DavicusPrime

KrazyIvan: Anyway, All tiles have been sealed and counter warped so that they lay flat. I have been having a horrible time reducing warping on my terrain pieces. What were your methods for "Counter Warping" your boards? The way I've had the most success has been gluing multiple layers of 3mm hardboard together. 2 Works, but I often end up using 3. -DavicusPrime

This is some very good stuff. I have been shy trying to do any urban terrain, but your work shows that it shouldn't be as hard as I was fearing it would be. Time consuming, yes. Too hard, no. Please continue showing off your creations! -DavicusPrime

I think Victorian is commonly used in Malifaux because that fits the asthetic of the victorian horror theme common in the game. The Fluff makes it totally reasonable to use everything that would be around pre-1900 which lets folks who play other games mix and match their terrain collections. You can claim the settled areas to have been rebuilt to fit the settling peoples' taste. The quarantine zones could and should be all kinds of weird. I suck at building urban terrain, which is why I have focused on building bayou terrain pieces. -DavicusPrime

So I've been trying to improve on my speed and technique for making some basic terrain I might be able to sell on ebay... Here's the latest batch. 2 Rock formations and a swamp shack and tree. Normally, I just use painted foam for my rocks but I've been trying to increase the sturdiness. This batch I coated the foam with an air dry clay. Only problem is that the clay shrank as it dried so I had lots of cracking. the white you see there is gap filler to get rid of them. The tree is polymer clay over a wire armature. When it's done, it'll have woodland scenics foliage clumps to top it off. the shack and platform are my usual craft sticks with wood grain drawn on via ballpoint pen over a foamcore frame. Here's a closer pic of the swam shack piece: hopefully I'll be able to get some paint on 'em by next week so I can show y'all how they look. -DavicusPrime

All it needs is a gremlin sitting on budda's head, fishing. -DavicusPrime

I've used the same material minus the holes and still have warping issues unless I glue 2-3 layers together. Storage is one of the problems... I have to keep my terrain out in my shed so my terrain has to handle temperature shifts and fluctuating humidity. And it seems the simple use of white glue on one layer of 1/8" hardboard will warp it in my experience. If it's just paint, one layer works fine.

They suggest super glue on their website. The usual plastic glues won't work on the vinyl as they actually melt and weld polystyrene based plastics together. -DavicusPrime

The newer projects are looking good. You may have mentioned this already but I'm feeling too lazy to read the old posts... What are you making your bases out of? I've had a horrible time with warping over the years so I'm always looking for other ideas. Your bases are really thin but look like they've been staying flat for you so I want to know what it is. :-D -DavicusPrime

I'm lucky enough to be between several towns and cities but I've found that I really don't need any "special" tools for the most part. Just requires a little more ingenuity and perhaps time. I've done most of my terrain using an xacto knife kit I got 20 some odd years ago that included a razor saw and two hobby knives and a 4 part kit of small pliers and wire cutters. A scroll saw and sander and a couple clamps is all I need to make the bases. Everything else is improvised from what's lying around the shed. Judging by what you've been able to make so far with what you've got, you're doing just fine. -DavicusPrime

Looking pretty darn good. I try to use a bit more scatter terrain... Barrels, perhaps some low stone walls, light poles, shrubbery! Gives your melee folks a little hope getting through to shooty types. Your two story house looks very nice and pretty much fills a quarter of the table. The other structures incorporate a nice mix of obstacles, walls and buildings. -DavicusPrime

I really like the way you made tabs to link your floors and the fact that they look like part time of the brickwork is a nice touch. I also like the start of your board. I've been using as my swamp board a bit of brown canvas stretched over some hardboard on a wooden frame. I painted some brown and green splotches to pretty it up. I want to try a folding board next, either for a malifaux city board or for X-wing. Right now we have been playing X-wing on the swamp board, or the "brown nebula" as we call it. -DavicusPrime

Dhampir... that is flipping awesome. is that mold flat or does it have some curvature? hard to tell from the pic. I think I'm going to have to make myself some forms to make a couple different stamps. Thanks for the ideas. -DavicusPrime

G.G.: Just out of curiosity... What are to going to use as the surface of your table? Okay. I've been slow to make any city style terrain/tables because I wanted to figure out a tolerable way to add various cobblestone textures to things that looks reasonably good, is durable, doesn't take forever and won't cost an arm and a leg. So far, Dhampir's homebrew cookie cutter texture stamps are looking like a potential breakthrough on the tooling side of things. I really want something more durable than foam, but if someone knows a good way to protect the foam without filling in the texture, you have my attention. -DavicusPrime

I'm glad you put the mini in the warehouse for scale... In my mind's eye I thought it was a heck of a lot smaller, with the shelves being more in scale with a book shelf. Wow, was i off. The fences do indeed look very good for the scale. I have been using these long and skinny type of craft sticks that don't require much trimming to fit unless you want them to look more irregular. For my terrain pieces I want the wood to look pretty rough so I just score them with a hobby knife and break them. But then most of my terrain is meant to have been slapped together by Gremlins in a swamp. It actually takes more time roughing up the wood than any other part of the job. -DavicusPrime

