This competition ran in June-July 2007 and was run by cgosling. We also owe a word of thanks to Eazy-O for compiling this summary from the information posted on the forum.
... the first one's a doozy. The theme for the competition is "Dangerous Ground" i.e. terrain that can cause damage, including immobilizing vehicles, to a unit in the game of your choice.
The basic construction is foamcore. For the exterior I used thin strips of wood from small vegetable crates, matchsticks for the rafters and windows, and bamboo skewers for the porch posts.
The roof uses shingles cut out of the same strips of wood, glued down on thin cardboard. It was then sprayed with white paint and stained with two different mixes of black ink, brown ink and alcohol.
The base is MDF textured with spackle/filler, sand and PVA, with a bit of brown flock and the bristles of an old paintbrush for grass. The tumbleweeds are teddy bear stuffing.
The interior uses wallpaper printed from swatches found on the Internet, as well as 19th century photographs and a carpet obtained in the same way. Furniture was made using wood and random bits and pieces, and a LED was disguised as an oil lamp (the wiring and button cells are hidden under the floorboards). The upper floor was built on a thin yet sturdy sheet of cardboard and rests on an armature of matchsticks, so that it can be taken off.
The house is made dangerous by additional rules: Any character within 10cm/4 inches of the house has to take a test. If they fail, they fall victim to the evil spirit's curse and automatically take 1 wound. If they actually enter the house, they have to take a test with a malus.
The Tyranid Reclamation pool is filled with digestive fluids in which all biomatter is dumped during the consumption of a planet. All biomatter is digested into a rich sludge waiting to be transferred to the hiveships in the orbit for later use. Of course the pool is impassable because any troops or vehicles entering the pool would face a grisly fate.
The pool itself was made of a 3mm MDF base and an old power cord that forms the wall of the basin. Next I added all matter of gruesome details to the the bottom of the pool such as skeletons, some moss and tyranid bits. Painting was really simple: a black undercoat followed by a white drybrush. Next I coloured it with inks. Finally I used poured in clear resin to achieve the impression that the pool is filled with a vile fluid. The resin was also tinted with green ink. I have no explanation for the red discoloration of some ingredients, but it looks ok.
Further images and details of this piece can be found in this article.
I made it as a part of my current modular dungeon project that is based on 6 inch square tiles. The base is a double layer of cardboard. So I started out with a basic tile, and began cutting some cracks. All the materials used were what I had on hand (cardboard, spackle, sand, styrofoam). I had to make sure I put something heavy on top of the cardboard while the glue dried, but it stayed relatively flat as you can see in the picture. Since it's an old, dangerous, bridge, I distressed it, which also helped make areas for the miniatures to stand on. So after carving out the old stone bridge and making it fit, I began gluing the cardboard together and filled in the obvious cardboard corrugations with spackling.
As far as the paintjob goes, I started with a black spray paint undercoat, and then painted the reds and grays. After that was dry, I drybrushed with lighter gray, tan, and orange. The bridge is styrofoam, so I covered it with a gray latex house paint, then used a black wash to outline the squares, and drybrushed with the same gray as the cardboard to get it to blend better.
My 40K minefields are designed to meet all of the requirements for hidden deployments. In addition they had to be stackable for easy storage. All components are scratch built and total cost was under $15.00AU and build time not including drying was about an hour. The mines are visible, because in game terms they are very specific terrain and both players should be able to recognize the minefields. Also buried mines would look visually boring.
The shape was originally a stopper. Realizing that I would need a lot of mines, I made a latex mold to mass cast them. After successfully casting about a hundred, I got on with building the minefields.
Using my scroll saw I cut out the shapes of MDF, then beveled them with a craft knife. After gluing down the mines, next step for these was a scattering of mixed fine beach sand/coarse grits. Once this was dry it was heavily sprayed with mission brown paint. A bit of drybrushing with burnt sienna and raw umber followed. The mines were painted with one of the new GW foundation paints.
Static grass was then applied to all pieces to tie them in with some other 40K terrain I have. The razorwire is created by wrapping a thin wire around a thicker one and then coiled around a metal tent peg.
For 'Crazy Crossings' I envisioned several walkways that can be placed between buildings and will have a 'slight' risk of collapsing under the weight of a soldier. The stones on bridges were carved in using a ball point pen. I then drybrushed it and gave it some stains. The wooden one is just bits of wood and a paintjob of cheap acrylic paints.
The 'Precarious Passages' consist of several sections for my sewer that will include pits. Nothing very special as far as terrain goes, but I felt like a little more sewer fun. They are made from plastic egg cartons and styrofoam, like the rest of my sewer. Stonework texture was carved in with a pen. Painting consisted of black undercoat, grey drybrush and a beige drybrush with some stains.
The 'Leaning Ladders' are like the other ladders I have on my board except in even worse condition. I want the player to be able to destroy them to slow the other warbands movements. Again, ladders were just pieces of wood, glued together in a laddery fashion. Via some tactical smashing I knocked some pieces out. I undercoated with black before painting and then drybrushed with acrylics.