This competition ran in May-June 2006 and was run by Kishkumen. We also owe a word of thanks to Eazy-O for writing up this summary from the information posted on the forum.
The challenge this time is to make some ruins. It should depict a man-made object or structure that's been neglected, battle-damaged, or forgotten. By "man-made" I mean "not created via natural processes". Therefore, ruins of things made by dwarves, elves, orcs, space aliens, mutants, lizardmen, and so on are also allowed. Both machinery and structures are allowed.
Ariss began this piece after buying some new speakers and finding some nicely shaped chunks of polystyrene foam amongst the packing materials. Selected pieces of the foam were set on a foam base. Much of the piece was coated in Ariss' special mix of filler + PVA + dirt + cheap black paint, to disguise the polystyrene texture. Scatter materials were added for debris along with details such as the wooden (balsa) sidings and rebar (copper wire) poking out of the 'concrete'. The broken paved floor was made as describe in our article on paved floors.
The piece was then drybrushed with colours that were carefully chosen to provide a contrast between the grey concrete structure and the brown rock on which is stands. Note the way in which the brown colour of the shuttering and the rusty brown of the rebar 'ties in' with the brown of the rock to great effect.
For more pictures and information about this piece, please click here.
First I've made 3.5" base hexes for the town, including river, from cardboard. These were later based with sand and painted mostly in shades of gray. The town looks quite small, but it can't be helped due to the game. The buildings were made partially out of cardboard and/or cast in resin. Everything was glued together and spraypainted dark gray. For the rubble I used foam plastic from sprue, otherwise it's my favorite mixture PVA glue-filler powder-water, with some sawdust to bring volume. I've cut 1mm x 1mm plastic stripes into 2mm long pieces and dropped them, along with pieces of wire & plastic and some small stones/pebbles, onto the mixture and pushed them a little. I did this on glossy plastic sheet so I could pull them off pretty easily. I had to add some more paste below the edges as they warped a little, now they look pretty even. I've used thin cardboard for the windows and doors, and in some cases I've pressed hard with a pen and make texture to them.
I started with your average foam core building. I added the crater and large rubble piles with styrofoam glued to the base.
Spackle was spread over the base with my fingers. A rubber spatula was used for the outsides of the building to get that stucco texture. A watered-down coating was put on the floors and some places on the insides. The individual floors were taken out to do this so the spackle wouldn't stick them together.
While the spackle was still wet, I sprinkled broken plaster chunks. For small piles of rubble, I put a dollop of spackle and pushed plaster into it. You could also glue plaster chunks, but the irregular shape of the broken plaster means there is little surface area for the glue to adhere to. Sticking it into spackle means it's stuck over a larger area and will stay stuck better. Even if it breaks off the dried spackle, you can glue it back to the impression left behind.
Kitty litter and sand also make good little chunks here and there. Press them down into the wet spackle and they'll be somewhat level, even though they look irregular.
When that was dry I painted everything with a tan base coat, followed by a wash of a brown in selected areas. Finally I drybrushed selected areas with white.
The rebar is simply lengths of steel wire I pushed into the foam core.
For this model I used a piece from a DVD packaging as a base for the building. Empty camera film holders were used for different tanks, straws for tubes and pipes, bolts and washers for holes and so. Different pieces of metal and plastic from old floppy disks for floodgates and stuff, and plenty of cables to make it look good. The little gas canisters can be found in some air fresheners or in inhalers for asthmatics. I found the tube in a construction skip, I think it's the kind they use for electrical purposes. I saved a bit to use on the rear part of the building. The bit used for the "three output pipes", is a audio/video adapter of some kind. I glued on a few electrical resistances from an old computer that look like small barrels or containers. I like the look of them.
The two braces were cut from thick cardboard to hold the tank, which was made out of an empty energy drink can. I textured the piece with white acrylic paint mixed with some black tint and sand. Later I gave it a wash of black dye diluted in water. I used a lot of bronze mixed with straight red or dark blue. Sometimes with a little black or earth brown in the mix too.
Finally I added a fence made out of rugged cardboard, and painted it with a mix of bronze, ocre brown, and a drop of pale green.
Initially I was deciding between modern/medieval, but I like the idea of a post-apocalyptic desiccated sea, so I went with that. I decided to make this a corner piece, mainly because I don't usually do corner or side pieces, and this was a good opportunity to get one. The principal change is the natural environment. I thought that desert is too stereotypical, so I decided to add some vegetation - some trees where before was a sea.
