Making Foam Tools has some really good ideas about making your own custom hot wire foam cutting tools. I'm not sure you'd be saving much money over, say, Hot Wire Foam Factory. You would gain the flexibility of custom tools, though. It's something to think about.

Reaper has a nice little article on building Sci Fi buildings out of electrical junction boxes. They do a good job of it. I have scads of these things. Every time I think about making Sci Fi terrain, I go buy a couple-- even though, yes, I still have a bag of the things from all the other times I thought about making Sci Fi terrain. And I never do anything with them. Oh well. One of these days I'm going to need a junction box RIGHT NOW and I won't even have to go to the store to get it.

A Year of Frugal Gaming has some quick ladder building tips. I've used HO scale model railroad tracks before. You just can't have enough ladders, especially if you play Necromunda...

I've started on my February terrain for Trucidos. While that is strictly true, unfortunately, this was done in January, and I have yet to actually work on anything this month. That will change soon.

I've also been working on my Witch Hunter Canonness. She comes with a lot of really nice arm options. I haven't put much thought into how I will play her, so to avoid making any decisions, I decided to rare earth magnetize the arms and make them swappable. The magnets are not very big and the arms are relatively heavy, being metal, so the join isn't super strong, but it seems good enough to play with. If I decide I don't like it down the road, I can always just pick one combination and glue that in, like my Ape-X.

Got the fountain finished, completing my January terrain for the Trucidos campaign and giving me 162 square inches of terrain for the full three campaign points.

Here's my last bit of January terrain getting finished up. This is an old ceramic Christmas village fountain I found in a box as I was cleaning up some old terrain junk. I had used it for some 25mm WW2 skirmish gaming, but never done anything with it. The chipped areas were two red birds I knocked away. Snow patches were covered with spackle mixed with brown paint, which also served as a contour for the rubble I would glue on. The rubble was my usual mix of clay cat litter and bits from my rubble bag...I saw sprues, both metal and lead, a computer case fan, a piece of a blade and some side mounted machine guns from a destroyed 1/72 helicopter model kit, sculpture contour mesh, stripped wire insulation, dried paint scrapped from a bottle...

The spackle was something of an experiment. I added some brown paint to it and a little water to thin it down, and then stirred all that up until smooth. It was easier to add, but I think I need another material. Looking at the first picture, you can see that the spackle shrinks, and when used in such large amounts, left gaping cracks in the surface. I expected something like this and it's not a problem for this piece, but obviously it's not a general purpose solution.

Got the crane finished tonight. It's 10.5x12", or 126 square inches. I have two other small pieces under development that will put me over 144 for January for my campaign points, just need to get one done. With the two 7.5" square pieces I did before the campaign started, I have around 472 square inches, or almost four square feet, of this white industrial terrain. It feels like a lot, yet it's only 1/3 of what I should end up with for the duration of the campaign.

From the Warp has a lot of terrain, modeling and painting tutorials.

Olicanalad's Games has some interesting posts on modelling and conversions. He's also a Piquet player, and active on the Piquet list.

I just found this Adepticon gallery of terrain. Lots of stuff to steal from in there. I haven't looked through it all, but I really liked what I saw in Marcin Ignasiak's gallery.

My Necromunda gang scrabbles over the ruined crane. Who needs Vents when you've got a crane, baby! I had hoped to prime it today, since it had stopped raining and we had some nice weather, but I never got the rubble on until tonight. I'll let it (hopefully) dry over night, and prime it tomorrow. The forecast looks cold, but dry. With a little bit of luck, I'll have it done in time for our campaign game on Thursday.

I really enjoyed browsing through Geektactica. He has lots of really nicely painted figures, but I really like his series on constructing cheap Western buildings detailed here.

I kind of didn't want to post anything until I was finished, but I'm excited about this and thought I'd post some work in progress shots. I was at the store with my wife today, doing some shopping. I needed some more epoxy for what I was planning for my January Trucidos terrain. It was kind of an extension of my industrial style terrain I've done so far. One of the things I had been thinking about was a crane, but it seemed very intimidating and time consuming to scratch build myself. And as I was walking through the discount toys, I saw this...

SCORE!!

For $14, I got a massive crane assembly that has become the center piece of my January terrain. I've propped the crane up so that it can be glued into this position, allowing figures to run along the top of the crane, Casino Royale style. If you look closely, you can make out a Necromunda Goliath up there right now. You start to get a sense of just how big this thing is.

I've glued some barricades around it for firing positions. Gluing onto this thing is neigh-impossible. Looking around the internet, I've decided that it's made out of polyethylene or polypropylene plastic. Superglue runs off this stuff like water-- nothing sticks. Epoxy would probably work, if I create some hole or something in the plastic to give it purchase. Right now, I'm trying contact cement. I'll see how well that adheres before doing any more.

