Today’s post is about the terrain I’ve built to date, the materials I’ve experimented with, and the resources I’ve learned from. Comments, Criticisms, and Thoughts are encouraged!

HUGE Credit to – TheTerrainTutor. Almost all of what I’ve learned about building terrain comes from ideas/tips/awesomeness I get from his Youtube channel. Instead of fumbling around in the dark with materials; his channel gave me insights into how best to use materials to get started. His videos were also what inspired me to try this aspect of the hobby in the first place. I’m nowhere near close to getting the kind of results from his videos, but I am having fun learning. One of the builds I note below came completely from his channel: Cheap & Easy Foamboard Bunker.

If you haven’t checked out his channel – Do it! You’ll learn way more there then you will here. But – Read below to see some of what not to do, or, at the very least, get an idea of how to improve your first builds by seeing the Pros and Cons of mine!

Materials for Projects (Cost)

Materials came mainly from the dollar store, with two exceptions, and were very cost effective. In total I spent about $20.00 and I have LOTS leftover to play with.

Foamboard ($1.50 large sheet)

Cork Board ($3.00/2 1’x1′ sheets)

White Glue ($2.00 bottle)

DAP “Fast N Final” Spackle ($6.00 for a small tub (Walmart))

Paints (Brown, Black,White) ($1.25/bottle)

Static Grass and Clump Foliage (GF9 brand)

Projects

1. Cork Board Wall

Picking up on some of the inspiration from the internet: I started using Cork Board as a material first. I was able to pick up a number of large sheets from the dollar store for about $6.00 for 4 sheets that were 1 foot by 1 foot (I still have tons of this stuff around). Also – Note: This stuff is messy to work with. I got little bits of cork all over my desk, on my carpet, and just generally everywhere. Easily remedied with a vacuum, but also a bit of a pain. This stuff crumbles/tears as you cut it too. However, this property has it’s positive – as it makes the edges of these bricks look randomly chipped for realism.

What I did:

First: I cut the cork board into long stripes, then into bricks, and then stacked them into a wall using PVA as an adhesive. I needed to use thinned down PVA or it simply oozed out the sides making a mess. I didn’t water mine down enough to start, and used way too much at times.

Afterword I painted the cork black, and then drybrushed (heavily) in grey. Finally, I used a light drybrush of white for details. I needed to use light pressure with the brush or the cork crumbled away revealing the brown underneath.

I put the wall on a foam board base which I painted brown and put some static grass & clump foliage on for detail with PVA. I also used some of Citadel’s “Lustrian Undergrowth” texture paint on the base, and hit the ground along the wall with a wash of Agrax Earthshade to blend. I let the green creep up on the rocks to look like moss.

What I Would Do Next Time:

One thing I would have done differently here is I would have beveled the edges of the base, and maybe used a grey base coat instead (the black looks very dark – almost like a dark granite). The Cork really creates a natural texture for the rock, and it ends up looking very good across the table. Some might think the scale of this build is a little weird (see Stryker1 above for reference), but I don’t mind it.

One big con of working with this cork is that it chips very easily, and that the brown of the cork shows through in the creases between the bricks. Putting the bricks closer together and using hot glue as a mortar might fix this issue.

Pros: Cheap, Easy, Fast, and Lightweight. (Plus: It looks pretty good!)

Cons: Durability (Chipping), Brown of the Cork.

2. Cork Board Tower

Using the same principles as above: I decided to go bigger to see what would come out.

What I Did:

I stacked the bricks (made the same way) higher into a tower; and then painted it the same way as the wall. The roof was a little tricky, as I needed to slice small bricks for the outside to leave a lip for the roof strips to sit on. One difference in build was I used a spraypaint for the black instead of the dollar store stuff (to save time). It was then adhered to a larger formboard base. I also beveled the edges this time, and tried to leave room on the base for models to interact with the tower.

What I Would Do Next Time:

You can see the clear disadvantage of the cork in this build. If you look at the tower you can see bits of brown all over. That’s where I was either unable to reach with the paint or where the cork chipped during drybrushing. I tried to remedy this by spraypainting black as my base cost first (to get into the cracks better), but it really didn’t do the job the way I wanted. Using cork for this type of structure was not a great idea in this regard.

