I started this thread on a different forum, back in 2016, not too long after I discovered the first Polyversal Kickstarter. I don't post much on the other site anymore, and this forum is a lot more relevant, so I'm copying it all over to here.
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So, this thread is going to be all about me making 6mm modern/sci-fi terrain. [Edit: I have also discovered, as I near the end of this post, that it will be me rambling on and on and on semi-coherently about the process.]
I recently stumbled across Polyversal while the first Kickstarter was under way, and since then I've decided to dive right back into 6mm sci-fi gaming. I had an absurdly massive Space Marine/Epic collection back in the day (I was able to field almost the entire Space Wolves chapter, plus Imperial Guard artillery and heavy/superheavy tank support and Adeptus Mechanicus titans and knights, plus an Eldar force large enough to oppose said Space Wolves, Imperial Guard and Adeptus Mechanicus forces). I sold the lot for next to nothing on a stupid impulse when I was feeling shitty with GW for releasing a new edition. I've regretted it ever since.
Anyway, I've got nothing at the moment -- no minis, no terrain, no table.
I don't currently have anywhere I can permanently set up a decent gaming table so, after hours of googling about I eventually found someone who can make me a 6' x 4' (180cm x 120cm) table with folding legs for easy storage. That will hopefully arrive next week.
Assuming Polyversal funds on their next Kickstarter, I won't actually have the game until late this year [Well, that was highly optimistic of me] at the earliest. In the meanwhile, I have 24 square feet to fill with terrain.
I've got a bit of GW flock and static grass, but not all that long ago I got rid of my other landscaping materials in a massive cleanup (along with a bunch of modern micro-armour that had been gathering dust and cobwebs for years). Also threw out my old microarmour terrain at the same time, which isn't a great loss since it was mostly just made out of cheap packaging styrofoam, but unfortunately quite a few trees went with it.
I have ordered new trees and flock on EBay, and some gravel direct from JTT Microscale (the shipping EBay was going to charge me for the gravel was insane). I also have a plethora of buildings just ordered from Game Craft Miniatures.
I'll also be grabbing some Phalanx Consortium buildings when their Kickstarter goes live.
Hills will most likely be done with extruded polystyrene, but for the moment I'm going to be focusing on the urban stuff. My current plan is to do a 4' x 2.5' area of built up urban terrain and a much smaller outlying village.
Initially, my plan was to use GCMini's road system, until I realised that with a heavily built up area and tall buildings, there wouldn't be room on some of the streets to actually get your hand down to street level to move stuff. Their largest roads are four lanes, and they're only 2.5" wide with a fairly limited range. The two lane roads come with a lot more variety, but then you're down to a 2" width. In both cases, those widths include the footpath (sidewalk, for you North Americans).
Instead, I've decided on a modular road/block system using heavy cardstock. Most of my streets are 3" wide, and there will be additional width once the buildings are set back to create room for pedestrian traffic. As an added bonus, 3" at 6mm scale works out to pretty close to 100', which is the official width originally laid down for the main streets in the Melbourne CBD (not that I have any plans to recreate Melbourne, but my terrain is representative of somewhere where people drive on the left, as God intended).
I spent a reasonable amount of the past weekend measuring, cutting, painting and detailing the cardstock for the streets. The unpainted areas between the roads are waiting the arrival of my GCMini city base blocks, which will provide kerbs for the streets. That's also why I haven't worried too much about straight edges with my paint.
The road surface was done with poster paint, a bit of white mixed into black. I made the roads look less pristine by using a stippling brush with some brown and concrete grey, leaving marks here and there showing discoloration, various particulates in the bitumen etc ... I'm finishing them with a black wash, which makes those brown and grey bits more subdued, and also makes the line markings look less like it's all fresh paint.
The line markings themselves were done with a white permanent marker. When you stick the road sections together, the concrete median strips and the intersection line markings don't always line up properly. I'm not too fussed, it still looks decent, and my mini and terrain standard is always "looks good when you're looking over the table, doesn't necessarily stand up to close inspection". I actually screwed up on one street and the lane dividing dashes didn't go straight. Oops.
