I decided to try making a batch of terrain for Combat Zone, but it's also useful for generic 28mm Post-Apoc/Near Future gaming. I based the buildings on Craig Hardt's Cardboard Ruins tutorial on TerraGenesis with a few tweaks, and I also made some rubble piles and a corrugated iron [cardboard] lean-to.
The walls are obviously made from corrugated cardboard, only single thickness rather than the double-layer recommended in the tutorial. I just used Craft Paste or PVA Glue (see below) and sand to texture the walls as well.
The rubble piles are just screwed up butcher's paper with offcuts of cardboard and bits of plastic sprue hot-glued on, and the corrugated cardboard is made by peeling off one side of a piece of cardboard.
Here they are unpainted (the miniatures are all eM-4 28mm Plastics for scale):
While I painted them:
Later in the Painting Process:
Finished painting:
In Action:
Random Notes:
Initially I used Craft Paste instead of PVA glue since it was what I already had available; that was a mistake (I now own a half-litre of PVA glue, so I won't do that again). I base coated some of them with cheap black poster paint, before realising that both the paste and the poster paint are not water-proof when dry, so my next paint layer was pealing up the first layer of paint and the texture. Fortunately I had already realised after painting up the first few that poster paint is too slow, and I'd based coated the rest with black spray paint, which held together a lot better. I did a layer of PVA glue over the top of the ones that I had base-coated with poster paint which held them together after that.
For the first few I didn't bother putting masking tape around the base edges, or cutting slits in the masking tape when I put it over curved bits of the walls, so those ones are significantly rougher at the edges of the concrete (which works for certain types of buildings), and you can see the corrugations on the base.
I'm not sure how visible it is in the pictures, but several of the walls are crooked as well, which is a bit annoying.
Unfortunately I made most of it a bit high for 28mm as well, though it's not super noticeable at the table.
I also don't really like the scrunched up paper for rubble piles. It's probably the easiest and quickest technique, but I don't think it looks that great.
I'm thinking I should add some graffiti and some sort of plants or flocking as well.
I painted the walls by dry-brushing on medium grey, and then light grey. The ground by putting on Raw Umber, and then sort of dry-brushed yellowy-brown (Yellow and Burnt Sienna). The corrugated iron was painted silver and then sort of dry-brushed Burnt Sienna. (A lot of the time I probably had too much paint on the brush to really call it dry-brushing though)
Lessons learnt:
- Craft Paste isn't the same thing as PVA glue, and generally shouldn't be used as a substitute.
- Put the effort into putting the masking tape on properly.
- Put a bit of effort into putting the walls on just right.
- Putting the hot glue on the thing you're gluing down rather than to the base makes it easier to line up.
- Lightly brushing gold onto black makes a nice brushed brass effect.
- An easy way to put sand onto terrain is to put the terrain into a bucket and then scoop sand onto it with a small container.
- Spray paint makes a better base coat than cheap poster paint, and it's quicker.
- Double check the size of your walls and the like against a mini as you go along.
