On a terrain making high.

[eldargal]

I'm on a real terrain building high at the moment.

I've mentioned my Garden of Morr themed board on the forum before, well I've finished assembing the first 6 modular 2x2 boards with noble tomb precinct, middle class areas and lower class tombstone fields as well as fields of unmarked paupers graves. Lots of gravestones from various producers, a couple of Tabletop World graveyards and half a dozen GW Gardens of Morr. Many, many gargoyles and statues using miniatures from innumerable ranges from over the last 30 years or so. Lots of scratchbuilt sepulchres too, with internal detail. Some of the raised areas have underground crypts and whatnot as well. I'm planning a few more 2x2 boards to add variety, I think one might feature a rambling old Temple of Morr.

But I've also started work on a Nuln themed board, the basic idea is to show the entirety of my Nuln countesses main estate in Nuln. Inspired by something my brother did it will feature a lot of 2x2 boards but it won't be modular and the joins will be completely hidden by terrain pieces and buildings so it is portable and easily stored. It won't be a gaming table (except perhaps for Mordheim), more of a display table. It is inspired by this piece of artwork:
http://whfb.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/2/23/TheEnemyWithinJohnBlanche.jpg

The basic plan is to have a backboard featuring a panorama of Nuln painted by an artist friend, protruding from that (by about an inch or two)will be a link of the city wall with the estate walls which will run down a terraced hill. The walls will be punctuated by towers and two gatehouses. There will be outbuildings, the main palace about a quarter of the way down, stables, a Greatsword barracks, a guard barracks, private temple of Sigmar with family crypt below, barracks, an entire suburb of houses for the families feudal serfs and worker and whatnot. There will also be a chapter house for the Knightly Order the Countess funds in return for it accepting female initiated with her being the honorary Grandmistress. On the lowest tier with its own entrance to the city proper will be the Countesses menagerie, basically an excuse to build lodgings for all the monsters I have (thank you SoM). I'm going to make this at the very end of the board so I can expand it with future 2x2s sections as I get more monsters. There will be a private garden for the countess and noble guests as well as some small parkland for the servants and serfs. There will also be a parade ground where visiting regiments of the Countesses armies can strut their stuff.

Every building will be scratchbuilt in half-timbered style, except some buildings that are commercially available with interior details. There will be sewers, basements, and everything will lift away to reveal it so I can show off or use it for Mordheim. The only fully stone building will be the guard barracks and walls and towers (no hoardings, it is inside the city afterall).

I'm going to spare no expense and lavish all sorts of attention on it as well as take my time in the execution (as in years), I want it to be the ultimate display board for my empire army.:) I will also try to get pictures when sufficient progress has been made.

Oh I also intend to paint up a cadre of civilian miniatures to populate it while also having enough space to display an Empire army at least double what mine currently is.

I also have vague plans for a Nuln industrial sector featuring the countesses factories and foundries with canals and docks and all sorts of things.:rolleyes:

So, anyone else have any terrain plans, ludicrously ambitious or plain sensible?:)

[roncarlin2002]

Madam, to put it succinctly, you rock.

I have some vague ideas to create a 3 tiered ocean platform for a zone mortalis game. Life has to get out of my way first before I can get started on it though,,,,

[Brakkart]

Currently both unemployed and skint, so no grand projects for me alas, save for getting the rest of this Space Marine army assembled and painted. Very impressed with what you have planned though and would love to see some photos of it as it comes together (as well as that Garden of Morr board which sounds amzing). Course you might have to change the Idle part of the occupation you've got listed on your profile to Rather Busy. :p

[eldargal]

Thanks.:) I like the sound of tiered zone mortalis board.

Madam, to put it succinctly, you rock.

I have some vague ideas to create a 3 tiered ocean platform for a zone mortalis game. Life has to get out of my way first before I can get started on it though,,,,

I need to paint the GoM board first and that is going to be a long process. Everything is still basically unattached where needed to facilitate painting. One of the things I like about Empire themed terrain is it can be done quite cheaply, some 9x9mm balsa wood, 2mm plasticard and some .5mm plasticard for roof tiles is really all you need for the basic structures. Add a basic hirst arts mould for stonework.

Good point about the idle occupation status.:rolleyes:

Currently both unemployed and skint, so no grand projects for me alas, save for getting the rest of this Space Marine army assembled and painted. Very impressed with what you have planned though and would love to see some photos of it as it comes together (as well as that Garden of Morr board which sounds amzing). Course you might have to change the Idle part of the occupation you've got listed on your profile to Rather Busy. :p

I actually bought a heap of books timber framed buildings and even tudor dollhouse making to help refine my scratchbuilding abilities. Practised on a 1/12 scale dollhouse for a friends little sister. Really looking forward to making a start but I need to keep refining the plans first.

Another inspirational artwork, Marienburg from the cover of In the Dying Light, a WFRP sourcebook:
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p127/nikephorusLB/DyingLightCover.jpg

[Wildeybeast]

My dream is to make a scratch built Sartosa board (as described in DF) for use as a Mordheim stand in. But given that none of my armies if fully painted and life has other plans for me, it remains just a dream at the moment.

[Cherub]

So, anyone else have any terrain plans, ludicrously ambitious or plain sensible?:)

I'm building a sculpted table and doing 1 of every entry in the rule book. Ohh and some floating terrain to go with my chaos army

[eldargal]

You'll enjoy my alternate miniatures and terrain post on pirate ships, terrain and models then.:) When I get around to finishing it.:rolleyes: I do sympathise with life getting in the way, I didn't get any terrain built while working on my doctorate. Did paint an awful lot of Eldar but that was therapeutic and didn't require much thought.

