Desert Terrain Photos

Holy geez! I can't believe I haven't posted in 6 months. I won't bore you with all the details, but a lot has happened in my personal life. Among other things I've been busy with school, won my first 40K Tournament, had 2 surgeries, and most importantly of all I added a new addition to my family with Space Marine Initiate Darryn! Here's a pic of the little guy.

I have a lot more coming up soon (including a move across country to Austin, TX), but I wanted to start working on the blog again because it helps me stay motivated with the 40K hobby. As an aside, if any readers are from the Austin area drop me a line in the comments below. I'll need to find a new 40K crew once I get out there.

Anyway, I was looking through my old posts to see where I was at and I realized I never posted an update on my desert terrain. A lot of the desert terrain I searched for that was specific to 40K was pretty plain in my opinion and all looked the same. Everyone does the same type of rock columns and just rocky looking hills and I wanted to break out from that.

Craters in 40K: Part 2

Last time, I talked about craters in 40K. If you happened to have read that post and there wasn't much there or it didn't seem like it was finished that's because it wasn't. Apparently I hit the publish button when I just started writing it. I didn't notice until I posted and realized it wasn't showing up on From the Warp or any of my other feeds. Turns out the date was wrong because it was published a couple days sooner! Doh. So make sure you go back and read Part 1 before continuing.

Today we're going to finish off our trimmed craters. The goal of this tutorial is to create a crater that is roughly the size of a Rhino or Razorback. Here is what you need to get started:

• Vacuum formed crater. I'm using the Pegasus Hobbies Crater Set, but Games Workshop's Moonscape will work too. My wife prefers the Moonscape because they have sharper detail and paint up easier.
• A base for your crater. I use MDF.
• Cat Litter. I use Tidy Cats Non-clumping for Multiple Cats. I guess you can't use this stuff if you only have one cat (shrugs).
• Wood Filler. I use Carpenter's Wood Filler Interior/Exterior.
• Razor Knife
• Glue Gun. You could just use PVA glue, but that takes long to dry and I'm pretty impatient.
• PVA Glue
• Isopropyl Alcohol
• Eye Dropper
• Paint Brushes
• Paint. I use craft paints for terrain. You can buy them at AC Moore or Michaels. Wal-Mart even has a decent selection by the school supplies.
• Blue Foam
• Scissors
• Sharpie
• Sand Paper

Step 1: Cut out the crater you want to use with a pair of scissors. I used the triple crater that came with the Pegasus Hobbies Crater Set as it was the perfect size and I got three craters for the price of one!

Step 2: Trace your crater onto a base with a sharpie and leave about 1/4 to 1/2 inch all the way around. We don't want the base to be too big. Once your base is traced, cut it out. I use MDF which requires a jig saw. If you can't use power tools you can always just use foam board or card board. Once the base is cut, I shave the sides at an angle with a razor knife and I use sand paper to sand it smooth. In the pic below, I stuck a piece of foam under the crater to keep it upright and I attached the crater to the base with a glue gun.

Step 3: Here we need to build up the sides of the crater where we made the cut with the scissors. You can use various materials for this such as foam, modeling clay, green stuff, or even paper mache. I used blue foam and shoved it under the crater and affixed it with the glue gun. Once the glue dried, I cut into the foam to make it look like rock and match the rest of the crater.

Step 4: In this step we cover the sides of the crater with wood filler. There is no way to be neat about this step so just use your fingers from the beginning and save yourself time as opposed to trying to be neat. What we want to do is make sure that we are covering the seam where the crater meets the base or it will stick out like a sore thumb when we dry brush it later on. I love working with wood filler because it doesn't crack, it dries really quick, and you can sand it smooth.

Step 5: If there is anything I want you to take away from this tutorial it's the next few steps and how to make piles of rock and rubble. I got this tip from some dude on TerraGenesis and it's really easy to do and the results look great. If I made a list of my top 10 killer tips when making terrain, this would definitely make the cut.

Now that I have your attention, take out your cat litter and make random piles of rubble on the crater. Don't be afraid to stack it into large piles, because when we're done it will dry just like you place it. I'm adding in some other rocks too for variety. You'll want to do this on a piece of newspaper because once the rocks are in place, we can't move it and we'll be adding glue in the next step.

