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Mordheim is Games Workshop's
fantasy skirmish game in a post-disaster medieval setting. The
game benefits greatly from lots of terrain, which needs to be
multi-storey ruined buildings. This article describes the
terrain collection a few of us built for my gaming club, Gobstyks
With the exception of the ruined tower all of the following buildings are made in the same way, and are variations on a basic ruin. They are extremely easy to make and quite versatile. Although they were made for Mordheim they can be used in games of Warhammer Fantasy Battle as well. |
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Materials
This method was first described by Nigel Stillman in White Dwarf magazine.
>Step 1 : preparation
Decide on the size, in floor area, of building you would like and cut out the base. Decide on the wall height that you will use (I suggest you use the same wall height for each story so the floors will be at the same height between buildings). Cut long strips of foamcore to this height. We used 50mm (2 inches) to match up with the cardboard ruins supplied in the Mordheim box set.
Cut your balsa wood into strips (much cheaper than buying ready cut strips, but you have to do the cutting up yourself. It's your choice - I have a mini circular saw, so it takes no time at all). The thicker balsa you bought is for the building corners. Cut some strips 12mm (� an inch) wide, and some more 12mm minus its thickness wide. This is so that when you glue them side by side on a corner you end up with what looks like a square timber (you'll get what I mean later). Now cut lots of 50mm (2 inch) pieces of this balsa to use on the building corners (of course, if you made your walls higher than 50mm then you need to cut the balsa to your wall height...).
The thinner balsa is for the wall timbers. Cut it into strips 10mm (3/8ths of an inch) wide. Also cut some very thin strips (say, 3 to 4 mm) for window and door frames.
If you are going to make several buildings then it's worth making a template for your doors and windows. This will allow you to work faster and also ensure that your windows are at the same height. Just cut a piece of card to the same height as your walls and cut one window and door in it. Use this to mark out doors and windows on your wall strips.
Step 2 : Making the first storey wall (or the ground storey, depending on your nationality...)
Most of your ruins will have a whole wall or perhaps a corner missing. This allows you to get miniatures inside easily. Sketch the approximate position of the walls you would like onto your base. Now take one of your strips of foamcore and align it with one end of the wall you have marked. Mark the corner, align the foamcore along the next wall, mark the corner, and so on. When finished you will have one long strip of foamcore with with a pencil mark at each corner position.
Cut the foamcore to the length of all the walls (don't cut every wall out). Then with a sharp knife cut a vertical slit at eash corner mark cutting through the outside card skin but not the inside layer. This will allow the foamcore to fold around and make your first storey wall. Mark any doors or windows and cut them out with a sharp craft knife. Glue gun your wall to the base.
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Here's a simple first storey glued to a base. This has had the balsa wood details added, as described in step three. You can see that the foamcore is one long strip. |
Now add the balsa wood details. Spread PVA glue on the corners of the building, and some on your wider balse corner pieces. Stick one strip of balsa in place, and then butt the second piece up to it to conceal the corner, as in the photograph. Cut your thin strips into window and door frame lengths and glue them on to the wall surface. You don't have to be very precise. Let the assembly dry for a few minutes or you'll keep on knocking the balsa out of position. You thinner balsa strips are used to make corner timbers as shown in the later photographs. It can be easier to add them now, but you can also do it later.
Step 3 : making the second and subsequent storeys
I used 2mm plywood for the floors of most of the buildings. Thick cardboard is almost as good. Either way, the next step is to make the first floor. Turn your assembled building upside down and place it on your chosen floor material, about 12mm (� an inch) from the edge. Draw all around your walls. Remove the building. Draw a second line 12mm wider than all your walls to create the overhanging upper storey characteristic of these buildings. Your floor will be broken and incomplete, so roughly draw in the broken edge. Now cut the floor out.
Place the floor on your first (ground) storey walls to check its size and shape. If it looks OK, remove it again and detail it up. First, score along the grain of the wood with a nail or similar to scratch floorboards into the surface. Now cut into the floor along the 'joins' in the floorboards. Cut the boards off at rightangles and break them a bit for a more realistic effect. Have a look at this picture:
| This building has two floors. At the moment yours will only have one. You can see that we have scored some 'floorboards' into the wood for a more realistic effect and broken some here and there. When you are satisfied with the floor glue it to the walls using a hot glue gun or PVA. |  |
Now make the walls for the second storey. You can just hold your foamcore strip against the floor you have made and mark the position of the corners:
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Mark the corner on the outside of the foamcore, but then subtract the thickness of the foamcore from your mark, otherwise your wall will be too long when you fold it around the corner. The easiest way to do this is to hold an offcut of foamcore against the corner and draw up its inside edge. |
Remember to cut out any windows that you want in this storey before you glue it to the floorboards. Repeat this step as many times as you wish making your storeys slightly larger each time to get an overhanging effect.
| You can vary the design of your buildings to get a more interesting effect. In this one Will has extended the first floor on one side to give a balcony effect. |  |
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And in this one he made a top story with a very large overhanging bay windows. I added lots of heavy balsa wood timbers and a few gargoyles here and there for extra effect. |
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Step 4 : Adding the balsa wood timber detailing and windows
Much of the character of these buildings comes from the
half-timbered effect, created by adding balsa wood corners and lots of
diagonal timbers.
| This building has had the balsawood details added
and I have started to paint on the textured wall covering. In
this ruin I created a very large overhang on the first storey
and supported it with balsa wood pillars. Diagonal timbers were
added to the corner of each wall, and I broke up the longer
walls with vertical balsa strips. I also added horizontal balsa
strips to the bottom of each storey on all the buildings - this
hides the join between the foamcore walls and the floors. On the
top storey I extended the floor to make another large overhang
wide enough to take a miniature. I glued lots of balsa strips
underneath for added realism.
The windows and doors just have thin balsa strips glued around them on the surface of the foamcore. |
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We discovered that the windows look a lot more convincing if they have a glazing bar in the centre. This is the easiest way we came up with to make these. Cut a piece of balsa slightly longer than the height of your window and sharpen each end. Dip the ends in PVA glue. Push one end into the window edge until you can get the other end of the glazing bar in, and then push it into position. |
Step 5 : Adding the roof
| For the arched building I made a slightly more sophisticated roof. I glued roof timbers to the tops of the walls and supported them with vertical timbers going down to the floor, and bracing timbers reaching from one side of the roof to the other. Then I glued very thin balsa strips across horizontally. Pieces of card were glued on top, and cereal-box roof tiles glued on with PVA to finish the effect. I think individual tiles (rather than strips of tiles as in the gothic church) look more convincing and are not really much more work. |  |
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This is more or less a copy of Nigel Stillman's similar building from White Dwarf magazine. It is basically a half timbered top storey, built as described, sat on top of a 'stone' archway made from polystyrene (styrofoam). I cut two identical arches out of cardboard to guide the hot wire cutter on each side, and just sliced out four arch ways. The stone effect around the arches is just cereal box cardbord snipped up and glued on. The stairs are made from balsa wood, crudely hot glue-gunned together. I just made it up as I went along. The beauty of these buildings is that it doesn't matter if they look ramshackle. |
| Tom and Mark (Gorkamorka fort, Nurgle Plague Tower) made this tower from a cardboard tube. A floor was added half way up and an arched doorway cut out. Bits of cereal box card were stuck on randomly to suggest stonework. The stairway was again made from balsa wood and a hot glue gun. To get the steps to fit they used the technique described right back on the giant fans page. You wrap some sandpaper around the tower and rub the steps up and down to sand them to the shape of the tower. Glue them on and you have a perfect fit. |  |
