containers, currently thinking red, yellow and green.

 

 

 

[GawFang]

It's been a long while since my last update. I've been busy working away on things so huge update below!

I got all the terrain built ready for painting. With the way 40k terrain rules now work I tried to make lots of line of sight blocking buildings. I've still got a few bits left over and once i've got the main parts painted up I plan on making a load of scatter pieces.

Here are some photos I took of the board in my test layout.
 

 

With everything built I then began the process of spraying everything. About 15 cans of Halfords, Army Painter and GW spray later everything was primed and had a base colour. I was fairly lucky as the weather was nice an warm so the coats dried quickly. To speed up painting the board I masked off and sprayed as much of the main colours as I could.

For the industrial buildings I opted for Army Painter Chaotic Red, which is a dark almost brown red. I feel it works nice with the grey and blue i'm using for other things. I found that a fairly quick way to paint things this colour is to apply random spots of nuln oil then drybrush with  Golgfag Brown. The problem I had with it was that the red has a smooth almost gloss finish that made it so that my dry brushing just wasn't sticking very well, however it did go on nice over the parts I washed. Because of this I decided to apply a spray of purity seal to a test piece and try the highlights again. This time the drybrushing worked a charm so I went on an sprayed all the red parts. Sadly I got some of the dreaded frosting on some parts but i'm hoping I can hide it with washes.

I took some photos of the tests but they are over the size limit to upload and i'm too lazy to resize them.

I then decided to paint up a couple of buildings, mostly because I wanted to try some water effects on my chemical plant.

I then made a start on the board tiles getting all the base colours down and finished the paths. The folks at White Dwarf released some handy guides which I made use of for some of the colours.

All the terrain painting was starting to drive me a bit nuts. At this point I realised that I wasn't going to get the board ready for my games at the end of August and I didn't want to rush things so I decided to build and paint up the models from a boardgame as a treat.

 

After that it was back to the board tiles and I pushed on and got the bulk of the work on them done. I also finished off a tile to make sure I was happy with everything before doing the other 5. The one thing I didn't like is the grey rubble/rocks. I just wasn't happy with the texture of it and wasn't sure if it would be better in brown. It was a bit of a pain but I decided to apply sand to the grey rock areas and re-paint it all in brown.
 

 

Once again I was going a little crazy painting the boards. I think a lot of the problem is that my painting desk isn't that big so swapping the tiles over when batch painting things is a pain. Anyway I opted to take another break and painted up a model from another boardgame.

 

With the Rat Ogre finished I made the final push on the board tiles.

 

Quite happy with how they turned out and i'm looking forward to spilling the blood of some Blood Angels on it soon.

Next up I think I will paint the containers.

Edited September 25, 2017 by GawFang

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Impressive.

[Charlo]

Looks ace!

 

What paints did you use for the toxic water?

[Jolemai]

Looking great, I gather we're going to break it in next month?

 

The most important question though, does the "Rhino Wash" fit the board?

[GawFang]

Looks ace!

 

What paints did you use for the toxic water?

The bottom was caliban green. I then added nurgles rot around the edges. Once dry I then used some very thin fire dragon bright and moot green.

Since taking those photos more water effect has been added with a bit more of the orange and green mixed in.

Looking great, I gather we're going to break it in next month?

 

The most important question though, does the "Rhino Wash" fit the board?

Yes, plan is to use it for our game.

 

I've not tried the rhino wash but I expect it will fit. I won't have all the new building ready for a while yet so will have to make do with my other ones.

[hushrong]

This is fantastic! All that great scenery has to make for some awesome games.

[GawFang]

Today I painted up the containers. I really do like this kit.
 

[GawFang]

I got some promethium relay pipes painted up over the weekend. Progress is a little slower at the moment due to me playing a computer game but should return to regular speed soon.

I opted for a fairly simple colour scheme so they didn't take forever to paint.
 

Next up are the ruins.