Step 6: Once we have all of our rock piles in place, you'll want to take your eye dropper and the isopropyl alcohol and get all of the cat litter wet. You don't want to go over board with this step, but you want to make sure that the cat litter and any other rocks you put on the base are well covered in alcohol.

Step 7: Now that the cat litter is wet with the alcohol, you'll want to again use the eye dropper and drop on diluted PVA glue. I dilute mine about 3:1 water to glue and I have a Tang container filled with the mix because I use it so much. The glue should be thin enough that when you drop it on, it flows through the cracks in the cat litter. If it doesn't flow and just sits on top, you can hit it with a couple drops of alcohol and that will do the job. Try not to get it all over like I did on the pics below. I ended up gluing the crater to the newspaper. Oops! Nothing a little sand paper and a spackling knife can't fix.

Step 8: Wait for the glue to dry. You should wait at least a few hours. I let mine dry overnight and work on it again the next day when I come home from work. In the pic below, you can see the cat litter stayed firmly in place just how I wanted it. A few pieces may flake off, but nothing too major. 

Step 9: Now that the cat litter is dry, we need to cover the rest of the base with sand. I just use straight glue from the jug without any thinning for this step and I use a cheap brush to apply it. Dip your crater in the sand, shake off the excess and allow it to dry. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of this step, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Step 10: This step was the easiest (at least for me). Paint the craters black and start dry brushing the different colors on. My wife is excellent at painting terrain, so I let her do it. We use craft paint for painting terrain because it's so cheap. She used black, gray, and white. For the browns, I had gallons mixed up years ago at Lowes. I believe I had them match scorched brown and vomit brown, but I'm not 100% sure.

Step 11: Marvel at your craters' greatness! And if you are me, you thank your wife for taking some time out before Christmas to paint terrain. Thanks babe! This doesn't solve wobbly model syndrome entirely, but it certainly helps and gives you a good looking piece of terrain that's also functional in the game. The craters are big enough to fit a full Tactical Squad and you can probably fit a few more models in there if you had to.

Below are some pics of the finished craters as well as a sneak peak at some of the desert terrain I've been working on. I'll have some pics of my desert terrain up in a future post as well as a sort fix I came up with for dealing with wobbly model syndrome.

Till then, have a Merry Christmas and may your dice always roll sixes.

–The Harrower

Craters in 40K: Part 1

I apologize for the brief hiatus. There is a lot that I have been working on in regards to the hobby, but I wanted to focus on getting things done and take a break from the blog for a bit. Not to fear, I have some cool content planned for 40K as well as Mordheim in the coming weeks.

I've been doing a lot of terrain in preparation for a campaign I'm starting next month, and I wanted to talk a bit about making craters. Craters are an absolute necessity for 40K. Not only do they make the battlefield look war torn and cool, but you need craters to represent destroyed vehicles. I've played in places where they've used old CDs with texture on top or cut circles of material to represent craters, and while it works for gameplay purposes it just doesn't look right to me.

I was looking at other alternatives and Greenman Designs, Inc. makes cool laser cut acrylic templates the exact size of a destroyed vehicle. For gameplay purposes they are perfect as you can set up your models without any issues, but buying a lot of these can get pricey and there is the whole having a realistic looking battlefield that I am such a stickler for.

Image from Greenman Designs, Inc.

I decided the best thing to do was just to make my own craters. Originally, I made a few craters out of blue foam. They looked decent, but the problem was getting models to stand on them. Plus, if the crater is too small you end up packing your miniatures in as close as possible. Which isn't bad until someone drops a blast or flame template on your squad. In hindsight, realistic looking craters don't make good terrain. I messed around quite a bit with blue foam, but I couldn't get something that looked suitable and played well.

Those that play in my gaming group know that I have a love hate relationship with all of the new fangled plastic kits that Games Workshop, Pegasus Hobbies, and other companies have been producing recently. Good homemade terrain is just as important to me as converting and painting your own models. With the Realm of Battle Gameboard and a newer kits like Skullvane Manse and the Fortress of Redemption scratch building terrain seems to be a part of the hobby that is starting to die out. Take a look through any recent White Dwarf or take a trip to an official Games Workshop store and you mostly just see Realm of Battle Gameboards with plastic sprue terrain. So it was with some regret that I turned to a plastic terrain kit to solve my problem.

