40k Terrain 2 Infinity Terrain

40k to Infinity

Bullocks what do I do with all of this old shit? 

        So you have decided to make the jump to infinity because doing the bidding of the emperor has finally started to take its toll. Unfortunately it seems like every table you ever played on, as a 40k vet, has been the ruins of some great civilization. Cities, outpost, industrial parks, military compounds... Everything in ruins! Why the heck did everything have to be destroyed? Hasn't anyone ever heard about rules of engagement and collateral damage? I mean if I were attempting to take a place over or protect it I would want it to stay nice. Not the armies of the 40k universe! "Is that a house? Looks like great cover for me to put my tank inside!" Anyway back to the business at hand. What the hell do you do with all of your post apocalyptic destroyed cities? Well use them of course. I understand the the fluff behind infinity is vary clean and crisp. That these special units are supposed to be running around in areas accomplishing missions to avoid open war... Who's to say that there are never cities that fall in the future? 

          Tommy here is in a movie that is way out in the future! Flying around in bubbles and shooting flying attack drones. Nobody ever told him he was supposed to be in a world that was well taken care of. Elysium is another great example of cities that have seen better days while still having the technology that would suffice for the infinity world. Think about the hunger games, one of the major cities could easily be the Capitol while distric 12 could be your post apocalyptic ass 40k terrain, before or after it got bombed I mean come on distric 12 has always been a shit hole! Panem, PanO what's the difference? The Matrix, some of the areas from Startrek, Titan A.E., Starship Troopers Buenos Aires after the bugs hit it the list goes on and on...      

So if you have spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours of your time on elaborate terrain for your 40k tables don't throw it away! Come up with a reason for it to be there. What if a faction bombed a growing colony for (insert reason here) and wanted to plant evidence that a rival faction did it while at the same time the innocent faction is trying to prove their not to blame? What do you think the aftermath would look like if the Combined Army came for a visit and decided that they did not need the inhabitants but only their resources? What about an industrial accident or natural disaster? All you have to do is allow your terrain to make sense and it will have new life. 

Add a few trees to this table and this could be the location of a last stand against the hostile inhabitants of Aireadna. All of your hard work and effort need not go to waste you simple have to think about it a little differently. Hell you may even find new ways to use your old terrain and spring a little life into that old table.  So this wasn't all just going to be a rant about moving from 40k to Infinity, I do have a little terrain advice to add to the mix. A few of the guys at my local shop had seen the Fifth Element table I made and started asking me about where I learned how to make terrain. I told them that I started in high school with 40k and that I made terrain out of things I found around the house. They were very interested in cheap terrain ideas because they did not have a whole lot of money to spend. One thing that I always looked for to make ruined buildings was packaging foam like the stuff you find inside of an electronics box. I decided that I was going to make make a set for a warhammer kill teams league we were starting up. 

 I started making this before I started writing this blog and never considered making a tutorial out of these photos. Instead of doing the traditional step by step I am going to talk a little more about theory. When ever I make ruins out of packaging foam I generally look at it first and think about what some of the shapes look like i.e. it looks like a door or window fits here and if I break this piece off it would make a nice concrete wall. Sometimes I will put my mini on it and see how he looks in different areas. Next you just break chunks off. I generally have an idea of how I want it to look and aim for that but at the end of the day the parts you break off will determine the layout of the finished project. You can also chose to keep the foam together sometimes and because of the shape it tends to look like pill boxes and concrete bunkers. 

 

We have some 40k players at our local shop and just because most 40k terrain is all ruiny and skully does not mean you have to play on tables like that. One of the guys just came back from filming with miniwargaming and decided he wanted to try his hand at making a batrep he like my infinity terrain so much that he decided to use it in his video. 

Main point of this article is that you should play with whatever you have, just play! If you have ruins and are playing infinity come up with cool scenarios that would cause you to be in such an area. Hell if you have a badass train set that fits 28mm then play on that maybe you landed on an underdeveloped planet that is just coming to age, some of the planets in the Firefly universe still use horses. 

 

Well I have wanted to write about this for a bit now seeing as is was brought up as an excuse of why some people didn't want to play because they didn't want to replace all of their terrain. I also needed a filler until I finish up the spaceship. 