My dream is to make a scratch built Sartosa board (as described in DF) for use as a Mordheim stand in. But given that none of my armies if fully painted and life has other plans for me, it remains just a dream at the moment.

I think I love the planning stage as much as the execution (I'm sure this isn't uncommon given how many projects don't seem to make it past planning), I have a stack of nearly a dozen WFRP sourcebooks detailing bits of the Empire along with the BRB, the Blood on the Reik art book and lots of old Empire army books that I'm scouring for art inspiration.

[Wildeybeast]

I've got quite a few of those books kicking around and I have to say the Empire inspires me more than any other race, because there is so much you can do with it. The likes of Elves, Dwarves, TK, Lizardmen etc have nice buildings and asthetic appeal, but are fairly generic. The Empire has such a mixture of stuff that you can do so many things with them.

[eldargal]

Agreed. I love gothic and renaissance architecture as well as steampunk and fantasy and with Empire I can combine all of them together. The Empire really is unique in that way, people still tend to see them as just 'the humans' or a historical army which is a real shame, as they are really the mroe original of the WFB creations. They were the first to have firearms in a fantasy setting.

[eldargal]

Changing tack, if money, time, skillset and space were no object, what terrain would you make?

[Brakkart]

Ohh that's an evil question...

I think I'd build something crazy big, like the entire of Zharr-Naggrund, Nagashizzar or Naggarond.

Of them I think the Chaos Dwarf city would be the easiest to build (though still a vast project that would take up a large room to house it and take years to make). A vast ziggurat city with huge fortified gates at the compass points, with roads leading out to the mines and such of their empire, great slag heaps of rubble littering the blasted land around the city, the run off from smelting having tainted the land. The city itself would be square and rise in huge steps, each home to many buildings, with foundaries, smithies and workshops, as well as gladiatorial arenas, shrines and such, stables for bull centaurs and all manner of creatures.

As the ziggurat got higher, so would the buildings on it, the tiers becoming home to more and more important nobles and wizards whose towers and mansions would compete against each other to dominate the skyline. The top of the ziggurat would host the temple of Hashut which would be decoarated in all sorts of tauran imagery, fire motifs and such. In the streets would be teams of soldiers and guards, and many many taskmasters whipping on teams of slaves as they are worked to death powering treadmills and bellows.

The roads leading in would be filled with chain gangs of captives being brought in (mostly goblins and orcs, but a few other races mixed in for variety) and armies marching in and out.

And everywhere would be the weapons and war machines of the city, great batteries of Hell Cannons and Death Rockets and such.

[Cherub]

A fully detailed city complete with the castle walls. I would do ruined alternates for all the buildings so if they got destroyed in the battle I would have something to replace them with.

[Chronowraith]

Easy... Skavenblight.

I would also do an Imperial City with an entire underempire below it.

[Wildeybeast]

Altdorf. ALL of it. An unlimited building project has to be the biggest city in the Warhammer World. The colleges of Magic, the Engineers College, the Temple of Sigmar, the Imperial Zoo and the Palace, all in city built on numerous islands with all the attendant ships, docks and so on. Just imagine what you could do with all that. As a side project, I'd build either a WE 'town' in Athel Loren or a DE Black Ark.

[eldargal]

I'd have to say a Black Ark too, or expand my planned board to be the entirety of Nuln.

[Brakkart]

A Black Ark would be a pretty cool project. For anyone attempting to build one I'd recommend reading Elfslayer, as a good chunk of that book is set on board a Black Ark. If you wanted inspiration for the interior design of such a place, it's got plenty of detail on such.

[eldargal]

Still working my way through Dragonslayer so I think Elfslayer is a while off for me.:) Back in the vain of thinks we can actually accomplish, I do eventually want to make display boards for my Dark Elf and High Elf armies. I'm thinking perhaps a series of floating palaces interlinked by thin bridges over rolling green plains for my Saphery HE, and a giant Temple of Khaine and Dreadlord palace complex for the DE.

I do work sporadically on ideas for Craftworld terrain but I can never get it looking right, it always ends up like something you would find on a Maiden World rather than the inside of an enormous spaceship.

[eldargal]

So I've started painting my Garden of Morr board, it's going to take an age to complete.:( Who'd have thought hundreds of individual gravestones, dozens of open graves, sixty or so crypts with interior detail and fences, walls and shrubbery would actually take a lot of time to paint.

I've done some work on my Nuln estate board too, the baseboards are done with a lot of foam on to get a rough idea of the mountainscape everything is based on and I'm in the process of building the walls that will go against the painted backdrops so my friend can start painting them and get the join between 3d and 2d as seamless as possible.

Anyone else done any work on terrain recently or seen some terrain-inspiring art?

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

As I mentioned to you, we've been building scenery at Games Workshop. Messy, jolly, fun!

[Skeith154]

heh, in the realm of doable terrain i've been attempting tyanid spire and chimneys. sadly my workspace doesn't allow for hotglue guns so i've been using green stuff. tis not easy.

[eldargal]

Thinking about making a castle for my Vampire Counts based on Castle Duckula:
http://causticcause.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/d_castle-duckula.jpg

[Wolfshade]

Are you going to convert up a "Nanny"

[redandrea]

It is terrain that can be used with nearly any game system. The mats are easily rolled out, instantly transforming your table into an ultra-realistic environment.