Many years ago, well actually twenty one years ago, Games Workshop released an inspirational book called How to Make Wargames Terrain. This book shows hows to build terrain from waste packing and a few modelling supplies with stunning results.
A very well thumbed copy, that the 16 year old callow youth that was Russet Coat Captain bought from GW Milton Keynes in 1996.
Today whilst unpacking the collection after the recent house move, stumbled upon several polystyrene packing trays that used to come with GW miniatures. Armed with my well thumbed book, I set about fashioning a shelled out ruin as found on page 69 of the tome.
Polystyrene packing tray by GW. Should I list this as OOP, Rare, and Limited Edition on ebay?
The crux of the job was re orientating the packing tray to turn it into a ruin. After a frantic session of hacking with a scalpel without lopping off my fingers (a rarity), the tray started to look like a ruin with windows, doors and bullet holes. The assembly was then glued to a mount board base. On reflection some hard board or plastic card would of been a better base to avoid warping.
Off cuts of tray were then glued on to form rubble heaps. The building was then rendered with a thin layer of polyfilla to infill the polystyrene patina and to give it a concrete texture. Sections of wire were poked into the walls to give the impression of reinforce concrete as well as some off cuts of plastic girder and pipe.
Lastly the ruin had basing material glued onto it and set in place with Woodland Scenic Cement. This will now be undercoated and painted at a latter date. With some perseverance the packing tray morphed into a convincing looking building after my nostalgic walk through 1996 and GW's superb How to Make Wargames Terrain book. It will be used for 40K, 1980s BAOR and possibly Bolt Action given a sympathetic paint job.
After the recent move, the painting desk has become an adhoc affair, hopefully when time and the Memsahib permits, I will be able to install a suitable desk.
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