Tag: terraforming

Terraforming – Bushido style

I was in Chinatown over the weekend with the family, and I picked up a handful of the little red Buddha figurines, thinking that they may work quite well as objectives or just straight up scenery for Bushido.

A mere $6 later and i’d picked up these little fellas. I washed them in warm soapy water and then based them up with some cork and MDF bases I had kicking around:

After the glue had dried, I textured the base with some modelling pumice and left overnight to dry (I prefer using this than the PVA/sand option, as I feel this has more resilience).

A quick blast with some grey car primer and a wash with some Agrax Earthshade, then random washes of the GW green wash (forgot the name!) and we’re on the way:

I used a splash of green to simulate the weathering and discoloration of stone through being left out in the elements. I didn’t want to get too crazy with the paint job on these, just something quick and easy. I grabbed a couple of different shades of grey and drybrushed the little fella, followed up with a last light drybrush of white.

After painting the soil and drybrushing that up too, I hit the base up with some static grass and added some flowers, and voila! a quick piece of terrain to dress my Bushido board. I’ve put my Cult of Yurei Ikiryo figure next to it for size comparison. I didn’t want a huge statue, just something that could be like a roadside shrine or something.

I can’t wait to get the Bushido board finished!

Cheers!

How to… Make your own jungle terrain

Just a quickie! quick and simple jungle terrain!

I bought some aquarium plants from my FLPS (Friendly Local Pet Store), picking up 2 packs of plants which totalled less than $8.  I figured they may look cool as either jungle/oasis scenery, or maybe as some scenery for an exotic alien world. So, here goes…

Step one:
These suckas are all joined together, so you’ll want to take your scalpel to them to separate them up. (Remember to cut away from yourself, kiddies!)

You’ll want to try and hack them off the base too, much easier than it sounds… I had to get a heavy duty Stanley knife to this mofo. You should then be left with the foliage, thus:

I did leave a couple of pieces on the base, although I did reduce the size of the base. This will make for some slightly higher pieces of terrain.

Step two:
Now you’ll want to get some foam board that you’ll a) have lying around or b) will go and score from the craft store for about $3 a sheet, which will last you for ages. Cut out the size of base that you want your scenery piece to be, then shave the edges at an angle to make it look more natural when you put it on your gaming surface. Don’t worry, it does’t have to be perfect, you’ll see why soon.

Then, when you have your base, glue your foliage on! Again, don’t worry too much about the weird base bits, this will be taken care of.

Step three:
This is my favorite part, the messy bit. Get your spackle (or ‘filler’ as we Brits call it) and some pumice, which is essentially sand mixed into paint, which works just as well if you don’t have access to pumice. Now liberally slap on your spackle first. Build it up where you want, like around the base of the leaves etc. I had also grabbed a couple of rocks out of the garden which I included on there too, to include a more natural feel. I brought the filler all the way up to the rocks too, to make them look buried:

I added a layer of the pumice after the filler had dried, you can see I left a ‘pathway’ through the piece to make a bit of a feature of it, and added a couple of skulls from my bitz box in there too…

Here is an example of the other piece made a little higher, more like a small outcrop of foliage:

Step four:
Paint the bastid!

Basecoat is Graveyard Earth, washed with Devlan Mud, drybrushed with Graveyard Earth>Bleached Bone>little bit of Skull White

Mud trail was basecoat Scorched Brown>Devlan Mud wash>drybrushed Scorched Brown>Scorched Brown with Bleached Bone>little bit of Bleached Bone

Now with drybrushing, and some scenic odds and sods added:

Another shot:

“be vewwy vewwy qwiet, I’m huntin’ aweiens!”

And that, dear readers, is it! you should be looking at a lovely new piece or pieces of scenery! and all for under $12!

Stay frosty

H.

How to… make your own movement trays.

With my first game of WFB looming rapidly on the horizon I picked up a pack of the plastic movement trays that GW produces. They’re ok, for models with bigger bases, but I wanted to create my own.  I’ll be playing Tomb Kings, and as such, will be using minis with smaller bases. Now, anyone who has seen the TK minis will see how spindly they are. This can prove to be a bit of a pain in the arse when it comes to moving them around, and I didn’t want to be wasting time arranging them properly everytime they marched around the battlefield.

Dutifully I went to JoAnne Fabric and picked up some mounting card. I already had foam card at home so I already have everything I need. Initially I was thinking of using just the foam card but realized that the skellies would practically be standing head and shoulders above the other minis. Hence the thinner and stronger mounting card.

With the mounting card, draw around your base. Do this for your frontage and your depth, depending on what size unit you’re fielding. As I will be making this for a unit of 10 skellie archers, frontage will be 5 with a depth of 2:

Once you have your base measured up, cut it carefully from the sheet of card. Keep the lines as straight as possible. This one became my ‘master’ so I can use it for making more bases whenever I needed. From here we draw around this again onto the mounting board. Then we draw a bigger box around it. This extra spacing will be where our lip runs around the edge of the base:

Cut this from your  sheet of card. You now have your base which encompasses the 10 bases, plus the lip around the edge. Everyone following this ok?

Now, to the foam board. Trace around the larger base you just cut. then, lay your original template (the 10 base one from step one) on top. Make sure the spacing around the edge is roughly equal then trace around it. Then you’ll need to cut (very carefully) this centre piece out. You should end up with something that looks like a licence plate holder:

Get some all purpose clear glue and glue your foam card license plate holder to the mounting card base. You should be looking at something similar to the picture above. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect, we’ll be messing with that in a moment. I stuck my unit in it, just to give it a test fit:

Now, grab yer scalpel, or other sharp knife. We need to trim the edges down to give a more natural appearance, thus:

You’ll see now why it wasn’t a big deal if it didn’t all look totally straight, as you’ve changed it now anyway. You can be as zealous or reserved as you like here, it’s all down to personal preference.

We need to texture it now and you can do that one of two ways. First is to mix sand and PVA wood glue and paint this all over, or, if you want a quicker solution like me, you may have some ‘pumice’ which is available from most hobby stores. So, brab a brush and liberally slap it all over the outer ridge:

And you should end up with something like this:

The final stage is simple. You paint them! Paint them whatever color you need. As mine need to look all desert like, I start with a basecoat of Snakebite Leather:

Then a drybrush of Bubonic Brown and then finally Bleached Bone yields these results:

Thats it! you are done! I made 3 straight off, so I could put 2 units of skellie archers and a unit of Tomb Guard in them. They’re looking pretty sweet, and help give the army a uniform look.

Hope you liked this tutorial. More coming soon!

Paul