Dear Readers, your humble correspondent returns to the intertubes once again with profuse apologies for leaving you waiting so long between updates. I must confess to very little hobby activity across the last 6 months in terms of painting and converting miniatures. This has been the case, however, for the happiest of reasons; I have been playing games!

Across the last 6 months or so, I would have averaged around 1 or 2 games per week of 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000, a few games of Space Hulk, and – across the last month – several games of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, 5th edition (of course).

What hobby activity I have been engaged in has mainly been terrain making to enable all of this gaming to be possible, and it is the results of those efforts which I report to you today.

Some of these elements you have seen before…. the Jungle Trees, the Scatter Terrain, and the Jungle Ruins…. but here they all are incorporated with some newer elements on a full size table.

No 2nd edition 40K setup could be complete without spiky jungle cacti, and so several bases of these were made up. I actually made them quite some time ago and they appear in a battle report on the most excellent Game of Travel blog (where you can see just how long ago they were made!).

The cacti were fairly easy to make, being constructed of Styrofoam balls, toothpicks, and with texture added from filler, sand, and dripping caulk from a caulking gun over them. Paint them before adding the spikes (which you should spray paint red on their own).

Another essential element for that authentic 1990s 40K look is moss covered rock spires, and I have prepared one so far, with plenty more on the way….

 

The other essential element is cardboard terrain. This is the old Imperial Bunker which I picked up on the WargamerAU Buy, Swap, and Sell forum for a good price considering it was in fairly poor condition. I fixed it up, and mounted it on a small hill. I ditched the tower and the forward position as I don’t like them anyway, and they were in very poor condition indeed. It makes a nice centrepiece for games and can be an objective in its own right if desired. It looks fairly good considering it took almost no effort to achieve this…

I also constructed a kidney-shaped hill (which I made so long ago it still has my old blend of flock on it!)….

… as well as a hill which has been dug out into a bunker, which utilises some Games Workshop terrain elements, namely the barricades from the Aegis Defence Line.

Also, I constructed some generic trees, which I think could pass for evergreen European trees on a Warhammer Fantasy table if required….

I used the method from this excellent tutorial on a great site called Boulder Creek Railroad (well worth a look if you want some tips on scenery making), and made them from old twigs, a plant hanging basket liner, and various grades of flock. They were pretty easy, but messy! They look better in real life than they do in this photo (flash photography… sigh).

Speaking of Warhammer Fantasy, I have been playing a few games of 5th edition, borrowing my gaming buddy’s Empire army, whilst I furiously put my own models together…. more to come soon!

Finally, for those sad pitiable souls interested in such things, here are some shots showing the construction of the table… it is a plywood top supported by pine battens. Pretty easy even for someone totally hopeless at DIY such as myself. It is quite sturdy, but heavy, and you do need somewhere to store it….