 

You are only limited by your imagination! -Chad-

 

Spaceship in a Shoe Box - Part 2

Spaceship in a Shoe Box - Part 2

 

 

 

In part one we came up with the plan, cut out walls, made doors and tested out the set up. I did end up cutting out about 6 more doors to make the walls section complete. In part two we will be adding a few elements that will create an engine/life support room and a command and control room. Just like part one I wanted all of the pieces to be able to be stored inside the shoe box therefore I made it all modular again. 

 

Engine room

       Every spaceship has one. Often overlooked, it is the beating heart of the floating hulk traveling through the hostel void that is space. The people that work on them are vital and serve as the blood that keeps the ship alive. Without these fantastic creations of human power and resourcfulness traveling the dark depths of space would be impossible. There are many movies and TV shows that portray just how important the life systems are on a spaceship. Malcolm Reynolds got shot to get a part he needed I order to keep his beloved Serenity flying. Captain James Kirk risked his life and took some serious radiation to keep the Starship Enterprise traveling the final frontier. Hell there are even video games out now that have this very concept in mind. Throw in an eight foot tall black alien turn out some lights and try to fix a spaceship. That's enough to scare the pants off anyone! One of the very reasons I wanted to include an engine room into my designs is to give me the opertunity to portray this same sense of urgency and seriousness into some of my games. I may have to create special rules to play with it but imagine if while you are playing anytime someone rolls a 20 to hit with their BS skill they miss and hit some part of the ship that requires fixing or maybe all or the characters orders can be irregular until the life support becomes fixed to represent emmissions coming off of the reactor, scrambling comms. What if destroying the life support and prepulsion system becomes the objective of the games where one faction is trying to prevent their ship from becoming crippled. There are so many possibities that you can come up with endless scenarios to run through. 

 

 I find inspiration for terrain all over the place. When I see something cool I look at it and think what can I make out of that! Well that happened to me a bit ago while trying to keep up my virtamin intake. The caps on this orange juice container have been really great to work with. They look really futuristic and make great additions to terrain pieces. Plus I drink tons of the stuff so I have loads of them that I have been saving.  

    I took a few of the caps, turned them upside down and used them as the supports to some raised walkways. The ended up being the perfect height to provide cover and still allow the minis to fire over them. 

       

Next I used some really cool cylinders aka cardboard tubes that my wife brought home for me. I spiced them up with some of the cutoffs from the supports for the wall sections. This will provide nooks for defenders to bed into.   Below is an example of how these pieces can be set up. Once painted these pieces will look really cool I could possible add wires or other small details to help further push the engine room feel.  

 

 

Command and Control

         If the engine and life support rooms are the heart of the ship then the control center is the brains. With commanders, such as theses fine gentlemen to the left, these hunks of steel can turn into flying fortresses. The nerve center of theses vessels are crucial to keeping operations under control. With monitoring systems, weapon defenses, and communications the one who controls the command deck controls the ship. I wanted to make and objective that both teams would want to take over and in effect not destroy the ship in the process. This would also serve at a location for info war to take place. With severs full of vital information and data links that span the fleet the control center is any hacker's wet dream! I imagine I will be making objectives based on both stealing or uploading information and simply control of the C&C room. The challenge was trying to give off the feel of a high tech room without taking up too much room. My solution was to create large computer displays that could be broken down. 

        Here you can see that I found some opaque material for the screens (it's actually just a dollar store cutting board that I have been cutting up to use as Windows for other projects). I will have to go back and draw "displays" onto them. 

 Here is an example of how it can be set up. Nothing super fancy just the bare bones to get the point across. Again I may add more technical pieces to add to the effect but this will certainly do for now. I really like how these rooms came out! This will add another element to the spaceship table and give us the option to explore different objectives. I still have not filled up the box; although we are coming mighty close. I could make some more room if I take out all of the door cut outs so I will keep you updated if I make and additions to the box.

Next up we will be preparing the terrain for painting and painting these bad boys up! I still have not decided on a color yet. I am currently leaning towards Nomad red but I am also considering yellow. Let me know what you think in the comments! Also if you have any ideas or experience with this type of work please share I would love to try some new things out!

 

You are only limited by your imagination! -Chad-

Infinity Terrain: Spaceship in a shoe box Part 1

 

Infinity Terrain

Spaceship in a shoebox

Part 1

 

 

 

    I have been making terrain now for quite a few years. I can remember making forts for my green army men out of sticks and rocks in elementary school. I also loved Legos and Kenects! I would often build whatever was on the box then tear it apart as soon as I was done just to see what I could make out of the same pieces. So needless to say when I started war gaming back in high school with my brothers terrain building really interested me. I really wish I had pictures of my early stuff. It was really rudimentary. It's amazing what a few bucks to spend on paint and supplies plus a vehicle to take you to the hardware or hobby store will allow you to create. 