My thought was to use Games Workshop's Moonscape. I know a lot of people hate it because models won't stand on them because of the smooth sides, but I figured if I based it on MDF and added additional texture it should work fine. Initially, I thought this approach worked the best. The craters were sturdy and looked good and models could easily stand on them without tipping over.

Then we ran into an issue I really didn't expect. The craters were way too big. If a unit was attacking a transport in close combat and it blew up, the crater was so big that the unit attacking in close combat ended up in difficult terrain. The other problem was if there were two transports together and they both exploded, we didn't have enough room to place another crater.

I thought I'd try the crater set by Pegasus Hobbies. At $12.99 from TheWarStore I figured it would be worth the investment even if it turned out to be a bust. The craters came in and they were similar to the Moonscape set: nice, but just a bit too big. There was one triple crater that would have worked perfectly if they made the individual craters that size. On a whim, I took a pair of scissors and cut it up into individual craters. The size was almost perfect.

I'll just need to base these on MDF, fill in the cut out side, and paint them up. Next time I'll do a quick tutorial and finish these off and we'll see how they work.

What do you use in your games for craters? Do you use plastic kits by Games Workshop or Pegasus Hobbies or do you just make your own? Am I being too anal in wanting actual modeled craters? I'm curious what other people out there are doing in their games as there isn't a lot out there on the search engines. 

Till next time,
–The Harrower

Making destroyed wrecked markers for 40K

I recently went went shopping with the family at the local dollar store and like always, I was on the hunt for some cheap stuff for the hobby. They had packages of 3 LED tea lights that I picked up. I've seen people make destroyed wrecked markers out of tea lights before, so I wanted to give it a try. As an aside, when a friend of mine was first starting in the hobby he asked me why I had "skunks" on top of my tanks. Apparently my cotton spritzed with black spray paint didn't look very good. Hopefully with these new glowing markers that won't happen again and it'll save me some embarassment.

This tutorial is straight forward and doesn't take a lot of time. You can easily make a dozen of these in an hour or so and they really look cool on the battlefield. Here is what you need to get started:

• LED Tea Lights
• Christmas Snow or Poly-Fil 
• Glue Gun
• Aerosol Hair Spray
• Hair Dryer (If you are impatient like I am)
• Spray Paint (I used black and red)
• X-Acto Knife

Before we get started, a word on "smoke"

I have 2 types of materials listed above that you can use to make the smoke. The first (and the one I prefer) is Christmas snow. The kind you want to buy is the snow that you have to pull apart. Resist the urge to buy the cheap stuff at the dollar store. It's a lot thinner and doesn't work as well.

The second material is Poly-Fil. You can buy this at Walmart in the craft section. They use it to make pillows and stuffed animals. The reason I am listing this material is because it is available all year round and does a decent job. If you can, get the Christmas snow. If not, Poly-Fil will do in a pinch (I've seen people use cotton too!). I'll explain the differences in the tutorial below. Let's get started!

Step 1: Use the X-Acto Knife and cut the flame off of the top of the tea light. This makes the "flame" a bit brighter as the light isn't getting dispersed by the soft plastic flame. You want to be careful not to cut too far as you'll cut into the LED and ruin it. Just run the blade around the base of the flame and pop it off.

Step 2: With the glue gun, run a line of glue around the sides of the tea light and glue down your smoke. Don't worry if you use too much glue. More is better in this step as it will help to keep the smoke attached.

Step 3: Once the glue dries, start forming your material so it looks like smoke. You can use the glue gun at this stage to glue the smoke to the top of the tea light around the LED. Also, if you are having trouble and your smoke is too thin, you can use the glue gun to glue pieces together if it isn't cooperating. This is the stage where I prefer the Christmas snow. You can shape it a lot easier as it comes in sheets and is made to be pulled apart. With the Poly-Fil, it breaks apart too easily and takes a bit more time to get it shaped correctly. Again, allow the glue to try before proceeding.

 

The marker on the left was made with Christmas snow. On the right, I used Poly-Fil.