Also – I might have used wood for the roof instead. Like popsicle sticks cut up, and maybe make them look weathered/damaged with a railing made of small cork bricks. As it stands it almost looks like a stone grainary, but the stone roof is a little confusing. The natural color of the cork also shows through heavily when looking at the tower straight down.

I also learned very quickly that the foamboard base warps. It was also weighed down on the one side by the tower. Both of these elements mean that it doesn’t sit flat on the table. I attempted to bend the base to remedy this (which helped a bit) but also caused cracks along the beveled edges (where you can see the white appear). Next time I would spackle the base first to reinforce it against warping and add some texture (a tip from The TerrainTutor I learned shortly after this build was completed).

Another thing I tried here was some creative recycling. I took the dust/scrapes/bits from my cork board cutting and mixed it into my brown paint on the base. Some of the grit adhered and it looks “ok”. At some point I will drybrush the grit and the edges of the foamboard with a lighter brown to get some better effect. Next time I would use sand on the base to get this effect. The Cork scrap was just too unpredictable and didn’t get a uniform look.

You can probably tell most of my complaints are about the base. As ultimately I do like the look of the tower and little side wall – on the whole anyway.

Some things that could improve this build:

Spackle on the base for texture;

Drybrushing the base for detail;

Reinforcing the base to avoid warping;

Taking more time to basecoat to avoid brown cork showing through.

Pros: Low Cost, Fast, and Easy. (Also – It smells nice. (Is that weird to say?) I find the cork has a natural smell which is nice to work with.)

Cons: Chipping & Warping.

3. TerrainTutor Foamboard Bunker

Don’t listen to me for instructions – Watch the Video!

Here are my results, and after that some of my tweaks. Please excuse the poor quality photography. You can just barely see that I have a Stormsmith Grenadier taking shelter from enemy fire inside.

What I Did:

Following the video instructions – that’s what I did. For paints I used a mix of the black and white dollar store acrylics for the grey, then a slightly lighter variant for a drybrush, and then some white drybrush for details. I use a watered down brown for the base over the Fast N Final Spackle. I intentionally left the spackle looking wavy/bumpy to have it look like mud.

Some things I couldn’t do was the detail on the base. I don’t have any flock on hand, and my static grass is in a small tub so I wanted to use it sparingly.

Instead – I tried to get a mud effect by painting the spackle brown, then drybrushing grey, and then drybrushing tan on the details. I really like how it turned out!

One other tweak I used is that I put some of Citadel’s “Typhus Corrosion” in the cracks, battle damage, and bullet holes. This helped bring out the details, and add some extra grit to the damage. (I might add more of this down the road). I also put this in some of the creases where the spackle did not look so uniform with the foamboard. The grit helped cover up these errors and looked like mud caught up in the cracks.

What I Would Do Next Time:

I forgot to cut the corners of the roof to match the bevel of the front wall! Rookie mistake.

I would also use more Lustrian Undergrowth for moss, and add extra battle damage for effect.

However – I was super pleased with how this turned out. Following The TerrainTutors build was easy and a lot of fun.

Pros: Looks Great, Easy, Cheap, and Fun!

Cons: Virtually None. Only complaint is the WW2 bunker doesn’t quite fit the aesthetic of my Cygnar models, but it doesn’t really matter to me at this stage. I’m just trying to learn!

Thoughts

I had a lot of fun taking these first steps into Terrain-Building. It was messy work, but a lot of fun.

I think I will probably use the cork for simpler structures in the future (bases mostly). As the structures from cork do not really hold up very well.

My next projects are going to be making a simple hill, and also trying to build a Stonehenge.

J

SPACKLE NOTE

TheTerrainTutor is in the UK. As a result, when I went to find the supplies he uses – I was understandably unable to find the filler from his videos. TTT notes this in his videos, and so I was expecting this.

Ultimately I settled on the DAP brand which worked just fine. DAP had a lot of vareities. One thing I noted was some were blue, but then dried white. I was nervous about the color change not giving me exactly what I wanted, and so I settled for this variant that doesn’t have that feature. It’s also fast drying and very lightweight.

Putting a picture of what I used below for others in Canada (and maybe the US) to find the same stuff. One downside (I think) is that this variant SAYS it can’t be sanded. I haven’t tested this yet.

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