That will still leave be just under 144 sq in for the month, so I'll have to whip something else up. I'm thinking of making one of the other vehicles that came with it an old wreck, sunk into the ground, for cover.

This Dome on Terraforming Planet gallery on TerraGenesis is chock full of fascinating scratch built detail. I alse loved the ideas in the Lighted Figure Bases gallery. I'd love to make something half as nice.

That's not a Cityfight...THIS is a Cityfight. A superb post-apocalyptic skyscraper-filled city, with custom wallpaper to match the terrain. The Work In Progress forums are just chock full of interesting little (and not so little) gems like this...

Dampf's modeling page has a wealth of scratch building projects and really inspirational photos.

Aaaaaaaaaand DONE! Got my December pieces done just under the wire. I'm in with 267.75 square inches of campaign terrain. I think I will start my January terrain tomorrow, so I don't run into this crunch again! But, I have to say, deadlines work. That's 267.75 square inches of terrain that I would not have had were it not for our campaign.

Here are the new pieces along side the old CD tower terrain I did.

Went ahead and drybrushed the rubble tan, washed it with some GW Badab Black, and then washed all the models and some of the rubble with GW Gryphonne Sepia cut 1:1 with water. It's a little thin, but better that than too thick. I'll probably leave it like that, go ahead and glue on the bridge over the pipes, and flock the base.

Okay. That's an awful lot of white to have left after painting on it for four or so hours, but I have brought it up to a basic rust "drip" wash. I'll let that dry over night (hopefully!). Tomorrow, I'll dust the rubble with a tan drybrush, then start some GW washes-- some Badab Black on the rubble, and 1:1 watered down Gyphonne Sepia over the whole model.

Whoops!! Look at those three scratches! No drips! It's amazing how you notice everything you missed only after you post it permanently for others to see. Fortunately, the wash hadn't dried and the drip has descended to display for future delights...

It's-a primed. IT'S-A PRIMED!!

The family has been instructed to leave me the hay el alone tonight so I can finish...it's still a significant amount of work to get all this panted and based, but I'm feeling more positive than two hours ago!

Weeeeell, last time I kind of forgot about the rubble, which is actually a somewhat lengthy process, waiting for all the glues to dry. I usually paint the piece first, and then base it, including the rubble. I wanted to do it before painting this time so I could primer over the rubble and help it adhere to the base. So, actually painting the pieces has been pushed out a bit. It is going down to the wire here, folks! I had wanted to try out some more interesting weathering techniques on these, but that will have to wait. I won't be able to work on these tomorrow night, since it is New Year's Eve and the family has plans, so I've got to bust my butt getting this stuff done. Still, I can't make the glue dry any faster than it does. I took my lunch today and got the debris all glued down. It can dry, and I can start working on it again when I get home tonight. Hopefully, I will be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon! My confidence is currently high, but it waxes and wanes depending on how I think about it...

Update: Fortuitous serendipity!! My employer is letting us off early tomorrow for the holiday...

I've got the main piece ready to paint...I added some greebles and random pipes...some of which are on the far side and perfectly not pictured! Ah well, a few hours well spent. 2 points I can count on, at least! Decent terrain is, indeed, fairly time consuming...time for some Rowan's Creek!

Here are pictures of the current state of my December terrain for our Trucidos campaign. It's down to the wire for me, but I have a few more evenings left to finish. I'm glad December has 31 days!

With my original CD case tower I made, I was very pleased with how the simple cardstock paper Imperial Eagle I cut out looked on the sides. I wanted to duplicate this, so I had the idea of making a resin casts of some 40k symbols. That way, I only had to go through the effort of cutting these fiddly icons out once. I spent probably three to four hours just cutting them out of styrene sheet. Once done, I superglued them acrylic sheet and made an RTV mold of them. So far, it seems to be working out just fine!

The resin appears to be fairly flexible when it's this thin, so I don't think I'll even have any problems contouring the cast pieces to fit the curve of the sides of the towers. Here's what the pieces look like right now.

A few things I could have done better:

1. Contact cement does not adhere insulating foam! It EATS it! I keep forgetting this...
   
2. Spackle for contouring isn't really that great, because wherever it gets a ding, it shows up white. I need to try mixing up some custom filler
   
3. I used styrene tubes for my pipes. I should have just used regular rods, as the tubes tended to buckle where I heated and bent them. On this piece, it will be covered up, as I have something to lay over the pipes to make a better walkway.
   

I liked this idea for a lighted lava board. There's not much detail, but it looks like he's sandwiched painted fluorescent light panels between insulation foam, and run Christmas lights underneath to make his lava glow. Hot! A great use for those old Christmas lights you're going to have to take down soon...Merry Christmas!

