The Queen City Gamers: Terrain Log

I wanted to have a blog up and running by this time, but since i haven't gotten around to making a website I'll use the forums instead! Here I will present what i hope will be an ongoing project log to display our little group's terrain. Figgy and myself met up yesterday for our first terrain building day, and the results were a success!

For those wondering what finally prompted me to start taking terrain seriously after a year of procrastination... well sadly our local gaming store closed down, so now the members of The Queen City Gamers must fend for themselves, and risk life and limb by playing in various pseudo-stranger's houses!

Firstly, i must show off Figgy's WIP building. It is very hard to tell this is his first terrain piece EVER! Great inspiration like this forum, and it's members, can make all the difference when starting out.





I'll let Figgy give descriptions and accept praise...

Here are a couple of WIP buildings i've had on the back burner for months now. I need to get around to finishing them...



And finally, I started working on an elevated platform to add interest and height to the city of the damned. I had an idea to hide some imperfections in the foam with sand, but it looked atrocious. The sand was to thick and artificial looking so i have since ripped it off; I am now wondering what i should do with it... I think i may make small craters since buildings can still be placed over them if needed. Ashton and the Necromundicon inspired this idea.


I cut the edges with a foam cutter using two metal rulers taped to the foam to ensure a straight edge.



For those wanting more pictures, here is a link to the photobucket album: https://s28.photobucket.com/albums/c215/goot_chute/Terrain%20Day%20One/

Sheewet! NiCe J.O.B

Alas! That was a fun night!

I wanted to make an elevated building, so built it on top of a pink foam base. A rather large piece this is.


The top floor overhands to around where the pink foam ends, and there will be steps leading down from the pink foam to the actual gaming board (located at the bottom left of the picture). (Dubstyles can make some nice stairs, I will be taking his advice on making them).

I had alot of fun making this piece! Dubstyles had to practically kick me out of his house. (I was drinking all his soda after all). I look forward to more works, especially when I look back at this piece and think - 'wow, that sucks. I can make so much better now!'

We both got fancy with terrain, by our standards at any rate.

Oh, and dialogue of the night. This happened while we went to grab a bite from his kitchen

Dubstyles: Man, I got pink foam all over me! *shakes shirt*

Figgy:I got wood. (I had worked with a ton of balsa wood)

Dubstyles: *laughter*

Figgy: *confusion followed by recognition of what he had just said.*

LOOKIN' GOOD! You've got yourself some FINE buildings in the works. The woodwork is particularly nice. AND they look to have TREMENDOUS gaming potential. WELL DONE!
For filling in gaps & masking miscues try Woodland Scenics Foam Putty. It's also good for adding some texture to stuccoed areas.

Looking good!

Foam putty you say? that sounds like a good idea, i also hear, from Necromundicon, that ready mix concrete filler is good for filling and texture, i'll have to see what is cheaper.

Also i have some textured spray paint, my plan is to texture and paint the stucco walls before gluing the (all ready painted) wood details on. I realized i hate painting terrain simply because of different materials needing different colors sitting next to each other. I hope to speed things up by painting major areas separate and then assembling everything with hot glue...well that's the plan at least! Hopefully we can keep this pace up with a terrain day each week, hooray!

Maybe someday i'll buy a real camera too!

I'm slightly embarrassed to post this, since there is so much nice terrain around the forum... but i need to cut corners in order to get a table full of buildings. After can actually play a game of Mordheim again I can go back and make "proper terrain; although this is functional and looks decent.

The textures are from here.

Update with my new camera!!!

I am still trying to figure out all the functions so the pictures are perfect. It is a canon powershot A480 for those interested. 10 megapixels, with an above average macro mode for the price.

I have not really made more terrain, but just retook some photos. I did finish the printed building from above with more ruble. I think i overdid it with the gray drybrush on the wood.

I am going to detail the interiors as you can see and use the textures for the outside, effective cutting build time in half! I need to fill up a table before i focus on detailing the exteriors. Considering i have 20 more of these suckers printed i think i can make an impressive table in a few weeks time... well maybe a few months!









(this is the 2nd story of the following)




And finally an action shot mid game, Figgy's Lizardmen won that one.

I as well would like to see my terrain painted right now!!

