Terrain is everything - a solution to an age old problem part 2

More work on my man-made hill. The original plan was to make this as simple as possible but you know these things are fluid, always in flux. It's at times like these where new ideas and directions become apparent and so the end result can be dramatically different than the initial concept. So they end up being less simple but more functional in the process. Here's the 'basic' hill.

The downside to this is the STC production. I could deliver about half a dozen new .pdfs of my STCs to 'my followers' and the community as a whole now [if they wanted] but the kinks may not have been worked out and I've not constructed them enough to show step-by-steps or put any instructions on the pages so it's a little clearer what goes where. However I've tried to stay on top of the template with this construction so who knows, this may leap-frog some older STCs and be in your hands before you know it! Here's a Dread for scale.

You can't tell but I messed up on the cutting for the bottom step, it's 5mm longer than the other ones but I kind of like it, the STC will be fixed to accommodate this error and there should be a cool little construction technique where interlocking bits of foam core should make that bottom step reall solid. As this hill will not have a board base it'll need to take the strain at this join. It also needed a bit of extra card under the front step, apparently my vertical measuring was out by about 1.5 mm so your average cereal box is too thin, and mounting card too thick, however the sort of card used to back A4 writing pads was just right!

Next up is mounting card edges on the top of the hill and steps with Granny Grating mesh on the top. That's right I come up with an idea for a simple hill in case you can't get hold of foam and use another material that not everyone can get their hands on! Of course you could do without or just use card squares with a tile pattern... Oh and the hills going modular [in a way]!

Terrain is everything - a solution to an age old problem part1

What do we have here?

I've been cogitating like a Mech-Adept fiend for months about this and finally decided to do something about it. When I started back in 40k I made a list of typical terrain:

• Hills
• Trees
• Walls
• Fences
• Buildings
• Ruins
• Scattered objects
• Rock formations
• Bunkers/defences
• Containers

As you see first on the list was hills, your defacto standard terrain, and I went on to make my modular hill. But what happens if you can't get pink/white/blue/peach [delete as appropriate] insulation foam? Well foam card is a much easier material to source, although maybe a little more expensive in the long term. However, you can get it on ebay, at places like Paperchase and many art supply shops so you can make a hill-like structure that will function in much the same way as a hill. In fact Dawn of War has many such elements of scenery similar to what I propose, although sadly I can't seem to find a reference shot of what I'm on about.

Here's all the individual pieces for my 'simple' hill. Of course, by now you should know it won't be so simple when it's finished.

The concept is partly inspired by my walk to the train station. Below is some shots of a concrete ramp leading up out of Port Street Car Park. This split level 'waste ground' has quite a 40k feel about it and although you don't get quite the 'funneling' effect from these images I've exaggerated in my build because it really is quite a nice effect.

Here's the exact location in google maps [which I love with an unhealthy passion], you can see the ramp just below where it says Port St. Of particualr note is the L shaped building in the bottom right. There's a blue placque on the wall just by the bridge over the canal and it states one of the world's first aircraft builders, A.V. Roe and Company was established at Brownsfield Mill,  by Alliott Verdon Roe and his brother Humphrey Verdon Roe on 1 January 1910. Avro went onto produce the Lancaster and Vulcan bombers and it's a nice little bit of history I get to pass every night.

View Larger Map

'nids part 22. - Photo bomb!

OK here's a photo bomb of my Son's 'nids. I realised recently I've never really done a full exhibition of my efforts last year so I thought I'd remedy this. I decided to take all these pics the day I embarked on the Red Planet Basing for the entire force and before I tweaked all the highlights on the claws and talons. These pics have been knocking around for ages and I really should have shared them before but by getting them out in the open now I can do individual unit shots further down the line when they're varnished and complete.

Here's a couple of shots of the 'big guns' Hive Tyrant [before he had any Bonewhite highlights], Zoanthrope, Trygon and Tervigon and the second shot with the Tyranid Warriors and Tyranid Prime.

'Mount Doom' the big guns get ready to descend on Ferron Proxima!

The Tervigon and a few Gargoyles

'The Tervigon on the mount' seen over the horde of Hormagaunts and then you have to change focus to the ravaging beasties that are bounding towards you!

Another view of the Tervigon through the mass of chittering gribblies and then the Tyranid Warrior armed with Barbed Strangler.

Lastly, my old friend Broodlord in a Bodywarmer!

The Five-O

Just a little fanfare for my 50th follower, you win a 'no-prize' and a heads-up that I've been 'building'. The ad-mech dendrites have been stirring and I've started a new project to solve a common problem with sourcing certain terrain materials. I wanted a simple solution and of course in the process of execution I've started to over complicate things as usual...

Have I teased you enough? Don't worry I'll reveal all shortly.

Terrain is everything - Standard Template Constructs - FREE Terrain Templates

Standard Template Construct (STC) systems were advanced computers created during the Dark Age of Technology, which are said to have contained the sum total of human technological knowledge. An STC system was possessed by every group of human colonists before the Age of Strife, allowing them to build all of the equipment necessary for survival on an untamed colony planet. It enabled the colonists to build efficient shelters, generators and transports without any technical knowledge and using almost any locally available materials. The user simply asked how to build a house or a tractor and the computer supplied all the necessary plans.