Step 4: After the glue dries, give it a good shot with the hair spray. Make any final tweaks with the smoke and let it dry. I got tired of waiting at this point and used a hair dryer. You can probably skip this step if you don't have hair spray, but I wanted the flame to be a bit more stiff and with my wife and 2 daughters in the house, we have tons of hair spray. If you are using Poly-Fil, I would definitely use hair spray as this material tends to fall apart.

Step 5: Now that the hair spray has dried we can start painting. I'm still experimenting with coloration, but you want the paint to be thicker at the bottom and lighter as you get to the top. Once the paint dries, you can pull on the smoke again to let more white show through (I wouldn't do this if you used Poly-Fil). I added just a spritz of red for color and I like how it looks. Just keep painting and tweaking until you are satisfied with the look and allow everything to dry.

Step 6: Turn on the tea light and marvel at the burning destruction! Above is a picture of 2 different markers I created. The marker on the left was made with Poly-Fil and the marker on the right was made with Christmas snow. You can see why I like the Christmas snow better as you can give the smoke the illusion of blowing in the wind. All in all, it takes maybe 10 minutes to put one of these together.

Updated 11/23/11: Added some videos so you can see the effect better.

You can get a lot of variation with these markers. Make the smoke bigger or smaller, add more coloration, or use multiple tea lights to create burning terrain that blocks line of sight.

I think it would be cool to use 25mm round bases and make signal grenades with plumes of green or purple colored smoke and use them as objective markers. I always wanted to model a smoke launcher template to cover my tanks and after this I may give that a go in the future. There are also rules for burning buildings in Mordheim so these will work for those as well.

Hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial. I'd love to hear your comments and see the markers you put together. Drop me a line with some photos and tips and I'll feature them in a future blog post.

Till next time,

–The Harrower

Building Desert Terrain

I've been doing this blog for over a year and looking back I find it pretty surprising that I haven't done any posts on terrain. I'm sure the other members of DED 'ARD are equally surprised considering how insane I am when it comes to making terrain. I'll admit, I'm somewhat of a terrain snob and nothing makes me lash out more than bad terrain. My devotion to terrain usually comes at the sacrifice of my models as you'll typically see primed red Blood Angels being pushed through lavish terrain when you play at my house. I know that defeats the whole purpose of why we game, but it is something I'm still working on. Anyway, building terrain wasn't the main reason why I got into the hobby, but it was pretty high on the list.

As a kid, I've always been amazed by model building and I used to look through old magazines on how they made models for movies like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Dark Crystal for hours on end. Alas, today a lot of the modeling craft has been replaced by 3d modeling, but I still love it and I was glad to see Peter Jackson go old school with The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Not so glad with how he butchered the story and turned Frodo into an unlikeable ass, but that's a topic for another time. Today, building terrain and converting miniatures are my two favorite things with the hobby and terrain building is still something my wife really enjoys so I usually get her to help me out on my latest projects. Here's a few examples of some terrain we've made in the past.

I'm going to be running a campaign for our Gaming Club starting next month. It's going to be based on Planetary Empires and everyone is going to be fighting over the planet Ghalis IV. The planet has been lost since the Dark Age of Technology and has remained hidden in the Ayntaara Nebula for thousands of years. Ghalis IV has remained untouched by the strife of the 41st millennium as no scanners or Psykers have been able to pierce the nebula's depths. This will be an escalation campaign with games starting at 500 point combat patrol matches as the armies make planetfall and escalate to 1,500 point games as they stake their foothold on the planet.

One of my new 4" by 4" table sections.

As you see in the pics above, my tables are kinda huge and really heavy. I made them years ago with 3/4" plywood and 2x4s. I'm replacing these with newer tables made out of 1/4" MDF and 1x3s. The tables are in two pieces one 4" by 4" for Combat Patrol and another 2" by 4" so I can make a tournament size 6" by 4" table. These tables are a lot lighter and easier to store.

In total, I'll have 3 tables. 1 grass board, 1 city board, and 1 desert board. Each of these will correspond to the tiles on the Planetary Empires sets we'll be using. I have the desert board painted and ready to go, but as of yet no terrain to speak of. Don't worry I'll have pics soon including a tutorial on making your own game table.

With the table completed, I did what I usually do. I scoured the internet looking for examples of cool looking desert terrain to draw inspiration from. Problem is, this time I came back pretty much empty handed. I would have thought with Tomb Kings just being released and Necrons on the near horizon there would be a ton of cool desert boards to get ideas from. Alas, there isn't much out there and the stuff I looked at was your basic rocks and tan colored hills.