Here are some more pictures, a few new buildlings in the mix and some in game shots. I'd say once all there wip are done we'll have about 1/3rd of what we need to fill a 4x4 table... i like a lot of terrain!

VERY IMPRESSIVE! You've progessed on The Project quite nicely. It's turning out to be a FINE LOOKING gaming table. KEEP THE FAITH!

Yea, the dwarfs def cleaned house in that battle... hahaha. Can't wait to work on some more terrain this week.

I found a quick method for carving cobblestone...A soldering iron! It only took about 5 minutes to carve the actual stones.Prep time was about 10 minutes and involved cutting the block and pressing a stone into it for texture.

I am now dizzy and light headed from the fumes, make sure you do this outdoors and with a breathing mask, and not indoors like me!

LOOKS GREAT! I hope you survived the experiment; the fumes from burning insulation foam can be toxic. Michaels carries a solderung iron that accommodates an Xacto type blade, which works fairly well for fine cuts.

Yes i am alive and well, thanks for the consideration!

Ancre wrote:

I want to see your terrain painted now !

Ask and you shall receive!

BIG UPDATE TIME.

All pieces are constructed by me unless otherwise credited. Some monotonous painting projects like ladders, and upcoming rubble, are painted assembly line method by everyone.


Another printed building hybrid: by Postcthul


Painted Ladders and Walkways!


Functional Too!!


Figgy's building.


Another angle


Another angle


Corner ruin


Still very WIP


Another WIP


Hand made crates, by Figgy and I. These took a long time to make, and at first i thought they were not worth the effort. I asked myself, why not keep using the cardstock print outs? And then i painted them and was floored!!

So we can sparsely cover a 4'x4' table. And we are at the point where we can not ever have to play on unpainted terrain! YAY!!

I set up a vignette that took up roughly a quarter of the play area. Eventually i want the whole table to look as dense as the following pictures. Enjoy!

That's REALLY coming together GREAT! The individual buildings look FINE, but all grouped together...OH BABY, COOL! about covers it. WELL DONE...keep'em coming!

Yay! Fix your computer?

The 3D aspect is awesome! Great job of bringing Mordheim up into the air

Necromundicon's platfoms has inspired lots of us, but your finished models ARE SUPERB!

The different levels and buildings REALLY create the cluttered, looming mood of Mordheim.

I'm green with envy.

The wood boxes are indeed difficult to make, but there are some shortcuts you can take, as making them AROUND small pieces of leftover foam (cut the foam in blocks about 1/2" to 3/4" aprox. You don't even need to cover the "small" sides, just draw a few lines to make it look like wood and glue the fine strips over that) With this method, I made like 40 in an afternoon. Once you paint them, they're ready to rock!

All in all a very good job, and this is a tabletop anybody will be delighted to play on.

Best wishes.

I have no problem saying how jealous I am on that lol. Very nice work indeed.

Thanks for the praise folks! It keeps me going when terrain building gets boring.

magokiron: id really like to see the boxes you made, you should start a new thread about them!

roguelike: nice name, played any good roguelikes lately? Dwarf Fortress is awesome!

May I ask about the size of your platforms?

by the pics I think they are about 20x25x5cm, or 8x10x2 inches aproximately.

Am I right?

I made lots of platforms 20x25cm (8x10") (well I made 8 platforms actually, just to try), but only 1" high, but I'm thinking they need to be AT LEAST 2" high to be of any use, so I'm thinking about buyin 2" foam and makin more platforms and mixing and matching to get lots of different levels.

Tnx.

Right now i have one 12"x12", 3 of roughly 8"x5", and one 7"x15" with a built in ramp. These are small test pieces actually.

My next project is to make 6 16"x16" platforms to fill up 2/3 of the 4'x4' table. These will be the "ground level" of my city with the smaller ones on top. The remaining space will be canals, and low lying slum areas with muddy ground.

Rather than scrapping your first attempt, why not just stack you platforms so you only have to make half as much? I was actually thinking of making some 1" risers to add height variety.

That's the idea.

So I'll have 1", 2", 3" and 4" platforms, once stacked toghether (my idea is to stack only 2 platforms at a time).

I'll see if I can show some pics tomorrow in my WIP thread.

Best wishes.