 

     So I have been posting some fairly elaborate stuff lately on the infinity subreddit and the Personal Flashpaper, an Infinity Podcast Facebook group about terrain and thought it would be neat to write up an article on my next project. There are a few things I have come to notic about tabletop war gamers. One they either love making terrain and therefore go to great lengths to make completely emersive terrain. These folks are willing to go to extreams to play on top notch tables. They will cart massive loads of terrain to events, they will spend hours making beautiful scenery that make the rest of us very jealous and they don't care how much it cost as long as the finish product places them, or at least their minis, into the world they have dreamed up. This brings me to number two, money. Money is very important, it helps fund our growing collection, allows us to travel to events, and pays the bills that way I can keep my infinity storage unit's, I mean my house's electricity and water on. Unfortunately I have to explain to my accountant aka my wife why I keep buying "toys". I can avoid most confrontation if I limit my spending which in to long run benifits me because without my accountant I would be eating Top Ramen every night. The aforementioned terrain artist do not mind spending a bit more on terrain because they enjoy that aspect of the hobby. That is as much of the game to them as scoring victory points. We on the other hand can avoid spending too much money if we make our own terrain and are willing to skip a few of the heigher end details. Lastly space and time. These two peices of logistics are often forgotten but tend to be very important. If your anything like me you not only have to manage your money wisely but your time was well to stay out of the dog house and God forbid you take up any more room with your "toys". It's not really that bad my wife gives me a fairly long leash and just reignes me in when I get nuts. Keeping these factors in mind I would like for my next project to be cheap, quick, and condensed. 

 

    My next project is going to be an entire infinity table's worth of terrain and I would like for it all to fit into a shoe box. I am going to do a boarding action table, which if you are not familiar with the term means the inside of a vessel or ship. In this case I am using a space ship, a Nomad spaceship to be exact. In the realm of Infinity the Nomads are a group of space gypsies of sorts. They do not like the government of the colonized planets and their reliance on the Aleph "Big Brother" so they fled and now colonize a fleet of spaceship that circle the know universe. There are three large mother ships within the Nomad nation; Tunguska, Corregidor, and Bakunin. Each of these ships has its own culture, character, functions and specializations within the Nomad nation and populations equivilant to small cities (around a few million). The ships are accompanied by various smaller ships and shuttles that perform different tasks, from communication and transportation to obscure subcontracting work. I am going to model my ship after one of the smaller accompanying ships instead of trying to grasp the size and scope of a "mother ship". There are 3 key elements I would like to have for various mission aspects of the games. I would like a control room located somewhere in the center area (this can substitute for an armory or any other occupy room objective), I would like a a large open loading bay room with shipping containers and the sort, and I would like some sort of engine/life support room. It is going to be a challenge to fit all of this into one shoebox but let's see what we can do!

 

Now time to quit bumping my gums, I guess technically my thumbs seeing as I am writing this from my iPad, and start with the darn project. I started with the planning stage where I gather information and sketch ideas.

   

 

You can see here that I took down the dimensions for both the box I wanted the terrain to fit into and that foam I am using. With these two in mind I came up with the best solution to maximize the use of both. It is very important that you plan what you are doing before you just start cutting things. I decided on a modular wall idea that would allow flexibility as far as doors and windows go as well as removable supports that also act as cover. I didn't want people standing there with nowhere to hide like these goofballs. We all know how this one ended for them.

 

Once planning was finished I decided to use some scrap foamcore to test out my design.

 

 

Saticfied that the walls were the correct height and the supports would hold up well enough I move on to the actual work! At this point the supplies I used were fairly common items that any of you should have around if you do much scratch built terrain. If you do not then these items are a great place to start and I would consider them must haves. 

 

 

From there you will utilize the schematics you planned out earlier and transpose them onto your foamcore. 

 

 

 Great use of space here! Isn't planning awesome? I made the walls 220mm wide and 80mm tall I was able to fit 10 onto one board. With the left over I was able to make my support pieces they are 60mm at the bottom and 30mm at the top and are 50mm tall. You should always ALWAYS meausre twice and cut once. This will save you loads throughout your hobby carreer. 