The base is foamcore and the 'wall' is polystyrene. I smashed some wooden sticks with a stone to get the upper side. I cut a long narrow channel into the foamcore to house the pipe, which I then damaged a bit with a lighter and a craft knife. The pier is made of balsa wood. I also glued the anvils, made from video-recorder rubber pieces and big screws. The bars on the grill are from a toy cage. The trees I made with some little branches and some expired Woodland Scenics lichen. I used some thin polystyrene worked with fine sandpaper to make mounds and irregularities of the terrain. Some wheels and barrels were added too.
I textured the polystyrene with a mix of white acrylic paint, black tint and sand. I used that mix to get a smooth transition from foamcore to polystyrene mounds. The rest was painted in various acrylics before the trees were glued on.
I found it hard to decide what to make for this competition because I don't usually make ruined buildings. Most of my scenarios are set on frontier worlds, where a ruin would very quickly get salvaged/cannibalised for parts, due to lack of materials. They wouldn't be around long. Anyway, I had bit the bullet and made a ruined gun emplacement/bunker. The gun is supposed to be an anti spacecraft type, hence the size. I wanted to show it destroyed but still recognisable as a gun emplacement.
For the basic structure I used a box of chocolates and a cut off water gun barrel. The gun has been glommed into a hole Dremelled into the top of the bunker. A damage hole has been cut into one corner, and turrets added for anti-personnel guns. I added rubble and rebar sticking out of the blasted turret hole. On the other side I added some more details, using TV components.
It was spray primed white and then painted B&Q Dolphin Grey, Dulux Forest Green and Dulux Jamaican Ginger. The lower half of the guns is painted a blue/grey I mixed up myself. The base was flocked and painted in various shades of brown and green. Finally some lichen was glued on for the plants.
As part of a larger project for Games Day Chicago, I built a pair of ruined city buildings. They are set on 10x10 inch bases and designed to meet along 1 edge in order to form a single 20x10 ruin. The image shows just one of them.
Step 1 was to create my own master. The goal was to have a 4x3 inch wall that can be used over and over to create the buildings. The master 4x3 wall panel was constructed from plastic card stamped with a brick pattern & edged with plastic card, all glued on 1/4 inch foam core.
Step 2 was to make the mould using Mold Max RTV from Smooth-On. It was my first time using it. Fortunately, the mould cured with fewer bubbles and better detail than the 1-1 RTV I'd used in the past.
Hydrostone is my preferred plaster, but I have concerns about the 1/4 inch thickness of the walls. So far, the walls are holding up fine, but I'll need to abuse them a bit to see if the hydrostone will hold up.
I used vinyl tile as the floor, scored with a box cutter into 1 inch squares. The pillars on the wall are Hirst Arts bricks & support the second floor. The pair of bricks in the middle of the floor were intended to represent broken internal walls.
I designed for playability first - mostly flat floors, open walls to allow hands to move figures, incomplete 2nd floor. If I had to do it over, I'd put more effort into the 2nd floor - it looks too much like a balcony.
I was trying out a base tri-colour scheme. Tan walls, grey floors and black dirt/rubble. This was later washed/drybrushed for the final effect.
I started to make a ruin, and then realised that I could also post it for this competition. It's made out of plaster casts that had been gathering dust since I made them about 15 years ago. I then added the roof beam, and the door.
The base is Masonite (or MDF, I can't tell them apart), and I've also used PVA glue and sand from the lovely S�derbysj�n Lake.
I painted it all black, and drybrushed it grey. Then I painted some parts to look like moss and dirt.
I see it as part of a house, maybe just the entrance to one. The purpose was to finally use those plaster casts and while it's not the coolest ruin in Christendom, it'll fill my Mordheim table, which is what counts.
A friend who is a WH40K player told me he wanted to buy the "Cities of Death" boxed set, but couldn't afford it. I told him there were cheaper alternatives, and offered to build him a simple example to show him how. Next thing I knew, I was building a ruin.
I don't really consider this a contender for "best terrain of the month" because it is not particularly a) innovative, b) complicated, or c) realistic. But it qualified so I thought I'd share it.
This piece is composed of Hirst Arts bricks, largely from the Gothic Church and Gothic Floor Tile moulds. I chipped the bricks with a pair of pliers and the drum sander on a Dremel. The base is MDF board. I used terrarium gravel for the "pulverized tile" and model train ballast as the base for the texture.
The building was spray-painted black, then covered with my two gray house paints: dark and light. The base was painted and highlighted with Ceramcoat.
I did some weathering using very diluted browns. Since I think this is supposed to be a city ruin, I kept the "vegetation" to a minimum. I also didn't include much in the way of detail. Truth be told, I like to avoid "tells" that indicate time or game universe if I can, so I can get the most mileage out of the terrain. This could also be used in fantasy, for example. I'll add the little bits separately as needed.