How To: Warhammer Terrain

Here's a quick tutorial on how to make some easy terrain for Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, or any other Fantasy, futuristic or historical genre of table top gaming. Here is our terrain piece with some Warhammer 40k figures to show scale.

We started with a leftover piece of polystyrene from a large disassembled project and some hardboard cut to the same approximate shape.

Overlap the hardboard past the edges of your foam.

Here is a smaller version...

adding old stone ruins to the top.

Apply hobby or craft glue to the bottom and press the polystyrene firmly on to the hardboard.

We then used coarse drywall screws to hold everything together. If you decide to use this step. carve a bit of the hardboard away so the screw head sets in the board. You wouldn't want to scratch your playing surface.

Our screws were long enough to go through the base and up into the ruin to help secure it on top.

Next we applied liberal amounts of craft glue along the base edges were foam meets base...

and poured coarse ballast onto the glue. Press it in to get maximum coverage.

Using any paint for a base coat, mix in some ballast...

and apply with a larger brush.

The mixed in ballast will give you a nice texture.

We sprayed the whole thing with a black base coat.

Now the real painting begins. We started with a Raw Umber and Charcoal Gray. Use a smaller brush, this is a half inch flat brush which is great for dry-brushing techniques.

On the flat bare surfaces and along the outer edges we applied Chocolate and Burnt Sienna.

The ruins got a coat of Pewter Gray...

and then a dry brush of Slate Gray.

A final light dry-brush of Granite was added to bring out any highlights and add a final contrast to the darker base colors.

Then we stippled on some Olive Green where we plan on adding foliage.

For our dry leaves and grass we use a mixture of herbs and spices mixed with Coarse Turf from Woodland Scenics.

Add in the crevices where blown leaves and old plants would gather.

Here is another example of filling a crevice in the rock.

Don't forget about along the edges of the base.

And there you have it! Ready for the gaming table. You could use lighter and greener colors with more traditional green flocking, These pieces were more cut to facilitate a rocky terrain area.

As we mentioned these can be used for almost any game system and scale. For Fantasy and Dark Age games like Saga add a cairn or load stone to the  base.

For World War II or Napoleonic era games like Bolt Action or Black Powder add barricades or sandbags.

Until next time,
Have a Great Battle!
The Old Crow

How To Build a Half Timber House - Part Three, Painting

Finally back to finishing our Half Timber House, painting will be the final stage to having a few of these beauties to call your own! We showed you how to build The Half Timber structure in Part One and how to add all the details in Part Two, now we'll provide the painting tips.

Start as usual with a base coat of black. You can apply a spray primer or brush it on with a 1-2" soft bristle brush. Here we brushed it on quickly, not worrying about brush strokes showing. we'll use those to our advantage later.

We'll be simulating Terracotta Tile so first we applied a dark brown, we used Burnt Umber. Next is our middle stage consisting of Raw Umber for this model. If you wanted to do a slate roof, use a dark gray, medium gray and then a light gray in the final stage.

Keep the brush more parallel to the surface and apply the paint in downward strokes from top to bottom. It is better to use small amounts of paint and build up the layers.

The Raw Umber has been applied here and we're ready to move on.

Our final stage is the Terracotta paint. It is applied the same way, small amounts, top to bottom and several layers. The wetter the brush the more paint that will go down at once. If the brush is to wet, all the fine details will fill in and the final project will look flat to the viewer.

Here the Terracotta was built up to give us a wonderfully textured roof.

This close up shows the great textures the contrasting paints have brought out.

On this roof we have a much softer look. We did additional layers of dry-brushing and different colors. A dark gray primer was used, then raw umber, nutmeg, yellow ochre and finally the terracotta. 

It's more work but if you have the time it will provide an awesome finish.

Now that your roof is completed, we'll move on to the siding and timbers. This first stage will be applied to both parts and then we;ll do the rest of the stages separately. We used the Raw Umber again and applied it to our wood going across the grain and as before, keeping the brush more parallel to the surface. You really want some of the crevices to remain dark.

Still using the Raw Umber apply the paint to the walls leaving corners black.

Now the stucco or plaster wall surface. Using a stiff bristle brush and a tan color, we used Mink Tan, dab the paint into the recessed areas between the timbers. This is often referred to as stippling. Variations in the amount of paint and coverage is a good thing here.

Once all the wall sections are covered in the tan color we can move on to the final step of the wall treatment. 

Using the same technique apply an off white over the tan. Allow variations in your coverage. Don't use a bright white, it'll look to clean for the side of a weathered house. Also, don't worry to much about getting extra spots on your timbers, future stages will cover any mistakes.

Back to the timbers. We painted the Raw Umber earlier, now use a medium brown, we used Coffee Bean.

As before, be sure to paint across the grain.

Finally dry-brush on a lighter brown. In this case we used Nutmeg, warm brown. You could easily use colors to represent a lighter wood or grey tones for a weathered barn wood look.

If you added extra features like wooden doors and window lentils, use the same process to paint them.

If you have stone on your house, you want to work with a very dry-brush. We used Medium Gray and wiped most of the paint off the brush. Then we gently wiped across the stones keeping the brush more parallel with the surface so the paint stays out of the cracks between stones.

You can see the texture left behind at the priming stage coming through quite nicely.

The next gray was a slight shade lighter than the first and after a quick and very light dry-brush, we applied it thicker and wetter to some of the stones.

Last but not least was to add some variations in colors and detail out some additional stones to give it a vibrant field-stone look.

And there you have another half timber house to add to your village!

Keep up the good work and...
Have a Great Battle,
The Old Crow