Rubble and Scatter Terrain - Part 1

So, I've almost completed some pieces of scatter scenery that have been sat half finished in the basement for way, way to long! Admittedly, the main reason I've been determined to get them finished is that I keep getting struck by inspiration for building various bits of scenery, but didn't want to just add to an existing queue of half-finished things, and so decided to finish them off before I'd let myself start anything new...

How long is way too long, you ask? The bulk of the content for this post (as there's so much, I'll probably split it into two or three posts) is from last June. You'll notice that I'm wearing shorts in some of the pictures:

So, way back last summer, a few of us had decided that we wanted to play Inquisimunda. Well, I say a few of us had decided, I was tempted to, and bugged other people in the hopes that they would too. Wanting to be a providing sort of host, I thought I should knock up some simple (and generic, so that it could be used for other projects rather than being limited to just 40k) scatter terrain.

My first idea was some pleasingly generic sci-fi barrels, made from soda caps, an idea I think I first saw done by Nathan Ironworker Miller over on the LAF that I mentally files away for later use. Handily, my wife drinks a bunch of Pepsi Max (it is apparently healthier than regular carbonated beverages), so it didn't take too long to accumulate a suitable number of bottle caps. A quick sand to flatten their bottoms (oo-err) and they were ready to be superglued together in pairs to make barrels:

Note the Inquisitorial Acolyte for scale, who has noticeably not appeared painted on the blog in the sevent months since this picture was taken. The majority of those clips are from poundland, by the way, and I recommend anyone thinking about building any terrain or scenery grab some rather than siting holding things together while they dry with your actual hands!

I scribbled some rough shapes in pencil on the board that I use for basing all of my terrain these days, and then cut them out, and bevelled the edges with a knife.

I then set about arranging the barrels on bases, and glued them down with PVA, as I figured this would have a little more 'give', being less likely to snap off than superglue if I were to drop them or be a little rough during painting (spoiler alert - at least one broke off during painting)

I also made a couple of other pieces that don't seem to feature in these pictures, but that you'll end up seeing later...

Pleased with these pieces, I decided to make some accompanying rubble / rough ground pieces, to slow movement and block line of sight. In hindsight, knowing how I am, I should potentially have done the two batches of terrain separately (as two manageable chunks rather than one big mega lump) in order to get them finished quicker, but who knows if that would really have been the case...

Thusly, I dug out my bags of differently sized pieces of cork (doesn't everyone file their cork by size?) and a few bits and bobs, and set about making some rubble bases.

A pipe here, a bit of scrap metal there, a broken piece of wood panelling that was inspired by the collapsed buildings in Fallout 4 where there's a whole floor collapsed into the room below but ended up looking more like someone had discarded a fence panel, and a hearty handful of bits of cork, and we have our basic base:

I also etched a brick pattern into some foam (the type that comes underneath a tasty chilled pizza from your local supermarket) to break up into fallen wall sections, to provide some different texture and visual interest:

Some pieces also got taller ruin sections, to provide more line of sight blocking, whereas other pieces had quite a low profile, intended to simply be rough ground that would force tactical movement decisions but otherwise not affect a firefight.

I then decided to go back and add a couple of 'character' pieces to each set;

Firstly, an objective-esque barrel (or simply one with a little more narrative than just 'stack of barrels') with the addition of some pieces from a Tamiya sprue:

And then taking a saw to the cogs from an old Hot Wheels toy (that is one of the projects that keeps catching my eye, but I'm determined to get these finished before I start anything else!) to make a large cog and rubble piece, even including a half-buried barrel to tie the two sets together...

And that, dear reader if you've made it this far, is where we pause. More to come in a future blog post though, don't you worry...