Tabletop Terrain can suck up a lot of your time, even if you don't play the games covered. There are a lot of nice terrain ideas there, and don't miss the tutorials. He uses Ultracal 30 for his Hirst molds, may have to try that.

MiniWarGaming is a video-heavy blog with some useful terrain tips.

Gaming Terrain is a very new blog which looks like could be interesting to following. Also, I stumbled across a forum I hadn't seen before, Mini Art of War.

Now these are some seriously awesome bugholes. From An Hour of Wolves & Shattered Shields.

Over at Miniature Wargaming, there's a link to IronHands.com's list of Terrain How-To Pages. It's frustratingly inspirational-- I have all the ingredients listed except for the vision, patience and the skill. It's one thing to make terrain from scrap, but this stuff ends up looking professional. I just don't see the trash anymore, even when I know what it is! Looking through their links, I see a few sites I haven't noticed before: Parasitic Studios and NetTerrain.

I finished another piece of terrain yesterday, started alongside the CD case tower. It, too, had been sitting around a couple of years, assembled but unpainted. I'm glad to finally finish it!

The littlest tower is a small spray can cap. The two middle-sized grey towers are old vitamin bottles, and the tallest is a Glenfiddich sample canister. The machinery is a broken piece of computer equipment from my office, with old sprue as pipes. The ladders and fences are hardware cloth. The grating is more sculptor form mesh.

The liquid is epoxy resin mixed with GW Scorpion Green paint-- what a fun color! This worked really well, but I had to find the right epoxy. The DevCon 5 minute I normally used turned brown the next day. Not really a problem, considering it's supposed to be some sort of toxic sludge, but I wanted to try and keep the fresh green color. I wound up using DevCon High Strength epoxy, which had a 30 minute work time and specified it dried clear. My test piece worked well, and then I mixed an entire tube in a plastic cup to mix and pour from. I was mostly done and went back to my cup for a little more, only to find the whole thing had become this hot, green, spongy epoxy biscuit in the cup! My guess is that, concentrated in the bottom of the cup, the regular heat from the epoxy curing actually accelerated it's own curing process. Anyway, I got it out of the room as quickly as possible!

Wood glue. Glue for wood, not plastic. Who knew? Solved by using contact cement.

Woo! Posing for the camera!

I've mentioned picking up 40k with Mik and some others, and we've bemoaned the fact they while we all (now) have fully painted and nice looking armies, we don't have the terrain to match. So, this is my first effort to try and bring the table up to speed with the figures.

I've had this piece mostly assembled and laying about for a couple of years. It was originally intended for Necromunda. You can probably recognize the CD tower it was originally. Hardware cloth makes the ladder and the railing around a spray can lid, with old glue bottle lid antennas. The Eagles were some decals I found on Bolter and Chainsword, which I printed onto cardstock and laboriously cut out with an X-acto knife. The terminal panel was put together using plasticard from a "Beware of Dog" sign (cheaper than the hobby stuff) and an artists' sculpting form screen.

I finally stumbled upon a very nice color combination for rust. 2 parts brown, 2 parts orange, and 1 part metallic brass. It was very satisfactory when thinned to a wash and let run down the sides of the tower.

I washed the entire thing with GW's Gryphonne Sepia. I like the color, but it was too thick. I tried to thin it and tone it down acceptably. The next one will be better.

The detritus on the ground consists of various Woodland Scenics ballasts and sands, mixed with ground up sprues and other bits of trash like small cut offs of plasticard and screens I've collected over the years. The large piece is actually part of a car stereo mount. They were drybrushed up from black, then washed with the above rust and GW washes. I've used a similar technique on some Necromunda terrain a while back. My thought was with the debris and the grass, it might fit in with either board.

Seen in action on Mik's battle report. I've got two more old towers of this size, plus one that's double the height. They will soon end up as matching pieces, I hope.

I spent some time tracking down this informative thread on Sci-Fi buildings and wanted to record it somewhere for posterity.

I have found the design for my dream wargaming table. Now I just need a house large enough to fit it in.

Yes, the time when the craft stores carry Halloween and Christmas village things to use for terrain!

A buddy turned me on to the "Moss Display Mats." It's basically a mesh with reindeer moss glued to it. This will do really well for the wood outlines for my SG2 game. The alternative was to cut MDF with my jigsaw out in the garage...not something I was looking forward to. Also, I found these Christmas village hills-- two identical sets! Hard to beat, although they were $13 each. That sucks when I have bunch of foam board laying around, but then, it's been laying around untouched for a looooong time. Taken out of the box, painted green and flocked, and I've got my two identical sets of hills. I can see the finish line... Also, a small Christmas tree that will become 40mm corn fields before too long.

The Kapiti Fusiliers have a nice article about using ground cloths to their full potential.