 

 

 Take a few minutes and cut everything out. I like to cut everything out all at once in stead of finishing one piece at a time. This is call the production line method. General rules for cutting foamcore are use a sharp knife, cut three times (once through each layer) and use a metal strait edge. Next was a quick test to make sure they fit in the shoe box. 

 

 

Like a glove! It's like I planned it that way... Next up was cutting out the slots for the supports to slide into. I started by measuring 10mm in on each side and drawing a 50mm tall line along those marks. 

 

I then used one of my 50mm tall precut supports as a guide to measure the thickness of the foamcore. I drew a line on the inside of each of my previously drawn lines. 

 

 

Once all the lines are drawn cut out all the slits. Remember to be very careful when measuring and cutting these. Error on the side of being too tight because if it is too lose you risk your walls falling down. 

 

 

Once the walls are completed you can begin work on the supports. These will serve to hold up your walls, connect them together and give you cover. Unless you are River Tam and can just stand in the open and kill everything with your eyes closed then you need cover. 

 

 

Look at Kaylee being smart and staying in base to base... I used the leftover edge from my foamcore and cut out 60mm by 50mm rectangles. I then measured 15mm in from each side on the top to make a sort of pyrimid shape. You can make whatever shape you want I just chose this because it felt right and was easy. I then used the first one as a stencil for the rest. 

 

 

So now that everything was cut out it was time for a test drive. I placed some of the walls together and linked them up. 

 

 

Overall I am very satisfied with the result. I can go back and cut out some doors of various sizes and maybe some windows, I have not decided if I am doing any yet. From this test I found out a few things. One is that I am going to need anywhere between 1 and 2 more sheets to give me enough walls to fill the table. Two, I would like something to hold the walls apart a certain distance, most likely a brace of some sort. Three I need to figure out how to make the corners connect in order for my passageways to hold up if any dice bounce off of them. 

 

Back to work today and came up with a few ideas. First to solve the corner idea I will be using some of the precut walls upside down to connect to each other. 

 

 

This will free up the need for spacific corner pieces  and make for perfect right angles. This also connects the walls very well making them more stable in case someone wants to act like Godzilla while moving their minis. 

 

 

I ended up cutting out two more sheets to give me a total of 30 wall sections and 24 support pieces. I feel like that is a solid amount of bulkhead to fill up a 4x4 foot square. I decided to take it to the table for placement testing. With the 3 key elements in mind I came up with a cool layout plan. 

 

 

As you can see I have not put any doors in yet because I wanted an idea of how the table would look and what kind of doors I would need. In this layout you can see that it has a room in the center with an open space for my loading bay and several smaller rooms that could act as engine or life support rooms. My next step was to cut out doors. I had to keep in mind that I wanted the walls to retain their structural integrity so I did not cut all the way down. It also makes it have a sealable door feel like you would see on a modern day ocean fairing ship. 

 

 

I plan on using the door cutouts for some of the doors and just wanted the flexibility to either have doors open or closed therefore I kept all of the cut outs and even numbered them to help when pairing them up. If you have ever worked in any kind of percision craftsmenship you know that minute imperfections will occur, this will eliminate doors not fitting in holes. You will also notice that I cut doors out in various sizes, numbers and placements. I didn't want the same hole in every wall this would make the bulkheads bland and boring. I cut a few doors into my upside down walls too. After that I gave it another test run. This time with some scatter terrain. 

 

 

I still need to make braces to hold the walls apart at a predetermined distance and may add a couple of more doors to allow for freedom of movement and open fire lanes up a little more but it is definitely at a playable level. I really cannot wait to put this table to the test and see how it plays. I will definitely be making spacific lists for this mission. Can you say shotguns and direct template weapons?

 

 

As you can see I have only used about half of the box up. I plan on making scenic pieces for those key element rooms like computer displays and consuls for the command room and random mechanical equipment stuff for the engine/life support room. I will also make some cool raised walk ways to add at least a little depth to the terrain. On a side note I did not consider the scatter terrain we will be using when I came up with the "in a shoebox" design therefore I do not think everything you would need will fit into the box. That being said I did not consider it because it was already at my gaming club and I brought it home only for set up testing. You should be able to take this box anywhere you go and utilize existing scatter terrain to accomplish a full table. Who knows maybe the other half of the box will be enough room to cover all the scatter as well. Come check out part two where I turn the rooms into rooms and create modular scenery to fill in the spaces. 

 

You're only limited by your imagination! -Chad-