One of the primary goals in this blog was to formalise any tutorials and templates that I had, to help other hobbyists. The 'STCs' I've created so far for my buildings have received a lot of hits on the articles, although I'm not sure how many new structures have been built but I'm appreciative of all the good vibes coming my way, thanks. In the 10 years since I first posted this article some of the links have been misplaced. I'm working through editing it to be up-to-date so people can access both the original page and the .pdf of the STC.

 

Here's the STCs for what I've created so far, if it's BOLD then it should be up-to-date [Oct 2021]. But, if you have any issues or the link doesn't work please comment below, I will always respond even if it takes a while to do so:

• 40k Tower Page | STC
• 40k Outpost pg1 | pg2 | STC
• 40k Container pg1 | Scatter container search | STC
• 40k Hex Tower 1 | STC
• 40k Ruins | STC
• 40k Vulcan Plateau | STC
• 40k Hex Tower 2 [now reclassified as the Spyrle Forward Observation Platform] | STC
• 40k Single Storey Ruin [Caffeine Plaza] | STC
• 40k Mercury Plateau | STC
• 40k Standard Manifold Coupling, aka the Modular Plug Socket | STC
• 40k Cetacean 'Vent' Tower and Baleen Roof Extension | STC

'Adeptus Mechanicus unapproved plans' - STC's liberated by the Free Radical Collective that don't contain quite as much detail, instructions or corrections but it's better they're available to you so you can tinker with them. Then one day I may get around to fixing them:

• 40k Dawn of War Plasma Generator | STC
  Build tutorial: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
• 40k Targus Assault Blockade | STC
• 40k Cathedral Tower | STC

Print and Play STC building templates - a variety of pre-textured simple buildings to quickly populate your battlefield. Just print and stick to foamboard, cut out and stick together [be fair warned these templates are all considerably large filesizes - 40-90MB due to the many textures added to the templates. Please do not download if you are unhappy with this. I prefer to spend my time making FREE templates, not working out why one file is bigger than it should be]:

• 40k Administratum Tower 1 [2 storey] | STC
• 40k Administratum Tower 1 [3 storey tall] | STC
• 40k Administratum Tower 1 [2 storey wide] | STC
• 40k Administratum Tower 1 [3 thin and tall towers] | STC

• 40k Black Tower 1 [2 storey] | STC
• 40k Black Tower 1 [3 storey tall] | STC
• 40k Black Tower 1 [2 storey wide] | STC

• 40k Green Marble Tower 1 [2 storey] | STC
• 40k Green Marble Tower 1 [3 storey tall] | STC
• 40k Green Marble Tower 1 [2 storey wide] | STC

• 40k Generatorium [2 storey] | STC
• 40k Generatorium [3 storey tall] | STC
• 40k Generatorium [2 storey wide] | STC

Terrain is everything - Because you asked for it - 40k outpost, that got bigger Pt 3 'big pictures'

Warhammer39999 asked for some bigger pictures of the '40kOtgB'. Here's some straight from the camera at 2MB each click for the embiggen. Ignore the Trygon, you haven't met him yet, don't worry you will. If you still want the plans for the tower are here.

Terrain is everything - modular hill overview part 2.

In much the same way that GW’s battle terrain can split and rotate I wanted a hill that did the same. A hill big enough to support my largest building but offer a split so it can be positioned as corner pieces or board side ridges.

I sourced some pink insulation foam from B&Q. It was about £7 and 50mm thick, twice what I wanted but the 25mm foam was out of stock. I think the sheet was about 5’ long and possibly 3’ wide, big enough for a table on it’s own and after producing all my hills I have half of it left.

Firstly I had to split the foam in two to get it down to 25mm. I used a normal wood saw to do this. It made a really rough surface but I figured that would be the base so wouldn’t matter. One down side to this is that the foam did start to warp a little so if you can get 25mm thick foam, get it! I then traced my hill, with split and a number of other hills, a roughly circular hill, oval and a long ridge. I think all of them can fit on the modular hill in some way to get that double height cover.

The hills were all cut out at an angle. I used a thin bread knife for this as the serrated edges were finer leaving a smoother finish on the slopes. This is really difficult to do and takes a lot of care so you don’t lose a limb. Cutting the hill on the edge/corner of a table allows the knife to cut through without destroying the furniture. I did mine vertically on the wall outside so I didn’t make a mess from the polystyrene.

The hills had bases made out of mounting card, less durable than MDF but I had loads to hand and it’s easier to cut/bevel edges. Obviously the downside is that the PVA used to mount the hills and board together warped them but eventually you can bend them back straight. Around the edges builder’s sharp sand from B&Q was stuck on with PVA.

The hills were painted with a black interior house paint, bulked out with Early Learning Centre art paint, some Polycel ready mix plaster, some fine sand and a good dollop of PVA glue. I wanted a nice impervious coating, like you get with surfboards, a foam core with a hard outer fibreglass shell.

Once this was dry I sprayed a red oxide primer paint [another advantage to red planet battlefields] onto the hill. I’d also managed to pick up some Vermillion artists acrylic paint from Quality Save for 99p. Amazingly this colour matches the base map perfectly. A series of successive drybrushes really picked up the sand and texture.

Below are all the hills I made in one go, as you can see there’s plenty of variety to their deployment which means we won’t get too bored with our terrain. Later on as I present more examples of my red planet terrain, once I've prepped all the .pdf templates to go with them I'll show how the terrain all fits together.