Swamp Terrain - Simple Ruins

Now the that bulk of the playing surface is finished I have started working on the modular terrain pieces that will inhabit the playing field. Since I will be working on multiple projects at the same time I figured it would be easier to document and create the step-by-step instructions for each theme rather than throw a whole slew of different projects into on post. So in this series I wanted to create a "simple" set of ruins. What I mean by that is that these will be just a series of small walls that may have once been a part of a wall or a series of small structures that have fallen apart over time and suffered the ravages of time. So without making you wait anymore, let's see how I went about creating the simple ruins.

Swamp Board - Painting has begun

As stated in the title I have been spending the last two weeks painting up the surface of the swamp table. I also started to add debris and plant growth to the bottom of the waterway so that when the water effects have been poured in you will be able to see pieces of trees, rubble, and plant life. So let's take a look at the progress so far.

Born on the Bayou

I've made more progress on the swamp board over the past week. While I am getting a lot of things done on the board, the pace may seem a little slow since so much of the time is spent letting glue dry between applications. But fear not, things are progressing and starting to take shape. So without dragging this out, let's take a look at what I was able to accomplish this past week.

Swamp Board - A Genesis

A couple of weeks ago I announced that my first terrain project for 2014 was to be a swamp themed board. Well, the weather has started to cooperate in Western NY so I started work on the board. The idea behind this board is that I want to create a realistic looking lowlands/swamp that fits a 6x4 table surface but will have modular pieces so that even though the overall shape and layout of the board will always be the same, the modular pieces should have enough variety so that the board as unlimited potential for layouts. So let's see what I got done last week.

Terrain Board 2014

Every year I devote a part of my hobby year to creating a new themed terrain board. In 2011 it was my Train Yard board, in 2012 it was my Ancient Ruins board and last year I created my Tyranid/Jungle board. So this year I had a few ideas such as an Eldar/Winter themed board, Swamp Ruins board, or to continue on with my necron board. Well, after looking around on google images I finally made my decision to go with the Swamp Ruins board. Why go with this theme? Well, after working on the Tyranid terrain I was impressed with how detailed the terrain pieces looked and I especially liked the water effects pools I added to the pieces so I wanted to explore, experiment, and expand with working on that theme. So let's take a look at what I have planned.

Goodbye 2013...

2013 is just about over and what a year it has been. GW has surprised us all by churning out codices, army books, supplements, and new models with a frequency uncharacteristic of their business model. Where will all of this takes us in 2014 is unknown but you can be sure it will be one hell of a ride. Since everyone and their brother is posting articles on what this means for the future of war gaming and tournaments I am not going to bother adding my opinions in this article. Instead I just plan on riding this out and focus on what I have planned in the upcoming year. So grab a beer and join me as we take a look at what has transpired over the past year and what the authors of the Mandulian Chapel have planned for 2014.

Grubnards GT Countdown T-2 Weeks

That's right...the Da Boyz GT is almost upon us and I'm getting pretty excited. This past week was pretty productive as far as working on terrain, my display board, and my army. I was also able to get in another game this past weekend that did not go well for me at all. Since list submissions are due within 6 days I've been busy making some changes to my list that I will cover below. So without any delay, lets looks at last weeks progress....

Gaming, terrain, and theory - oh my!

The last couple of weeks have been a mish-mash of hobby related activities so I figured I would share some of my experiences and thoughts as I get back on track with terrain building and gearing up for the Da Boyz GT in November. Next week I will try to get up a battle report or two with a game I have scheduled with Hyv3mynd for tonight. We are both running lists that we want to test out for the next monthly tournament at Millennium Games and depending on how the games goes I would like to work in a narrative element into the report along with the awesome pictures Hyv3 always takes during the games. But until then here is a brief recap of what I have been doing the last few weeks.

City Terrain Wrapup and beyond...

Hard to believe that its been almost three months. Back in early February of this year, Hyv3, Calypso2ts, and Crispy approached me about becoming a contributing author to the Mandulian Chapel. While I was honored that they asked me to contribute, I was both excited and nervous about the prospects of writing for this blog. I was excited that they all felt that I had something worth contributing to the greater community but at the same time I was nervous because I was not sure I would find enough stuff to talk about each week that would keep you, the reader, interested and engaged. Boy has that changed. These past three months have been a blast and due to the blog I have found myself taking on more hobby related projects and pushing myself to try new techniques in modeling and terrain building. With that being said, this week I will be wrapping up the “Creating City Terrain” series by showing you how to create unique terrain elements out of items that you can find relatively cheaply and easily. Hopefully my articles have inspired you to go out and build terrain pieces for your own collection, or for your gaming club or store.

Creating City Terrain: Tank Traps

So far in the Creating City Terrain series I have shown you how easy and affordable it can be for anyone to make their own terrain suitable for use in their warhammer 40k games. To date I have showed you how to create city ruins (part 1 and part 2), rubble, and tanglewire. Today I want to walk you through one of the simplest city terrain projects yet, tank traps. Tank traps, in theory, are designed to slow down or halt the advancement of vehicles by creating a barrier made of concrete, steel, or wood. The most common images of tank traps can be seen by looking at pictures or film taken during WW2 with the most iconic being the tank traps employed along the Atlantic wall and the traps setup along the Siegrfried Line. The concrete barriers setup along the Siegfried Line were often called Dragon's Teeths due to the square-pyramidal shape that they were constructed in. The idea behind the tank traps were to impede the progress of tanks and funnel the vehicles into killing zones where they could be destroyed with anti-tank weapons. Mines, pole, and barbed wire was often placed in and around the tank traps to slow down infantry that often accompanied the tanks.

Creating City Terrain: Rubble

In my last few articles on creating city terrain I walked through the steps of making city ruins using Styrofoam, pink foam, shale, and other odds and ends. Well, after making the main ruins you should have amassed quite a pile of left over small chunks of foam littering your work space. Hopefully you did not throw them out as I am going to show you how you can use those pieces of foam to create rubble terrain pieces. I like to use rubble in my city fight boards because it helps flesh out the visualization that you are really battling it out in a city landscape.

Building City Ruins pt 1

In the first installment in a series on building your own terrain I thought I would start with building a couple of city ruins. Since the setting of 40k revolves around mankind and his conquest of the stars, buildings and fortifications of man are probably the most common type of structures that would be found and fought over  throughout the galaxy. Whether it is an alien invasion of a city, an uprising of chaos cultists, or simply two  xenos races fighting over the ruins of a human city; we can easily identify with structures similar to what we  see in our own daily surroundings or in the media and replicate it in miniature scale.

Its a jungle out there... or is it?

Hi, my name is Kevin (aka grubnards on various 40k boards) and Hyv3 asked if I would like to contribute to the Mandulian Chapel. Since I make a lot of terrain, tinker with conversions, and generally try to get creative with my models I figured I would write a series of article dealing with terrain.

Themed terrain can add new levels to your game.

Jungle Table 3.0

A few months ago, I told the owner of the store that hosts the monthly tournaments that I would build him a set of terrain for his store.  Here is what I came up with using some of my newly acquired tools and new techniques I've been pondering.

New Table: The Crystal Desert

I took a break from painting last week to build a new terrain set. You got a sneak peak of it if you read this report. 

I have a bunch of the tie-dyed fleece cloths from JoAnn's Fabrics and I've been wanting to get complete terrain sets for each one.  It's been a project I've put off for months and this new foam cutter the NOVA guys are using has me inspired.