40k Terrain

There are many aspects to making and using terrain. You have the 40k battlefield itself, miniature buildings, forests, ruins, objective and stratagem markers (for you Apocalypse, Cities of Death, and Planetstrike players), hills and more. It's easy to obtain or make these wonderfull Warhammer 40k terrain items. Games Workshop has great sets to build from, some great insight in White Dwarf, and a good book How to Make Wargames Terrain. You can design and scratch building your own, too. All you need is some basic design ideas, some construction skills, and willingness to get dirty with paint and glue.

Making Warhammer 40k terrain may be fun and fantastic terrain will make your 40k battlefield look fantastic. However, what do you do if you need something quick? Making a new battle fortress or an Orc tower or an Eldar web portal takes time. That's ok - you can play today! There are a few quick tricks.

First thing you need is a playing surface - something that looks like ground on the type of planet you wish to play. Games Workshop has a battle matt just for this purpose. You can also buy some great cloth materials at the fabric store. Some of these can be pricy, but always check out their remnants and sales items - the type of stuff you need doesn't necessarily make great bed spreads and drapes. For my part, I've got a great table cloth that has a nice brushed pattern. Nice thing about cloth is you can wash it - or at least just shake it out - to clean it. It's also REALLY portable. Some samples are show in the illustration below. Note the red cloth. This is actually a heavy paper table cloth; the red really looks good when you are making things look alien!

The next thing you need is to break up the open field a bit. Your traditional choices here are roads, rivers, lakes, buildings, ruins, hedges, walls, trees, and hills. Roads and rivers are easy - get some felt at the fabric store, cut it to suitable lengths and shape and lay it on the surface. You can put paper down to represent anything, of course, but it just doesn't suit well painted armies! Hedges, trees, and walls are easy, too, but a bit more expensive. Games Workshop 40k terrain includes great walls and barricades, and they have hedges, too. You can also go to your nearest hobby store and look in the train section - you might for some "O"-scale stuff that suits just fine. In the image below, you can see trees bought at a pet store (for reptile habitats), a pond made for wargames surrounded by some large Woodland Scenic trees, some hard pressed pulp paper (used for miniature RC rock crawlers I found at the hobby store), and a small fort I found at a local game store.

Hills and trees get a bit pricier. I don't like playing by putting cloth over books to represent hills. The models just don't stay up on these and it's not worth the hassle. So, you need to buy something that's readymade - you might be surprised what you find, though! Same goes for trees. There are a few options here, but my favorite is to buy readymade trees at the hobby store. The trick here is to get the right scale. You can get small ones, but the 25mm or so miniatures for 40k just don't work if you get small trees. If you can, get something suitably large that looks good. You can put two or three trees down on green felt to show the edge of your trees if you're playing area terrain. An important factor to consider is the scale of the trees - I like to have trees that are at least a few inches high. In the images below, you can see trees that are 4", 5", and 6" high from Woodland Scenics.

40k buildings may be the hardest to do quickly. There won't be anything suitable for 40k terrain or Warhammer scenery at the train store. I was lucky and found some at the game store made by other hobbyists. I also found some toy ruins. There are some great readymade buildings available on-line. However, if you've started making your terrain bits box, maybe you've stored some foam or paper packing items that can be very quickly painted.

Fish tank stuff works well, too. However, it can be really, really pricy. But, sometimes it looks great - good enough to use to compliment your hand made 40k terrain and scenery once you have time to make some. Some of this stuff might be the best way to represent a truly alien landscape, such as the trees I'm showing below.

Before you start making 40k terrain, you're going to need to acquire some basic tools and materials. You need just a few basic tools to start. Large brushes, a ruler or straight edge, some hobby knives, and a saw or moderate sized serrated knife should do it. As you progress to more advanced techniques, you may find it useful to have a foam cutter or hot knife, heat gun, glue gun, paint rollers, and maybe some light power tools.

