Set One: Simple Gothic Ruins The plastic gothic ruins I salvaged from the previous boards were originally fixed in place, which meant they needed to be completely re-based, not to mention re-painted as they were looking more than a little worn. Most of them were still fairly intact having been simply levered off the MDF and were still more or less fully assembled requiring little more than being cleaned up underneath before remounting. As these would be scatter terrain now I wanted to make sure that they blended in with the new boards and were as flexible as possible positioning wise. Using sheets of foam core card for the base, I marked out the rough building layouts I wanted with a marker pen. Using a craft knife I then cut them out at an angle so as to give the edges a slight slope giving me eight sets of ruins in total. Using a hot melt glue gun, I then remounted the ruins onto their new bases and stuck down a few piles of debris consisting of small pieces of slate and stone where walls had collapsed using a white wood glue. I find it is best not to water down the PVA glue much when working with foam core or card as they have a nasty habit of warping.
After giving them a fresh coat of black primer I started with the bases by giving them a heavy dry brush of bestial brown. Once this had dried I then applied two further lighter dry brushes of Vomit Brown and finally 50/50 Vomit Brown and White. This was the same mix I used on the main boards and helped ensure wherever the ruins were placed, they blended into the gaming surface. For the stonework I began with a 50/50 mix of Codex Grey and Graveyard Earth. This was then followed with a light dry brush of Fortress Grey and a final very light dry brush of Bleached Bone. The addition of the graveyard earth to the base mix and bleached bone as the final highlight helped to reduce the overall blue-grey tint that my previous version was overly strong in and resulted in a colour for the buildings that I thought was a lot more natural and pleasing to the eye. To break up the sea of grey a bit more I took some inspiration from the current 40K cities of Death buildings set and added some gold and bronze to some of the detailing. This started as a 50/50 mix of brazen brass and burnished gold which I dry brushed over any areas of banding, or, as in the case of the administratum building above, the gothic style windows.
In total, eight sets of ruins of varying sizes and shapes were salvaged successfully from the old gaming boards proving that with a bit of care and attention, it really doesn't take much to give your old gaming terrain a fresh overhaul once in a while. At no stage did I need to strip any old paint off or in a any way feel the end result would be lessened just because the buildings themselves were being recycled as opposed to being from pristine new frames. The great thing about gaming terrain in my opinion is it tends to get better with age and can only benefit from having an additional coat or two of texture and paint. Set Two: Themed and medium sized buildings The second set of buildings that needed some attention were the ones I made for the inner city sections of the old boards. Unlike the simple ruins above, these were not permanently fixed onto the boards originally, but were mounted on hard board and were designed to be fairly modular so they could be placed in between the roads and such like. Other than a few minor repairs here and there they only required a little repainting to help them blend in with the rest of the buildings and they would be ready for use. Following exactly the same palette as above I over brushed the areas of earth with Bestial Brown and dry-brushed accordingly to match. The walls were then given exactly the same codex grey/graveyard earth treatment and the metal detailing picked out the same way as I did with the simple ruins.
In total, the second set consisted of three medium sized ruins similar to the one on the left and three smaller sections including one which I constructed to be a thermal generatorium, or some such building. This was built using a combination of the old Warhammer 40,000 plastic building sprue (the one included in the 3rd Edition boxed set) and the Epic 40,000 ones shown here with a few machinery gubbins from the bits box. It is something I intend to revisit in the near future when I start work on the 'wave two' buildings, but in the meantime you can see it in the main picture at the top towards the extreme left and will be shown in more detail when I get around to completing the next batch of larger complexes. If you can't wait until then, you can also see it and indeed most of the original set two ruins in their original colour scheme here when I created them several years ago for Gamesday 2001. My goodness how time flies! Personally, I think they actually look a lot better now having benefitted from the extra few layers of paint and a slight change in the choice of colours. Having seen them finally all together for the first time only a few days ago after completing the second set I was very pleased with the end result and just how well the city was starting to come together on the new boards. When I first commenced this project I did so accepting that in order to gain some flexibility in my gaming terrain, I would have to sacrifice the overall look I got with having a dedicated city set. To date though, I have actually been surprised just how well the new modular building sections are beginning to take shape and fill out. once renovation of the final batch has been completed which will include several more large complexes and all of the Forgeworld set, I can start to plan out a few more 'unique' pieces. For now though, it is back to patching up the rubble and adding a few patches of vegetation. Next time … Generatorium and expanding the highways |
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Once
the debris was in place I covered the rest of the bases with the
usual coarse sand and gravel mix before letting them set
overnight.
These
were then highlighted with burnished gold before being given a
heavy wash of Devlan Mud straight from the pot. In the case of
the banding on the building to the right, a final additional
highlight of boltgun metal was also applied on the upper edges.
To
break up the colours even further and give additional contrast I
decided to repaint the gothic windows of the central tower with
a 50/50 mix of bleached bone and skull white. This proved to be
so successful, I also repeated it on two of the other larger
buildings.