Monday 16 July 2012

Quick Cheap Terrain - 28mm Infinity Part 4 - End of a Weekend

My challenge at the start of the weekend was to create a table-load of terrain.

Restrictions:

$100 budget
Unified terrain (i.e. not the usual mismatched bits thrown together to desparately block LoS)

12 hours of weekend

Day 2, Part 2
I spent 30 minutes yesterday night spraying my last two buildings (warehouses) but I had run out of terrain before starting my not-mosque and pumping station/factory. At the end of the weekend I had spent 11 hours and $96, coming in under my time/ and budgetary requirements. 

I had not added doors and windows of balsa as intended (due to a time blowout building the "fortress") but the weekend was over so I thought I'd take stock of what had been accomplished.

Time Elapsed: 30 minutes
 
 The terrain filled up the board as intended
The two warehouses at the bottom are the newest additions

Every building can be entered. Most have 2 levels






I like the cramped chaotic feel of the table.  Some detailing will really bring it to life.



The 50x30cm Donya Fortress (here with both stories visible) was a huge time sink and used up almost 2 sheets of foamboard.   It will be fun to battle through but with hindsight I would avoid it in favour of three or four 20 x 20cm buildings.


Some lessons I learned:
*Put doors in the corners of rooms to maximise internal space for rooms/minimise firing arcs; never centre internal doors but offset them to avoid easy firing corridors
 *I made too many identical buildings: by simply flipping the front wall (with the door + window) and exchanging the blank wall end with the opposite door end I could have had three times the variety with the same work.
*Bigger buildings use disproportionate time and resources; keep the largest to 20x20cm (8 x 8")
* Pins give a lot of strength and make assembly easy; PVA works as a foam sealant and a secondary connector

There is still lots to be done - about 2-3 hours detailing should "tart it up" a bit....


To do:
Ladders: made of either cut up peg baskets or push heavy duty staples into the walls. 
Windows & Doors: I have lots of balsa. I might consider some flyscreen for securi-mesh
Tin roofing/roller doors: I'll use the corrugated card and my aluminium spraypaint
Low walls:  Create courtyards/gardens for suburban houses for extra cover
High walls: Line of sight blocking terrain with doorways
Trees: a visit to ebay for some Chinese HO-scale palms
Steps: the wife can make some from her Hirst Arts stone moulds
Roof: for warehouses and Donya Fortress (I ran out of foamboard)
Planter boxes: Concrete boxes for rows of palms - adds to cover
 Drums/Pipes: I may get more - I also need to wash/de-shiny the ones I have and add rust streaks etc

The terrain building will continue through the week if I can source the foamcore - otherwise it is a trip to the cost next Saturday to stock up.

Anyway - a complete 4x4 Infinity board stacked with terrain; for under $100 and in under 12 hours.  Hope this has helped someone!

6 comments:

  1. Looks great, will def. be trying some of these out myself with my local Infinity group! The palaces look like the might be a bit cumbersome though if there were figures on multiple floors fighting.

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  2. Yeah - as I said, the big building was a time sink and used up heaps of foamboard.

    A few bigger buildings (the 20x20s and the warehouses) add nice variety. Avoiding the biggest building would have saved me 4hrs of the 11hrs spent.

    If you stuck with smaller buildings a few friends could duplicate the board in about 3 hours tops.

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  3. This is ace. A cracking concept and a really interesting project that I'm shamelessly ripping off !

    That's a great looking table you've put together and a real inspiration. Thanks.

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  4. Thanks!
    It's a quite crudely cut out and painted, but it's fast - shows you CAN get terrain out there that isn't a bunch of random AT43 crates, 40k gothic corner ruins and a few chunks of styfoam that make up 90% of the tables I get to game on.

    Next up, I'm doing a space station interior in a weekend....

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  5. I would really like to see some closeup images of these buildings with the figures next to them. Looking at starting a project and I'm curious how the figures scale next to those doors, windows, and tops of the walls. I'm trying to decide if I should follow your scale or increase it a bit to 7cm walls.

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    Replies
    1. I don't have my camera handy (wife has annexed it for baby-photo purposes) but maybe this AAR will help (some photos)

      http://deltavector.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/back-to-infinity.html

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