Saturday, 8 April 2017

Terrain Progress

Hi folks,

I can honestly say that in all my time of collecting my 15mm armies, I had never completed a singe bit of terrain. In fact, I'm struggling to remember ever making any terrain for anything (unless is was easy assemble stuff like Necromunda bulkheads or Epic plastic ruins.

So, one week in to my terrain focus, and I'm feeling pretty good. I think, surprisingly for myself, that I have come to view the buildings as models in their own right. Where I was concerned previously about feeling like I wasn't actively contributing to my collecting while working on 'other' stuff, I'm actually feeling like this work is really adding to what I have done with my models.

'Finished' as of Friday night

'Finished' as of Thursday night
I've been focusing on getting the main kits built for now, with a view of going back to do some detailing once all the main assembly work is done. I'm keen to make the buildings fit in together. There are some small scale issues, but mainly I want to have the colours match where possible. Roofs are the main element of this currently. On the second picture, the three buildings on the left are the non-4Ground buildings I mentioned in my last post. These do have some slight variety in shade of paint which doesn't perhaps show up well here. But the brown 'stone colour' and the roof colour should be what I aim for with other buildings.

Where there are damaged buildings, i want to try and have piles of rubble and debris. Any tips for this would be gratefully received!

I also plan to add shutters to most of the windows. These seem to be very common in the Normandy area.

Aside from the buildings, I have also started working on my minefields. I'm trying to do some that are uncleared and some that have been 'breached' by my flails. Initially the resin I have used has had some small craters put in, which I will make a little more pronounced later.


Following my prototypes earlier in the week, I've pushed on with making my destroyed tank markers. Apologies for the very poor picture of these!


I've used a small washer and some pipe cleaners. The pipe cleaners were cut in half and then each half was folded and twisted. I then make a small loop in one end to allow a small steel washer to be attached.

I then dipped in a watered down PVA solution and then in a green flock substance. Once the PVA is dry I'll tidy them up and spray them black, then add other details as required. I also used the same technique to add more flock to some of the older trees I had been given by Paul a while back. I'll end up spraying and painting these as well, I think!

As I hadn't started enough... I planned to make some bases for smoke markers, but didn't have suitable bases (I was sure I did...). I picked up some pillow stuffing last weekend, so I'm planning on using that.

I also came across some laser cut MDF 15mm fortifications I picked up in York last year. I dug out my Milliput (which I've not used for anything as I prefer green stuff) and used that to make some entrenchments. I'm not sure these will see much use in FoW, but I thought they would be useful at some point! I ran out of Milliput so will have to order some more - I've another pack of this stuff and each pack makes 1 meter of entrenchments. I cut up some of the boarding sections to make 'ends'. This left me some odds which I used to make the A/T position in the centre. I'll spray these and paint them up as well.



Also on the cards to do, I have a 'straw' doormat to cut up into corn fields, and a load of 4Ground walls and fences to build.

Hopefully, I'll have more to show off next week!

10 comments:

  1. Nice work James - those mdf fortifications look very good and will be useful in a while range of scenarios.
    Looking forward to seeing them when you're finished

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    1. Thanks Paul, I'm hoping to get them done this month!

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  2. Excellent work James. You certainly seem to be getting the hang of making your own terrain.

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    1. Quite enjoying it actually Ray - the fact a lot of it has been pretty quick to progress helps as well!

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  3. You have been busy James. Great collection of buildings, I too find those MDF kits very satisfying to build in their own right. Destroyed tank markers good, a spray of matt black and they look quite realistic, I used clump foliage but they did soak up an awful lot of paint! I like your pipe cleaner idea. Entrenchments excellent. Look forward to seeing more terrain.

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    1. I've yours to add to that pile as well Lee! Want to get everything built before I start trying to match colour schemes and such! I've got the damaged vehicles markers sprayed - quite happy with them and they are still flexible!

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  4. Wow Jamie, that's a lot of work! Your tables are going to end up looking even better than before.

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    1. I'm trying! Seems a shame to spend so much time painting stuff and not having a nice table to show it off on!

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