Warhammer 40K Terrain How To - Part Three - Buildings and Ruins

Alrighty then! Here we are in part three of our how to build Warhammer 40k Terrain for our battlefield. Let's make some ruined buildings for our terrain collection.

When we're done it should look like this with part one and two added.

We started with a basic pattern for the corner of our building. Using peaks on the windows fits in with the Warhammer 40k world better than squares. The same goes for peaks on the top. You can break off the wall at any height or width you prefer. Ours is 3 stories tall at the highest and five windows wide

These will be ruins so don't worry to much if your cuts aren't precise. We are using foam-core this time for ease of cutting. This is our rear corner, only one story left back there.

For the cuts on the edges, these are walls that have been "blown up" so don't worry if you need to tear things off. The rougher the cuts look the better the paint job will look.

For corners, trim off the thickness of the foam-core from the facing and the foam. Be careful not to cut through the backing. Apply a bead of hot glue down the corner and press the two parts together. You can use pva or craft glue but you'll need to leave the pieces to dry before proceeding. The hot glue dries solid, quick and a good way to keep your project rolling.

Next get hold of some press board, we used a cereal box. Cut strips the height of your structure and about 1/4 inch wide.

Glue those strips vertically between the windows. We cut door frames too and placed them in the gaps where we left windows out. We cut a 12 inch square piece of MDF board for our base.

We took leftover pieces of foam-core and insulation foam broke them up and used them for rubble. We added some of the sprue sticks we made in the last "How-To". Use hot glue for the large chunks.

We added piles of coarse ballast and "bits" we also made in the last tutorial. For these we used regular pva or craft glue. Spread as much or little as needed to secure the piles.

Here's what we have so far. Good pile of rubble where the floors would have collapsed into.

From the air it looks like so.

Now onto the painting. We had some latex paint with sand and ballast already mixed in but wanted to add more for the rubble.

Using a large brush, start applying it liberally in all areas.

Coat the fronts of your buildings too. Use vertical strokes so when you do the final painting steps it'll look great.

Once everything is coated and dried, we applied a coat of black primer to finally seal everything in.

Next, using a 1/2 inch brush apply a heavy dry-brush of dark gray

Apply to all sides...

Then continue with a heavy dry-brush of medium gray..

Then add slate gray....

When doing the buildings, use vertical strokes from the top down and especially under the windows.

This is where the weathering affects add to your terrain piece

We added a coat a light gray dry brush over most of the structure and then a light dry-brush of warm white over the very tops of debris and where weathering would be the heaviest like near the top of the building.

Here's the final dry-brush coat applied.

The rubble details come out with the final bright touches of warm white.

We feel it's lookin good from the back.

For the final touches we added splashes of Burnt Umber wash where any mud might be along the base.

So here it is. A beautiful piece of terrain to go along with your statue, courtyard and barricades.

Now you can use it as an ideal spot for your Tau Pathfinders..

Somewhere where a lone Blood Angels Sergeant  can hold out against a horde of greenskins

With the new allied rules you can have a last remnant of a Space Marine squad and Dreadnought  join up with a few Tau Pathfinders and Stealth team.

So now go have a great battle!
The Old Crow

Warhammer 40K Terrain How To - Part Two - Barricades and Recycling

Here we are in Part Two of our Warhammer 40k Terrain building extravaganza! We're going to make some barricades and heavy barricades. Here's an Imperial surveillance photo with what we want to construct!

On a side note, I never thought of building terrain as a "Green" hobby, but we'll also look at recycling in today's post. We'll give you several recommended measurements and such, but remember, nothing has to be "exactly" as we state. Variations are OK, don't get hung up on cutting your pieces to an "exact" measurement. Remember, above all, this is supposed to be FUN!!

To start you'l need some old sprues, a few pieces of board (hard board or gator foam will work) and the wire from an old spiral bound notebook or two.

If you wanted to do a similar project for Warhammer or other historical war games, get some sticks for logs, model wagon wheels, wooden crates or barrels and craft sticks. We can show you this at a later date.

Now onto the project at hand. The main tools used were the utility knife and this pair of heavy duty clippers we found at Harbor Freight Tools for 2.99.