Here's a list of basic tools:

Brushes - a wide range of sizes and conditions

Pots and buckets - These are terrain projects and many will be big-so think big for water and mixing pots. For some things, you'll definitely need buckets

Masking tape - Blue tape or green frog tape

Paint palette - Again, think bigger than you would for painting army models - an old dinner plate is ideal

Metal straight edge - preferably a ruler or even a square

Sand paper - several sheets of medium- and coarse-grain sand paper; you might want to get a sanding block and maybe even some foam sandpaper pads

Craft knifes - I like having Exacto style knives and also retractable carpentry or carpet knife

Scissors - preferably some pretty heavy duty ones

Tweezers - Invaluable when using super glue to fasten small parts to other parts%u2026. You probably have figured that out already.

Clippers - good grade wire cutters that can cut metal

Needle nose pliers - Sometimes tweezers just don't do the job. Also useful for bending metal.

Permanent markers - be creative and use your color of choice

Fret or key-hole saw - lots of choices here, but something that can easily cut out free form shapes in wood and possibly metal

Pen drill - some craft knives can double as a pen drill

Glue - PVA glue, spray adhesive, super glue, plastic glue, wood glue, and maybe something like Liquid nails

The more advanced or specialist tools could be endless, but here's a few. Oh! And it includes POWER TOOLS! How cool is that? Remember, you only need to acquire stuff as you can actually use it. To make a basic battlefield and some hills and woods take only a few very inexpensive items. You really can make fantastic 40k scenery very inexpensively - so you have more money to buy miniatures and go to tournaments!

• Foam cutters - There are a wide variety of these, but I like the hot wire kind of foam cutter. An extension cord is a nice accessory here.
  
• Hand sander - Not much to say about hand sanders%u2026
  
• Cordless Jigsaw - Make sure to have a mix of blades for cutting a variety of materials. And if you're cutting MDF, make sure to have a dusk mask and blades with as high a teeth count as you can find. MDF can contain formaldehyde.
  
• Rotary tool - For drilling and grinding and cutting. A wide range of bits and blades is good. This is one area you might not want to skimp on - I use my Dremel an aweful lot.
  
• Cordless drill - Sometimes you need big holes so you need a real drill; drill bits, of course, are helpful to use the drill.
  
• Hole punch or awl - Something to poke holes with - it's also useful to create a mark to start your drill bit.
  
• Utensils - Yes, utensils. A fork is useful for roughing up foam and a serrated knife makes rough cuts that can be more realistic than what a hobby knife or hot foam cutter can make.
  
• Files - small and large for wood and metal
  
• Clamps, weights, and rubber bands - for holding things together while letting glue dry
  
• Heat gun - For some uses, a hair dryer may be sufficient, but for others you really need something that can blow really hot air for extended periods
  
• Razor saw with miter block
  
• Sculpting tools - large and small, and make sure they are suitable for the kinds of medium you will be using
  
• Natural and artificial sponges and scrubbing pads - for various painting techniques
  
• Paint rollers and pan - For large projects - painting multiple 40k game boards, for example - rollers are much more versatile than brushes. For 40k terrain projects, I actually like to have used rollers
  
• Air brush - with variable spray and if you're going to be doing lots of large projects, a small compressor will turn out really nice
  
• Glue gun - I don't use one often, but you might
  
• Hammer - a small one should be sufficient; and it will be rarely used, but you never know.

There are always more things you can use. If you're putting your game boards on wood, you may need a circular saw. Drilling lots of holes in metal might require a drill press. But, for this more esoteric stuff, maybe you can bring your project to a friend's house and use their stuff. And, there are some things you may find you just don't like using. For example, I've never used a glue gun on a 40k terrain project. Another thing is that batter powered tools are nice; mine aren't, but I really wish they were.

And there are advanced projects like making plaster or resin molds and then casting models. This requires some additional tools; maybe we'll cover those someday, too.

Do you recycle? Do you reuse everything you can, giving things a new life? If so, then 40kTerrain is going to cost you a lot less! You need to start a bits box (soon it'll be boxes). You put all sorts of odds and ends in the bits box - anything that is CLEAN and can be cut, shaped, glued, or modified to make terrain. Variety is absolutely key. Your imagination is the limit, here. Almost anything can be used. Here's some ideas and pictures of stuff out of my bits boxes. First, couple of pictures and then the list of stuff.

