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| Planning is always a good idea. |
My mind continually re-assess my terrain collection. It's almost a sickness. As I have moved so many times in the last couple of years (Back to Australia, Back to the UK, and now a new flat again) I don't have the luxury of storing it all out of sight and mind.
Building terrain is probably the most therapeutic aspect of the hobby for me, and I'd say i devote a lot more time and energy into it than actual miniatures, although it is never my intention.
These models are from GZG, and are all-metal kits. They were the first terrain I purchased when I returned to minis in 2010, and they have held up very well indeed. There is certainly something to be said for the durability of metal buildings! The only problem was that when I painted them, after originally basing them on CD's, I had the really odd idea that uniform straight-edged basing would be a good idea. It's not. I decided to re-base them for a third time to fit in with the jungle terrain pieces I made last post.
This time around, I decided to return to making small clusters of terrain rather than individually based small buildings. I have come to believe this is the best way to store and set up this sort of terrain, and makes for a pleasing mini-diorama to work on. I am also determined to unify my basing scheme once and for all. Nothing bothers me as much as mismatched terrain bases (with the exception of people using medieval farmhouses in Sci-fi battles, the ultimate transgression). I should give a shout out to Chris/Deserter86 for inspiring me to do this. His heroic quest to unify his basing is inspirational!
Next, I arranged the buildings into little clusters and roughly sketched the shapes onto the MDF. Then used a Stanley knife to cut rough shapes. I whittled down the edges to make rough gradient. Easy enough, but if you try this make sure you use a sharp blade. As the blade dulls, it becomes harder to cut and you inevitably apply more pressure, which is where cut hands start happening. I was careful and sustained no injuries.
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| Whittling like a hillbilly |
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| Always check layout with test minis before glueing! |
Naturally, I got over-excited and tore into my city ruins terrain immediately, which has no less than 3 types of basing style and was in urgent need of refreshing!
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| A vast improvement |
Something else that I wanted to do was fix a glaring error I had made when first building these ruins... No rubble! Mr. Dave Taylor pointed this out to me and he was so right. The rest of the evening was devoted to crumbling up cork tile and cutting up little bricks to make rubble piles. The only reason I stopped is because my hands were hurting from cutting the MDF (it takes some effort) so I decided to hold off before there was a mishap or hasty creative decision.
Tonight I'm going to force myself to stop messing about with terrain and paint some overdue models for Khurasan, and then maybe get into some more of this.