Ziterdes Terrain pieces - Fallen Argonath and Waystone

To those unfamiliar with Ziterdes, they are a German company that deals mostly in hardfoam terrain.  It's lightweight yet sturdy and serves the purpose as diorama / "solid" terrain pieces.  Wanting to see if I could convert some for Mordheim, I had at them with a knife and saw and came up with the following results.

First is the Barn piece.  I carefully sawed along the roofline with a hacksaw, being careful to follow along the overhang.  Next, I worked the roof free with a simple kitchen knife.  Be careful, as my knife slipped through the top and caused a hole.  No problem for ruins, but is a big issue if you're looking to keep the original look.   The thickness of the walls may be a little off-putting, but for durability's sake I think it's a fair trade.

The interior is featureless foam and wouldn't look too bad if painted up. You could add texture or wall decorations as you please if you want it more lived-in.  I added a second floor / hay loft with some flat coffee stirrers.  I also carved out the doors and windows to make it more functional.  

The second two pieces are the City House, which I split in half into two different ruins.  Again, added second floors and carved out some windows and crumbled wattle for archers to hide behind.

Nice work.

Hacking up pieces like this to fit mordheim (or anything in general) is always a blast, especially when they turn out this good! Hurrah!
 

I really like these; I did something similar myself, with a foam building I bought in the UK (though I don;t know if it was the same company, it was definitely the same black foam).

Can I ask what you used to get the wooden second floors to stay up? Is it wood glue, or just some kind of PVA?

Also, did you make the roof yourself? I can imagine making all of the tiles would be quite time consuming (but it looks great!)

Thanks for the compliments guys!

I made the second floors by cutting some beams from balsa and then super-gluing them in. The floorboards are just coffee stirrers. Some people may think that super glue is too expensive for terrain but it's usually what I have close at hand.

The roofs are all the original building - I did add the broken beams by just gluing some more balsa around the holes and carving them up a bit.

What did you use for painting the houses? Would the foam melt when using spray-paint?

They come pre-primed so you can use whatever paints you like directly on them. I used some old Vallejo Game Color

They do look good in their ruined form. The roof sections hide the thickness of the walls well; they look better than the paper thin card stock walls of the original Mordheim pieces. Your brushwork & color choices, particularly the roof tiles, are OUTSTANDING. GREAT WORK!   

Alright - next up are a couple of ruins that I've been meaning to paint. Caught the bug this rainy Seattle Saturday and hope you like the results!

One is called "Forgotten Liberty" and is a fallen statue not unlike the Lord of the Rings Argonaths. In fact, I bought an Argonath bookend that came with the LOTR collector's DVD set to use as an accompanying piece and it scales quite well. This one comes pre-flocked as well as pre-primed and is suitable for play right out of the box. Not too bad, but I decided it needs some jazzing up.

The second piece is a dwarfish-type column that I think is meant for subterranean battlefields. It's name escapes me, it either starts with an N or O. There are others in the set, so if you can hunt them down you can have yourself a nicely themed board. I'd rather use mine as a Waystone-type terrain piece to match the Fallen Liberty and so will base it as if it's outdoors.




Thanks to the pre-priming, both pieces were simple to paint. I went with a white-stone look for both, giving it an Osgiliath feel and to make it more interesting on the gameboard. Each has only a basecoat, wash and about two layers of highlights. Some quick dabs of static grass and flock and voila! The Fallen Liberty's static grass is quite a bit brighter than mine and put on more thickly - it's also closer to the edges of the piece. I tried breaking it up a bit by flocking over and within the patches at times, overall I'm happy with the results.




Only problem I had painting these was my own fault - the bone basecoat I used was too watery and it really ran into the browns and grays around the bases. I touched it up later and covered it in other places with flock - can't even tell.

Looking forward to painting some more of these great pieces!

Nice work on the ruined masonry. Both are very nice pieces and you have definitely improved them.