Topic of the Week - Your terrain building experience!

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What is your level of experience?

Poll ended at Sat Dec 19, 2015 3:29 pm

Hi. The master of terrain building. Nice to meet you.
0
No votes
I have built a lot, but I could still use some pointers.
3
50%
I have built some kits.
1
17%
I have built some terrain from scratch.
1
17%
I haven't built anything. I'm a complete noob.
1
17%
 
Total votes: 6

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Daeron
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Topic of the Week - Your terrain building experience!

Post by Daeron »

Greetings,

In this topic of the week, I would like to discuss a terrain building. For 2016 we're hoping to make a terrain building competition. CultofKhaine kind of knocked us all out of the ring with his amazing Corsair ship, but why should that stop us from making our own piece?
However, when it comes to terrain building, there seem to be as many differences in level as there are in painting. What would your level of experience when it comes to terrain building?
What have you made before?

Do you have a project in mind for the coming year? Do you have a specific kind of terrain you prefer? Do you work with kits, or prefer to build from scratch?
Do you always find what you are looking for, to build the terrain you want, or do you feel there are gaps missing in the materials and kits you want?

To help us measure our community's experience, we're adding a poll where you can mark your level of experience. But by all means, don't stick to the poll only and feel free to throw in your comment!
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direweasel
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Re: Topic of the Week - Your terrain building experience!

Post by direweasel »

I took a class on terrain building one year at GenCon and we built some stuff there. I built a hill that was decent but nothing extraordinary. The class was neat but I don't have some of the tools they used and have never really seriously considered buying it. Most of my WH occurs at game stores where terrain is already available, so while it was fun to learn how, it's by no means a necessity for my gaming.

Beyond that, I mostly use pre-built stuff. I still have the cardboard cutout buildings from the old "Tears of Isha" set that has held up OK due to my taking care of it, and I have the old WHFB fortress set, still mostly intact over the 20 or so years I've owned it. And I have a bunch of terrain I bought from GF9 for Flames of War, but that's in 15mm scale and WW2 based so not really applicable here. Very good stuff though, if you play that game or one like it, I highly recommend it. I have 2 sets of the Normandy Beach bunkers, and 2 sets of the Russian farm villages. Nice stuff, high quality.
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Re: Topic of the Week - Your terrain building experience!

Post by Calisson »

I just bought a 4"x6" board!
Now we can play on a "normal" size battlefield. :)

For the terrain, I use mostly scrap plastic saved from recycle bin, and occasionally some old roleplaying models.
Nothing very elaborated, but couldn't be cheaper, and also it can be stockpiled in resonably small containers between two battles.
Here is a sample of what I made for 8th ed terrain: http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=66435

If ever we turned to 9th ed or AoS, then we would have to reconsider our stock of terrain.
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Re: Topic of the Week - Your terrain building experience!

Post by Darkprincess »

I've built loads of terrain over the years, much of it single-handedly, some with help (such as a 6x4 Mordheim table with loads of half-timbered buildings - mostly made from inkjet-printed card dressed with various bitz)

Sadly I don't have most of that now. when our gaming group drifted apart a few years ago, most of the terrain pieces were either sold on ebay or dumped in one way or another - much as I love good terrain pieces, we all have finite space to store it all.

Now that I'm returning to the hobby after a few years away - 9th Age here - GW have p155ed me off for the last time - dropping Slaanesh really was the last straw. GW have done to me what Microsoft did years ago - kept hiking prices, changing things I don't want changed and not changing the things I do - so I ditched Windows for Linux some ten years ago - in a lot of ways the whole situation with GW is very similar. AoS is like Windows 8 - horrible, changed in all the wrong ways, unusable for those of us who were happy with how it was before and so on, whereas 9th Age is like Linux - free and open-source, developed by the community, for the community - just the thing that I was calling for on this very website almost a decade ago. - I also suggested back then that one day, GW would annoy its paying customers to the extent that they will desert the company and it will become irrelevant and disappear altogether and I also suggested that if you gave GW enough rope, they'd eventually hang themselves with it. We're not quite at that point yet, but we're getting there - one battle at a time :twisted:

Anyway I digress (as those who've known me a long time will be aware that I have a tendency to do from time to time).

Getting back to terrain projects though, I'd like to build something new, but it can't be too big as I have nowhere to put it. I'll have to give this some thought. My uncle has a home-made 3D printer which, although not high-resolution enough to actually print miniatures, is ideal for building the basic shell of terrain pieces (as well as making custom bases), which can then be dressed with other materials in order to make them look really good. Perhaps I will try something along those lines, as such a machine makes it pretty easy (though very slow) to make complex shapes that would be tricky to produce by other means (roofs with compound curves, for example)

I still have various small terrain bits left in the spares box - ruined statues etc from LOTR, a few bits of 40K buildings and so on, as well as some WFB trees and arcane ruins, but I'd like to make something original. Now I just need a good idea :)

Black Ark, anyone?

OK maybe something a bit smaller in scale :)
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Re: Topic of the Week - Your terrain building experience!

Post by cultofkhaine »

My favourite topic - yay! Thanks Daeron for posting!

CultofKhaine kind of knocked us all out of the ring with his amazing Corsair ship


I'm still working on the ship - another update shortly :D

I love building terrain and theming it to my current army. It really adds some atmosphere to the game. GW use to be really boring in this area but of late it is good to see them really shake things up. I think this has been a missed opportunity for them in the past and it's good to see some of the new pieces now coming out like the chaos stronghold (that thing is epic) also the realm gates look pretty sweet as well.

I like to make my own terrain using a mix of materials and bits, I always thought it would be good one day to model a DE city (town perhaps). There is always something to learn, there are plenty of how to do it videos out there and it just takes plenty of time to experiment (half the fun I think)

My current mission at the moment is to finish my Corsair Ship, then I want to build it into a display board for next years Armies on Parade. I also have a few other random terrain projects I would like to work on (Dwarf Brew House) being one of them.

A terrain building comp sounds like fun - we have been a bit slack this year and not had a painting comp for a while (I also realised we missed having a secret santa)

I'm looking forward to see what new terrain will be coming with the Aelfs release for AoS
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