I've not tested it, but i was thinking 1/2" x 1/2" in my sketches for one of my next projects. The stairs from the terraclips sets seemed to be a little shorter than that, but with the gap under each stair being high enough for bases to slide under that was enough for you to still put a mini on them, assuming you didn't go too wild on basing the mini. I was going to copy the general design for a two story townhouse sort of thing. You've got to find a compromise between looks and playability. Trial and error plus blatantly stealing ideas is the way to go. -DavicusPrime

Okay... I think I know what I'm going to be doing with the next brush that wears out. -DavicusPrime

So I have a question... Once painted, is the foam still pretty pliable still? As in, if something were to get pressed into a finished building, would it leave a permanent indentation? The only reason I haven't done too much with raw foam/peeled foamcore is not knowing what to seal it with after drawing on the desired texture that would protect it from my haphazard storage arrangement. Thinned white glue has not been enough. But unthinned it fills in the texture. Your process and paint job is really good. Thanks for putting this together. -DavicusPrime

That is looking awesome. The chimney and columns look great. -Davicusprime

Here's an example of the trees I've made... My method for building these things is a bit involved, but if you aren't making lots of them, they make for some good center piece type terrain features. The trees pictured are wire armatures coated with a layer of air-dry clay. I used GW large flying bases because I had a bunch lying around at the time... Currently looking at other options as I've run out of them. Then I sealed the clay with white glue, primed and painted it and added leaves using woodland scenics clump foliage. I put some magnetic sheeting on the bottom of the base to help secure them on the terrain piece but also allowing their removal to simplify moving mini's and measuring. Lessons learned: -Top heavy/tipping problems: I started incorporating fishing weights inside the tree trunks to counter this, plus the magnets. Stronger magnets would probably also help counter this. Another potential fix, is keeping the canopy smaller and/or increasing the size/weight of the base. -Clay crumbling and flaking off the armature: If the armature is too flexible and/or the clay too thin, it comes apart if a limb gets bent/flexed. I have since started using heavier gauge wire for the main trunk and branches. And I'm testing out a polymer oven cure clay. My first test of this combo is still in work, so the jury is still out on this fix. The wire was an improvement, but the cured clay has not yet been tested. -Reel in the size: When I first made these, they were supposed to be very large old trees so I made the big ones to be about 11-12" tall. This is overkill to the extreme. Case in point: The pic below shows a GW dreadnought (approx. 2.25" tall) next to the first two trees I ever made. Top-down, these things covered so much area that only one of these fit into the envelope of the forest terrain pieces they were part of. One big one and one small one were all it took to cover a half sqft of table space. A dense forest they do not make. But I guess you could fill a whole table with just 18 of them. My current tree 2.0 project, has the large trees in the 7-9" range, which is plenty big enough for a game where the tallest mini's are under 3.5" tall. And they have a much smaller diameter on the canopy. It'll have the same general look, but won't take over the table like the old ones. After my 2.0 test case is done I'll post the results along side the older trees and provide a tutorial. -DavicusPrime

I always end up picturing Alice in wonderland when I think Neverborn... Familiar, but tweaked, dreamlike and surreal. Giant mushrooms, gingerbread cottages, evil looking trees, things at odd angles, things out of proportion, etc. Tim Burton movies seem to come to mind a lot: Beeltejuice, Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride. Things you can get on a T-shirt at Hot Topic... I guess that means I see Neverborn as the goth kids of Malifaux. Being as this is Malifaux, you could take it in any direction. You could easily take any malifaux'ish location, add in a few elements based on your favored master(s) theme(s) and you'll be set. For example: evil looking trees and brambles would totally fit a Lilith flavored bit of terrain. -DavicusPrime

That's one of the things I look for: is the foam obvious? How did they disguise the edges of the foam core? Every effort taken to disguise it, the aesthetics are usually helped. Secondly, during play and storage, I have found foam to be overly fragile. Usually the efforts taken to cover/texture said materials greatly enhances it's durability. As for those sewer modules... I am in awe, sir. -DavicusPrime

For this game, an inch tall is a good average for the scale. You can go up or down a quarter inch and still he fine. Best bet is to always have some models on hand as you design/build so you can eyeball things. 1" walls and fences seem to fit for gut high animal pens. 2" would be more along the lines of a property line or restricted area. -DavicusPrime

That's what I was thinking... When we play, you have a deck and discard but you're flips are going in front of you, not in a designated pile. I was thinking about doing something similar, but I was making it way more complicated than it needed to be. eyeballing it, it looks like your board is two pieces of 1" insulation foam painted and hinged with some duct tape perhaps? Beautifully simple. -DavicusPrime

Is the material easily marked if something were pressed into it? -DavicusPrime

Without trying to get too technical, I just keep a couple "human sized" mini's on hand to make sure the scale is in the right range. Most of my swamp terrain is designed for gremlin sized models so as shown below, things are a wee bit short for a human sized model... My gremlin scale doors are around 1 1/2" tall. I'd go with 2" for humans. Aside from that I don't worry too much about aiming for a specific scale. -Dave