It Even Smells LIke A Street - New Warhammer 40K Terrain, Part 2

A veritable ruined street of terrain pieces.

Finally, a hobby project finished for 2016!  Yes, after a couple of weeks of dawdling I've painted up my Warhammer cardboard ruins, which means I have seven new pieces to add to my already extant four pieces.  That's a nice wee ruined city board option ready to slap down on the tabletop.


After my last post I had six pieces of terrain assembled but still bare cardboard.  I made one more ruin to use up some loose pieces of cardboard I had - another fairly large one, this time a three-walled building  - and then it was time to move onto the next steps - filler, basing and painting.

Slapped on this and fast

So, taking my ruins I layered on as much pound-shop filler as I could.  This was used to cover all edges of base/walls/openings, but also slapped fairly liberally over surfaces as well just to give them a bit more texture than being flat cardboard.  When we get to the drybrushing stage this will go a long way to giving the ruins a stoney, 3D feel.

A mixture of basing materials.

After that the filler is sanded down to flatten it out - we want texture,  not random splodges - and then the full base is painted with watered down PVA and scattered like I do my miniature bases.  I use a mixture of two Javis Countryside Scenics products: Fine Cork Chippings for the more sandy sections and then Scatter #25 Coal for the slightly more chunky rocks

All seven terrain pieces ready for undercoat.  The seventh "three walled" ruin the one at the left hand side.

 At this point everything is ready for a spray of Black undercoat.  This is going to get the bulk of it painted but not quite everything - all those corners, floors and what have you mean there'll be lots of sections that need manually painted.  I ended up using up all my MP and Pebeo black paint on this.  I had Army Painter black for my figures but for terrain pieces I wanted to keep a cheap, thick black acrylic handy so I  replaced the Pebeo with some Pip Seymour Acrylic Colour black.

All four black paints used, not counting the spray can of Army Painter.

Once the full shape of the pieces are painted black, dry-brushing begins.  Two layers are done - first a bluey-grey, then a light grey.  I apply this liberally to the whole of the ruins and also a little to the base as well, as though dust from the ruins has built up.  Even though the bases will be mostly overpainted I'm hoping this will give them a slightly more varied look.

All seven pieces after the first drybrush.  A bit blue at this point.

The first colour I used was the last vestiges of my Fenris Grey, a colour GW no longer make.  (Though I think The Fang would be the right equivalent in the new range.)  This gives the whole thing the start of texture, though at first it seems a bit artificial and overly blue.

After the second drybrush - looking a lot better!

 After the second coating, though - Elven Grey from Coat D'Arms - and we have a nice looking concretey shade.  All those cuts, holes and filler layers on the walls now come out to make it a bit more natural looking.

Base painted.

 A very heavy drybrush of Mephiston Red is put over the bases to make the martian like red dust landscape.  I also experimented with some drybrushing on edges and walls as though red dust had been blown onto it over a long period of time, colouring the whole thing.  (This is more obvious on the roof of the three-walled piece.)

All seven new pieces, ready to roll.

And with that we're basically done!  As you can see they now look a lot better than just plain cardboard, and while I was slow working through them the whole thing is pretty low cost.

One side of the T-junction like wall

For a little  bit of extra detail I added some graffiti tags here and there to the walls.  The above one was painted with yellow first, then had orange finer detail added before a little pinch of red in an attempt to make a quick and dirty "subway graffiti" style effect.  Far better painters than I could acheived something far more impressive here.

Funny, I thought I put graffiti on this piece but I can't see any...

Mixed in with my older pieces I now have eleven pieces of ruined building, all painted similar enough that they can be intermixed to look like segments of the same building.  They now all sit together pretty well. Throw down some roads and we got ourselves a table.

The ruins scattered about my painting table.

My good chum 40K Dave is running a wee tournament in the near future and expressed some interest in borrowing these terrain pieces.  He is in fact making up some ruined roads to go with them.  Blimey, that's a joint hobby project and everything!  I really am back on form.

Now all I need to do is play a game with the damn stuff...
  

Intentionally faint but the blue graffiti smiley face in the corner of that building has CHOPPER written beneath it.