Warhammer Wednesday - Wargamming Terrain

Its been a long time waiting, but its finally Wednesday and I'm excited coz i wanted to share with you my crafty side of my Warhammer Fantasy Hobby. So what is Warhammer you may think? Warhammer Gaming is the ever growing popular Miniwarmgaming game ever and dare i say it is a very expensive hobby to keep up. This game is where you can collect a miniature plastic resin army of models , paint them up and customise them either by paint, convert or even by magnetising parts of your chosen model or army. There are two main groups of warhammer these being Warhammer 40k , which are the sci-fi models such as Tyranids, Spacemarines, Tau, Necrons etc and the Second is Warhammer Fantasy which is the most mythical and fantasy side , such as High elves, wood elves, Bretonians, Tomb Kings (Egyptians skeletons), Dwarves and Lord of the Rings models (LOTR) .

I would consider myself very nimbled fingered when it comes to arty farty projects and this hobby is no exception. I simply love what you can do with the models in terms of painting them up in different colours, Making terrain such as trees, hills etc and you can even magnetise parts of the model itself, which  involves drilling the miniature, and sticking magnets etc, very fussy stuff, but useful none the less for those of us gamers who like the option of different weapons etc, I personally do not do it as it seems too complicated for me. So i just stick to stuff like painting up and making terrain. So i thought i would share with you some Warhammer  terrain projects that i recently constructed out of corrugated cardboard. Now i know that there are proper plastic terrain pieces which are absolutely marvellous, but if like me you are strapped for cash, making your own is just as rewarding if not more so since its you that had the hands on approach to it. Much of the materials that i used are as follows :

• corrugated box cardboard
• Stanly or craft knife
• PVA glue /(Elmer's glue if in the USA) and "Hard as Nails" which is a tackier glue which i also useful as filler to fill in gaps etc.
• Pencil
• Paints
• Spray primer black and white
• rocks /gravel/sand  (to add some sort of texture to your terrain), bits and bobs ie toothpicks, cotton reel, old necklace chain etc 

A Greek ruined pillar with some Lizard bits and bobs

So here are some example of the terrain that I have been constructing out of cardboard. Some of the terrain pieces are missing Green flocking , but that is only because i didn't have any to hand, but i still think they make a pretty good impact anyway. Another thing about making terrain is the fact that you have to make them in balance with the models. here the miniatures are from a company called Games Workshop, who are the main manufacture of these specific models. 

Elven Weystone

The army that i am collecting now are mainly Lizardmen and LOTR army, which both come form the Warhammer Fantasy Group. So Do you need experience to do these things? in a word NO you don't. As long as you have a good imagination and are creative, you can do whatever you choose to do, the sky is the limit. If you are having some difficulties in coming up with ideas then i would highly recommend the Game workshop book "How to Make Wargaming Terrain", for some very good tips hints and tricks. So i hope that some of these pictures will fuel your imagination and get you into the mood of exciting new projects and crafting ideas.

Space marine captain atop a greek pillar ruin

On the left you can see that I have placed a Spacemarine Captain to show you that although the terrain is slightly larger it is still relative to the model itself so as not to dwarf the model too much, such as In the picture above of the Elven Weystone/ Landmark Oblisk. This obelisk was made using cereal box card as corrugated cardboard was not flexible enough. I also stuck on green gems in teh middle as well as painted some high Elf Runes and stuck some stones at the bottom, to add some weight to the base.

early stages of corrugated Iron Shelter

On te right here you can see the stages of making a "Corrugated Iron" shelter out corrugated cardboard. what i did was to strip one of teh plain sides of teh cardboard to expose teh corrugations , which perfectly mimick what corrugated iron looks like. I then decided that it would look great for a terrain piece and so gotto work building a platform and two windows so that a space marine could be on teh top or teh bottom and shoot through teh window if necessary at teh enemy.  I also put in some "bullet holes" by making small indents and holes with my pencil so that it looked as though it had been shot at a couple of times. I also added some rocks and stones to teh base so as to weigh it down alightly, there is nothing more annoying when playing a  game and you accidentally knock teh gaming terrain. there is a small platform between the top window and bottom window although you may not be able to see it. 

back of shelter 

On the left you can clearly see where i decided to put the platform and yes space marines can jump using a jetpack. There are obviously set rules on how to go about doing this in the Rules Book. To also make the platform say where it is i put barriers on either side so that the soldiers could get full protection form the left and right hand sides if needs be. I primed the whole thing in black first so as the paint would adhere to the surface otherwise you would have a soggy piece of wargaming terrain and no one wants that!!

bottom front of shelter piece

On the right here I have painted the entire shelter in a grey colour and also added a "rust" effect by stippling on a terracotta and red brown mix of paint on the roof and around the bullet holes to make it look as though they had been there for quite a while and the weather had started oxidising it.As you can also see on the rock i painted a Dark red streak to show that a soldier had already been shot and that the blood still hadn't exactly dried out yet so was still quite fresh. I also painted "Cracks" in the corrugated iron to show that it it hadn't bee made form just one piece of corrugated iron just to add some sort of character to the terrain piece. 





Well I hope you enjoyed my terrain pieces and hope it inspires you do some as well. So remember keep those creative juices flowing and who knows , you may even start up your own business making wargaming terrain for yourself or even your friends and have a great time. 


                               Happy Wargamming and Stay in the Fight!