Super-secret side project… REVEALED! Part I

I quite like making wargames terrain; I used to build it a lot when I worked for GW as well as my own personal collection.  Recently I had an idea of creating some new terrain and fancied making a desert themed board and terrain.

The Desert; source

Maybe I was granted a vision by Menoth, who knows?  I have been using both prime and epic Severius after-all…

"We knew the land so close to the Bloodstone Marshes was bitter and hot, but as Hierarch Sulon once said, hardship is the coin of Urcrean. Menoth would be proud of his children should they survive in such a place".   Prime II, p125.

The following details part 1 of my desert themed terrain.  Its quite detailed as I wanted to explain exactly how I built it so thanks for reading in advance!

Ideas and concept

The first order of the day was to sketch out some ideas, I drew some sand dunes, which would count as hills, the crescent shapes would be challenging from a modelling point of view, but look great on the field.  I thought of rocky out crops, these would be difficult ground, but maybe not block LOS.  A rock spire would look iconic (see Star Wars epIII on Tatooine as Anikin storms through the desert on his speeder), this would be a simple impassable object.  I liked the idea of palm tree clusters counting as woods and maybe an oasis for a shallow water feature.

Research

With the ideas I had gathered so far I researched ‘desert terrain’ in Google, found a few interesting modelling sites as well as imagery of real world deserts for inspiration.  I did have a few issues with this terrain project, the main one being the palm trees, there are some interesting ones at Warhammer World and I think they’re made with Christmas tree branches and a few other household bits, not that easy to build or able to get to look good, plus I’d be in bother in a few months when the Christmas tree was obviously missing a branch or two. ;-)  Instead I found this site selling plastic palm trees and like a golden nugget some plastic cacti too!!

Base boards ready for cutting

Stage 1 - Baseboards

I marked out terrain bases on hardboard sheet, I actually made a paper template for the crescent sand dunes.  Photo (left) shows this; highly exciting stuff!  Then I used a jigsaw to cut them out, finally I used a sanding tool attachment on a Dremel to bevel the edges.

 

      

Plastic palm tree components

Stage 2 - Palm trees

The Pegasus Palm trees come in five bright green plastic fronds and a turd coloured brown for the trunk and base!  

I just sprayed the plastic with black primer and painted the fronds and trunk with acrylic paint.  The fronds were painted with Dark Angels Green, then drybrushed with Goblin Green and  Bilious Green.

The trunks were drybrushed with Khemeri Brown, then Deneb Stone.

A top tip for this kind of thing is to file off any paint where the plastic has to be glued, mainly because it becomes too tight a fit due to the paint and also if using plastic glue it tends not to create such a strong bond if paint is present.

Stage 3 – drop terrain bases

The tree bases and cactus bases were built together.  The palm trees had coins attached to the bases in order to weight them given the height and top heavy nature of the palm tree style.

Cork tile was used on the cactus drop terrain to create height, the edges bevelled with a hobby knife.  I cut down dome of the cactus’ plastic bases as they were a bit big or overhung the cork in places, but for the most part they were fine.




After this I applied some Polyfiller over the whole thing to marry in the bases and get rid of any imperfections – this was filed when dry to further ease transition.  Prior to the filler drying I inserted some larger stones in select places, they’d just look a bit better when slightly sunk in I felt.





Once the filler had dried and been tidied up I added a layer of sand and gravel, I like to apply a watered down layer of PVA once it has dried fully as this seals it from the top, it really bugs me whilst drybrushing a bit of gravel flies off revealing the bare unpainted sand beneath, the sealing layer of PVA reduces the chances of this I find.  The final step was to undercoat the pieces in black primer.

Stage 4 Painting
Once the drop terrain was modelled I proceeded with the painting.  I purchased a litre of desert looking paint from B&Q, I took a pot of Desert Yellow Citadel paint to the store and got a colour match.  I painted two 4'x4' MDF gaming boards using a decorating roller, that was why I needed a litre.  I painted each gaming board twice to have a strong even coat.  I had considered modelling the gaming boards, or at least texturing them with a view to drybrushing them, but opted for the simple option.  I may change my mind at a later date, but flat colour boards are fine at this time.

I used the same Desert Yellow emulsion to base coat the drop terrain, then drybrushed the sandy texture with Bleached Bone to add a highlight.  The rocks were painted grey to add a bit of variation and the cacti base coated with Knarloc Green.  I realised the cacti were two different species of plant and through my research realised one was more of a bluey green, these were drybrushed with a mix of Vile Green and Ultramarine Blue, the other species received a drybrush of Bilious Green.  Both species of cacti were then washed with Thraka Green  in order to bring their colour closer together.

After the painting was done I added a couple of snakes from the Lizardmen Warhammer range as well as some 6mm Highland Tufts from the Army Painter Battlefields range.  See below for the final results:

Palm tree base

A brace of Reckoners wander through the desert!

Errants manoeuvre through the desert flora!

Hope they've got their UA...

Oops, no UA, then no pathfinder... hope that cobra is domesticated...

Thanks for reading :-)
Part II will have the remaining terrain features: oasis, dunes and rock spire.