So I'm not off to a great start and I sat in my basement for the past week waiting for inspiration to strike. I've got a spark thanks to my wife and I started working on a tar pit while she was doing a rock pile with a stone arch, but at this point that's not much. There's something about doing a desert board that just makes it harder to visualize for me. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can definitely use some ideas from my readers. I really want the terrain on this board to be more than tan colored hills. I need stuff that is unique to the desert from a visual standpoint, but also allows new challenges on the table top.

So what do you guys think? If you were playing on a desert board what would you like to see that would not only look cool, but bring some unique terrain elements to the game. Please share some links and thoughts in the comments below. Hopefully I can get some ideas and put together a really awesome board. I'll be sure to share and do tutorials along the way.

Till next time,
–The Harrower

P.S. Geek bonus points to the person who can identify where my terrain logo draws inspiration from.

How To: Painting Tarnished Metal

If you're a regular reader, you may have noticed that I've given the blog a bit of a face lift. That old template just wasn't wide enough and I finally got a chance to mess around with the template designer. Being a graphic designer and someone who is used to working on websites, I have to say the new template designer is really slick. Hats off to Blogger as they did a great job. If you run your own blog here on Blogspot, give it a try as there is a lot of cool stuff you can do and it's really easy to use.

For this post, I wanted to do something different and actually work on the hobby side of things. I consider myself a very well rounded gamer. I like painting and converting just as much as I like playing the game or building scenery. I've been enjoying working on the Liber Sanguinis articles, but I wanted to branch out a bit and either do some painting or build some terrain.

A friend of mine from the DED 'ARD Gaming Club brought over one of the Space Marine statues from the Honoured Imperium set. It was unpainted and I bugged him to leave it at my house so I could paint it because I always wanted to give tarnished metal a try. He agreed and it's been sitting on my desk for a couple days. I wanted to paint, but I didn't want to get involved in trying to develop a color recipe and scheme for my entire army, so I decided to paint this statue and do a quick tutorial. Let's get on with it.

Step 1: Prime the model black. Normally I use cheap flat black spray paint I buy at Lowes for like $1 a can on scenery, but I went with the GW spray on this one. 

Step 2: Dry brush the entire model with Tin Bitz. Yes, I said Tin Bitz and damn was I excited too. In my 15 years of painting, I don't think I ever opened this color! This statue is pretty big, so I just stuck with the GW Large Dry Brush.

Step 3: Do another dry brush of Dwarf Bronze. Another color I don't think I've ever used. Never been a fan of smelly dwarves...

Step 4: At this point the model actually looks pretty good and if you go with a lighter hand on the Dwarf Bronze dry brush than I did above, you could leave it at that and call it a day. Dan said he wanted a weathered and tarnished look so let's tackle that.

For this, you need a bluish green wash. I'm sure you've seen pictures of weathered statues before. If not, do a Google Image search. I can't stress enough how reference is extremely important no matter what you are trying to paint or build. I used a mix of about 1 part Dark Angels Green to 2 parts Hawk Turquoise. I applied this liberally over the model and was even adding water directly on the statue to water it down more. You want this wash mostly in the deep recesses and don't worry if you over did it like I did below. We'll revisit that again.  

Step 5: The wash is a little heavy handed, but I can see leaving it like if you want your statue really worn out. I wanted oxidation in the deepest recesses only, so back to dry brushing we go. We are basically going to redo the steps we did before. Do another dry brush with Tin Bitz. Yay, Tin Bitz!

Step 6: Dry brush again with Dwarf Bronze.

Step 7: To finish off the metal, do a final dry brush of Shining Gold.

Step 8: For the final step, we need to finish the plinth which is just straight forward dry brushing. I painted the whole area black followed by dry brushing Adeptus Battlegrey and then Space Wolves Grey. For the skull, I painted it Bleached Bone followed by a Gryphonne Sepia Wash. Once the wash was dry, I applied some direct highlights with Bleached Bone.

Below are the final pics which you can click for a larger image. With about an hour of painting, you'll come away with a nicely painted scenery piece.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Till next time,

–The Harrower