Which is an important point I've been meaning to get to. I am not an artist by any stretch. To be honest, I don't especially enjoy the process of painting minis -- I just enjoy the outcome. I'm excited enough about this project to post here because I'm excited about the expected outcome. I expect to do work in mad dashes, with lulls between, as motivation comes and goes. Don't follow this thread if you're expecting rapid progress and daily updates.
I'm reasonably patient (although not patient enough to carefully ensure every single road section line marking will line up against every other possible line marking it might end up beside when two sections are placed on the table together), and I know the basic techniques that allow someone of low to moderate skill to occasionally paint a mini in a fashion that the average person, ignorant of the possibilities, will look at and go, "That's amazing!" So one of the things I'm hoping to achieve by posting here is to encourage other people that aren't particularly gifted and show them that you can still do some pretty cool shit.
I actually came across an art product yesterday that I'm planning to use a bit down the track to do something that I suspect will look gosh darned awesome, with basically zero actual talent required. Stay tuned for more updates on that.
There probably won't be a lot of movement on this project until my GCMini buildings arrive (which might be in next couple of weeks if I'm extremely lucky, but could well be longer). I'm getting a mix of resin, acrylic and mattboard buildings, mostly mattboard, about 50 in total. You're all welcome to have a go guessing at how many I end up destroying while attempting to paint/assemble them.
Now to pause my rambling for a moment and get back on topic ...
I've used four 56x76cm Art Studio Kraft Boards for my road/block bases. My ruler and reasonably trustworthy eyeballs tell me they're about 3.5mm thick. I was a little worried they would warp too much once painted, but the warping was quite minimal, and sticking them under something heavy for a good while after drying has kept them plenty flat for actual use in play.
The paint used was, of course, poster paint, not paint designed for minis. Mini paint is far too expensive and too thin for this sort of work. I did actually use some concrete grey Reaper for the median strips (with black wash) and the parking lot (with a very effective sepia wash, albeit I'll have to do a bit of a wash again because I put the line markings on after the wash, duh). At some point, I'm going to test some spot-use of black and/or brown washes for oil stains in the parking lot.
The most complicated part so far was actually designing the layout, ensuring that I will have room to put the larger Phalanx Consortium buildings somewhere and then making sure that I actaully measured, cut and painted to the right dimensions. As you can see, the line markings and some of the work is a bit slap-dash (and high res photos don't help -- they really make flaws stand out [I've been appalled at how bad some of my minis look in a high res photo]), but once this is down on the table and (eventually) covered with buildings, I'm confident it's going to look pretty good. And for anyone with more patience to use a ruler and a permanent marker, you could easily have
pristine line markings without much in the way of talent.
And, if you've read this far, you deserve some pics. They're boring and reasonably shit at the moment, but it's a start and I hope the transformation into finished products will make for an interesting contrast.
Ooh look, it's a blank piece of cardboard! Art Studio 56 x 76 Kraft Board. Yippee!
Two sections cut to final size, with some basic roads painted on. I went over the lines, but I DON"T CARE! (The outer edges of the roads are the edges of the pieces, btw. They're sitting on top of the blank sheet highlighted in exciting picture the first. The magic of the internet makes it look like it's just one big sheet).
A close up of a 10.2" city section, near completion. Line markings close enough for government work. Note that I accidentally made two of parking bays at the top too large. I cunningly covered my mistake by declaring them Loading Zones. I also realised I was setting the parking bays too close to the the intersections. Luckily, I'll be driving tanks on these streets, and any civilian cars parked inconveniently will be flattened.
Two 10.2" sections and a big section. Later, if you don't get bored and abandon this amazing thread, you will learn why I added a car park and lawn area. You may also see me endeavour to make kerbs and guttering around the parking area.
To round out my first post, here are some relevant links:
