Pityak Studios run a friendly forum for New Zealand modellers. We’ve had a few challenges there recently (not ‘competitions’ because no prizes are involved), including ‘Take me to your Leader‘ and the ‘CD Terrain Challenge‘ which is currently ongoing.
I’ve seen a lot of good terrain based on an old CD on various forums and have always wanted to try it myself. So over the past week I abandoned all my other projects (surprise) and threw together the pictured terrain!
It’s a ruined building corner intended for use in Warhammer 40k and 40k City Fight. It’s constructed almost entirely from Hirst Arts gothic pieces cast in Ultracal 30 with a plastic drum from the Games Workshop Battlefield Accessory sprue and two pieces from the Tank Accessory sprue – points if you can tell me which pieces.
As it was a small piece of ‘throw away’ terrain I used it to try a few things I haven’t done before. I really ruined a lot of the pieces by attacking them with a small hammer to create rubble. Some of the pieces were also partial mis-casts and rejects because of bubbling, something you fortunately don’t really notice in the finished piece.
I tried my hand at ‘bullet holing’ the pieces as well by drilling with a 1mm and 3mm bit and chipping with an Xacto. I placed bullet holes just around the exterior of the doorway and ruined window. They look ok, but not great imho. Possibly I should have created at least one massive ‘thru-and-thru’ (as they say on CSI) blast hole – something to try next time I guess.
Finally the ruins paint scheme is a departure from how I usually paint which is three drybrushed coats of interior house paint over a black spray primer.
Instead this ruin was simply painted a creme colour over the assembled bricks, then washed with a blend of Kiwi liquid brown shoe polish and 50/50 Klear floor wax and water. Once dry a single coat of slightly lighter creme was carefully drybrushed over.
I was trying to acheive the look of marble or sandstone that has been heavily stained by age and/or pollution after being inspired by some great terrain by Wig on the Hirst Arts forum. I feel the effect is close but not exactly what I wanted. Possibly because I couldn’t help myself and fell back onto the warm brown palette I always seem to end up painting! I wonder if gray or black Kiwi shoe polish with give a different overall appearance.
The ground is a more orange than I would have liked but I can live with it. That sandy looking effect combined with the sandstone building actually makes the whole piece look like a ruined city on some dust blown desert world and also matches the paint scheme of my Imperial Guardsmen too.
Overall I’m happy with the piece and it was really enjoyable experimenting with a small, tight piece of terrain while having no fears about simply chucking the whole thing away if it went bad.
I suspect this won’t be the only piece of CD terrain I create…