We started using the utility knife to cut up the sprues into pieces but found the clippers worked a great deal faster. So while watching your favorite Space Marines movie or maybe Lord of The Rings (if so inclined) chop the sprues into little bits approximately 1/8 to 3/16 of an inch (5mm). If you have some tightly packed areas and longer sticks leave them for use later on. In a short time you should have a pile something like this.

Set aside your "bits" and we'll focus on the larger sticks first. For our bits we recycled an old vitamin container with a flip top lid and stored them all inside.

Now take your posts and a utility or hobby knife and take small chunks out of the corners and slice off the end from at least 2 different angles to form a point. There's no wrong way to do this, just as long as you like it. Set those aside with your bits.

Next use your tightly packed sprues and chop them up the same way you did the longer pieces. You'll wind up with something close to this.

Take the pieces you just finished and see if they fit together at 90 degree angles from each other. You may need to trim a point or two in order to get them snug. They should be at 45 degree angles from the ground. Any leftover shavings and scraps can be added to the bits you cut earlier.

Bases. For our barricades, we trimmed some gator board (harder surface than foamcore) pieces to make our bases. The first one is approx 6 inches long by 1 inch wide (150mm x 25mm). The other two are 4 inches long by 1.5 inches wide (100mm x 38mm).

With a hobby or utility knife, cut roughly around the base at an approximate 45 degree angle. Round off your corners too. If you want several barricaeds to fit together, you may want to cut the corners off at 45 degree angles so when they are placed on your battleground you can fit the corners together nicely.

Back to our short barricades, we took the spiral from an old notebook and twisted it around the crossed pieces of sprue. This helps hold things together and represents barbed wire. We then hot glued them in place on our bases. While the glue is still hot, press in some of your bits we made earlier.

The last step in constructing our heavier barricades is to add finishing touches. If you have any scale tires or 50 gallon drums to add or in our case, we used some craft glue in spots and just added more sprue bits and coarse ballast.

Now back to those longer individual spikes you created. Take your long base and where you want to stick in the spike, cut two parallel lines. These should be far enough apart to fit a sprue in between. Then cut one perpendicular line connecting the other two at one end, like so. If that was confusing, it should be a "U" shaped cut.

At a good angle, stick your "spike" into the hole like so.

Do this for as many as you'd like. We crossed a couple and used various lengths and angles. If these are Imperial Guard or Space Marine barricades, you might want them more symmetrical. If they are Ork fortifications, the more random the better!

Once again we took a notebook spiral, wound it between our posts and hot glued everything together.

As with the shorter barricades, we added spots of craft glue, stuck in sprue bits and then sprinkled coarse ballast over the rest. We used another recycled flip top vitamin bottle to make it easy to spread the ballast onto the glue. Also, do this over a clean piece of paper of newsprint. When you are done shake off the excess and pour it back into your bottle.

Painting! To start off we sprayed the entire barricade black and used a dark gray dry-brush as the first step.

Then we used a medium gray and light gray

and finally a light dry-brush of an off white for highlights.

Here is one of the smaller barricades with the same technique applied.

For the beams and wire, we use gunmetal gray and a highlight of aluminium.

Here's the other barricade with the metal painted.

The last step is to add weathering. Metal doesn't take kindly to the elements. Take a red oxide or other rust color and mix it with water to your liking, less water for darker rust or more water for lighter rust. Using a larger bristled brush spread it over your beams allowing it to flow into the crevices and down to the base.

Here you can see it puddling, which is fine.

We also like to add puddles at the bases of the beams or where the wire lays on the surface. Anywhere water would tend to puddle up would be where the rust would get the heaviest.

And there you have it, finished Warhammer 40k barricades. With slight modifications, they could be used for WWI or WWII battles or as is for other sci-fi action games like Infinity or Mercs.

Lastly, as mentioned in the beginning of this post, we wanted to talk about recycling. We had some younger hobby enthusiasts visiting recently and were showing them how to build some terrain pieces. One of them, who had been using his noodle, inquisitively asked, "So we're using things people normally throw away?". We happily replied to the affirmative.

Not much was purchased to make these last two projects. Paint, glue sticks and the action figure (which could have been pulled out of the trash somewhere) were all we bought. The foam and boards were all scraps from other things. The lid for the statue base, sprue pieces, notebook spirals and vitamin containers were all recycled. So you could say that this is a "Green" hobby if you wanted to!

Anyway you look at it, it's fun!

Have a Great Battle!
The Old Crow