A "Touch" of Terrain

So some people say that on rare occasions, they catch a bug and start painting terrain.  Well if that be the case, I must have caught an elephant or something.  Needless to say I have been working on terrain these last couple weeks, and it has been quite rewarding, and productive.

A while ago I was tackling a block of 20 Death Korps infantrymen. I found myself about half way through hitting that "is it over yet" feeling we all get with huge swaths of unpainted infantry staring back at us.  So I had happened to look over and saw a couple of the Planetstrike Craters just lounging about in the corner that hadn't even received a primer coat yet.

So I decided to just take a quick break from the little resin dudesmen and get some terrain knocked out.  I still haven't quit... and here I am now with all kinds of new terrain projects.  As a side note, I did finish the 20 guys and they have been based and fit quite nicely alongside the rest of my army.

As for the terrain, I finished off the two craters pretty quickly.  I also managed to put some of the elements found on my Death Korp bases (I'll do a progress report on them soon) as well, including the toxic sludge pits and dead grass patches.  After those were done... I noticed a Bastion that had also been built last year, but was never painted.  Once again, I have rectified this.  As well, I redid the work I'd done on my Honored Imperium terrain to make it more in keeping with the new design.

So I needed a new project.  I had painted a few craters, then a building... what could possibly be next.  Well for those of you who watch our battle reports, you might notice we have a couple of tables.  The Snow Table belongs to Ishamael, Heretic is in the process of building his own table, and the Grey City table is mine.  However... the Grey City Table caught my eye, and so I began a renovation project on it.  I thought it might be time to make that table into a Krieg Table.

I forgot to snap some picture before hand for the comparison, but if you view some of our battle reports, you should be able to see it before the work started.  My first step was to add some more consistent texture.  Ishamael and I thought mixing sand with paint would work well a while back when we first made the tables, but we soon found it wasn't that easy.  So this time I covered the board in glue, took a wet brush and smoothed it over the whole board (minus the road and the dirt patches), added a lot of sand, and let it dry.  It worked out pretty well.

Next I decided I wanted the ground to be as close to the color I used for the basing of my infantry as possible.  So I took a sample of the Charadon Granite color to Lowe's, and they mixed my up a quart of pretty much the same color.  After two coats, the table had a nice solid, textured top to it.

 I was pretty pleased with the results.  But I also wanted to touch up on some of the built in texture pieces I gave the board a while back.  When I built the board, I decided to have some built it rubble that the buildings could fit against, but as I began basing the buildings individually, these rubble piles became a little out of place and too angled to look natural.  So I thought it was about time to fix these up...

 I filled in the spaces that missed paint under some of the foam chunks, and plan to add some rocks around it to hide the edges of the ruins and the large rock piece.

These built-in craters were easy to make.  I just took a screwdriver and pounded the area which gave it a nice broken, uneven look.  These look great on the new mud covered table.

So what did all of this work yield?  Well below are some pictures I snapped of some of the terrain and the board after it was highlighted, dead grass patches applied, and all 56 of the sludge pits colored in.

So what do you think?  I'd love to hear from you guys, and would love even more to see some of the works you guys have done on your own terrain.  I still have plenty more terrain to paint up, and I think I might try to finish them before rounding out my last 20 infantry models.  Then I can add more to my new and beloved Death Korps... and maybe even eventually re-base my Black Templars to fit along side them.  Until next time.

Cheers!