• Sprue bits
  
• Old Tamiya tank model
  
• Styrofoam packing
  
• Table clothes paper and fabric
  
• Felt
  
• Cottage cheese container
  
• Card stock
  
• Foam board
  
• Hydrocal rocks
  
• Train tunnels
  
• Wire screen
  
• Corks (and a few Scotch bottle tops)
  
• Plastic egg container
  
• Molded plastic packing
  
• Blister packs
  
• Heat sync (like CPU heat sinks)
  
• Electronics (like old capacitors)
  
• Large staples
  
• Peach pits (really)
  
• Wire (several kinds)
  
• Lids
  
• Paper tubes
  
• Terrarium stuff ($$$$)
  
• Boxes (card board or card stock)
  
• Paper plates (clean)
  
• Wood bits (plywood)
  
• Pink board bits (polystyrene)
  
• Hair accessories
  

If you're a reader of Games Workshop's stuff, you'll know the sprue bits can be ground up for rubble. Hydrocal is like plaster, but harder and lighter - model train hobbyists use it for rocks and such. The plastic egg container looks particularly promising, as does the molded plastic packing material (from a cell phone box). Organic stuff like peach pits won't keep long without a preservative - in this case, dipping the peach pits in MinWax or something similar should keep them fine. I'm hoping to use them for some type of Tyranid thing. It's all good for 40k scenery.

Games Workshop's moonscape pack is a pretty good value. For under $20 dollars and well under two hour's time, you can have five nicely detailed 40k terrain craters. These craters are multi-functional. They can be used in Planetstrike to reflect the pre-game bombardments and fires storms; and they can be used in any Warhammer 40k game to show where tanks or fortifications blew up. In game terms and subject to players' agreement, craters typically convey a 6+ or sometimes a 5+ cover save as area terrain. They may or may not be considered difficult terrain, again depending on the players' desires.

The craters paint up very nicely right out of the package. Prime them and then base coat in earth tone, follow with a lighter shade over paint, and highlight by dry brushing a light shade. These will look fantastic.

You can take the craters to a much higher level, however. You can mount the craters on MDF or formica or other durable support. You can add boulders and gravel to the craters to make them each more unique and more detailed. And you can add 40k battlefield detritus (from you 40k bitz and the Bits Box) left from whatever was destroyed at the crater and the fighting since then. A complete tutorial is presented on 40k Terrain, presented in a three part series. The first post is Deluxe Craters Part 1. (Original title, huh? I liked it, too.)

I recently played in the North Star Warhammer Tournament is unique on the Warhammer Tournament circuit. The Warhammer scenery at North Star is executed to an incredible standard. The game boards themselves are durably textured and painted. Where appropriate, tuffs of grass or brush are adhered. Each board has five custom terrain elements. These will range from Fantasy terrain elements, to stalagmites that are played as forests (except they have hard cover), to impassible squig pens to Hobbit holes, and all the other things you can think of within the Warhammer world. A few elements are Games Workshop or Citadel. These included the Watchtower, Dreadstone Blight, a chapel, the Temple of Skulls, and Arcane Ruins. Warhammer armies looked awesome charging across the field. And most were suitable 40k Terrain (I'm not so sure about the Hobbit village). I posted several pictures at 40k Terrain, including a full post on the terrain at North Star Warhammer Terrain. As you look at the pictures, you should be able to get some great ideas.

Of course, pulling off an event like this takes a serious commitment. Each table was planned for a specific theme and balance within the overall tournament by the tournament staff. Then Jeron Stiffler and John Stentz worked together to make the bulk of the terrain. Eric Hager did some really cool detail work, including little mushrooms, the hobbit houses, flower boxes, pumpkin patches and more. Alex Wobema helped out in general and in planning and in rules interpretation during the tournament. There are other staff, but I didn't get their names. They work together through the year to updates and refresh the terrain and in storing the terrain. This is done at staff members home, and I suspect they get the benefit of playing with the terrain through the year. How cool is that?