The Mighty Jungle

[dreamwarder]

Ok, so after having read a ton of project logs and become thoroughly addicted to pictures of beautiful miniatures and scenery, I thought I'd contribute something of my own.

With the imminent release of the new Imperial Guard Codex, and the advent of the plastic Valkyrie, I thought it finally time to do the Vietnam-themed Air Cav army that's been lurking in the back of my brain ever since I saw the Forge world Valkyrie model for the first time, but an Air Cav army means a Jungle themed table, and since I'm currently limited to City Fight and Green and Pleasant Fields with my current terrain selection, this would mean a lot of work on my part. But I love a bit of a challenge, and while I was out at a local hobbycraft the other weekend, browsing Flames of War models, I noticed the nearby Pets at Home store was having a sale of plastic aquarium plants, so I picked up a ton of them and set to work raiding my stash of bits and useful terrain objects.

Usually when I'm making something I forget all about taking photos until I'm nearly at the end, but this time I remembered right at the beginning so I should hopefully be able to document the whole process.

So without further ado, here's some piccies.



This first pic gives you a rough idea of how many bases of jungle I'm going for. I wanted to be able to comfortably fill a 6' by 4' table, and really cram a 4' by 4' table. On a 6' by 4' table this will leave only two to three clearings and most pathways between terrain bases will be about the width of a rhino or chimera. On a 4' by 4' table the pathways will be about the width of a 25mm base, and you might get one clearing if you're lucky if all the terrain bases are used.

I'm basing up the bulk of the jungle plants on 30mm and 40mm washers, that way they can be removed from the terrain bases to allow more space for models if necessary, forest-style. Most of the terrain bases will be like the one on the far left of the picture that I use for forests, plain brown dirt bases, perhaps with a little static grass. However, some of the terrain features I have planned will be fully modelled with stuck-down plantlife - these will potentially have a game function, perhaps as generic objectives, or maybe a particular focus of a mission.



One of the terrain bases, for example, will be a troop encampment as pictured above. It'll have a couple of barrack buildings, a guard tower, and a small landing pad on a hill. It'll also be surrounded by a fence.



There will also be a couple of missile silos, like the one above. I want to give the impression that this area of jungle has an extensive imperial tunnel system beneath it. That way, it might be possible to play a dual board game, with the main board representing the overground jungle, while the secondary board represents the underground tunnel system, and models can move between boards through certain entry points. Can anyone guess what I've been watching lately ?



Finally, I'm planning on adding some ancient ruins. Necron relics perhaps? Or the remnants of a Chaos cult?

Any comments appreciated.

[dreamwarder]

Done a bit more work on this over the course of the day - spent quite a while making the fences for the guard camp:



Here's the gates



And the rest of the fences laid out



It won't go around the whole camp, just the guard tower and the barracks, the landing pad will be outside the perimeter fence.



I also made a start on one of the missile silos. I've used various upturned pots to create the basic shape, now I'm building up the hill with filler. I'm also going to mix in a bit of cat litter with the final layer to help with the texture. Hopefully the end result will look enough like a genuine hill not to stick out to much, but also give a hint of being there to bury a man made structure - beyond the silo opening at the summit of course.

For those who might be wondering, the missile inside is made of an old cigar tube. The silo cover is a plasticard construction - I made two, one open one closed. I'll use the closed one on another terrain piece.

[dreamwarder]

The silo hill, fully built up and basecoated with emulsion. I found an emulsion in a sale a while back that was very close to scorched brown - not sure I'd be able to track it down again but while it lasts its very handy. The hill has been textured with kitty litter. The sticks protruding will eventually become bamboo trees. In the background you can see the obelisk - decided against the plastic base in the end.



Close up of the missile in the silo



Here's the second missile silo - closed up, with a ventilator fan nearby keeping the inhabitants ofthe underground base in fresh air.



A whole load of big brown terrain boards, basecoated and waiting to dry



Ran out of filler before I could make up the guard camp - the silo hill used nearly three full pots of the stuff. Will get some more filler tomorrow and finish off the guard camp - should also have some time to start painting up some of the pieces I've basecoated.

[dreamwarder]

Closeup of the laser-fence system from the above photo - I've had these suckers lying around for ages, but I've only just got around to sorting out bases - figured they'd be great in the jungle. I've got the rules for them somewhere in a .pdf. One of them is missing because I dropped it on the floor and broke the top off just before taking the photos.



Close up of the closed missile silo - having trouble taking non-blurry closeups. Any advice anyone could give would be appreciated.



The stack of jungle foliage waiting to be used...



And a couple of test catachans with old necromunda weapons - I particularly like the assault-rifle style autogun which should "count as" a las rifle ok I think.

[Ethriel]

Awesome, I too am just begining a Catachan Army, and seeing your terrain has given me great ideas , quick question though.

What material is the chains on the fence made out off?

Keep up the awesome work.

[Müller]

Looks great so far, a tip would be to wait for the stuff to dry before taking pics of it as that stuff looks like poo to be frank (not saying it ain't nice, because it is, it's a great idea of a gaming board)...

I'm gonna guess you've watched either Platoon or We Were Soldiers, or played the game Vietcong :P

Well, as far as better pics goes, it depends on what kind of camera you have, but lighting is A and O in taking good pictures, try to not use a flash but then you need to get external light sources (as much as possible), and if you use a high ISO setting
Always be sure to take pics from a good distance, if you want real close-ups, then use the macro setting or manually control the zoom and sharpness.

Hope this was helpful

[N810]

Ohhh more jungle Terrain, Awesome.

[dreamwarder]

Hi N810! Love your Jungle terrain log - lots of inspiration there - thanks for stopping by. And sorry about the ickiness of the terrain boards - yes, it does look a bit like someone emptied their bowels over them - they're mostly dry now, but the hill silo, or Poo Hill as it may have to be dubbed from now on, is still quite wet.

Thanks for the advice on taking pictures also - when I take some more tonight I'll try and do a better job.

And for the poster who asked about the fences - I got a big roll of wire mesh from homebase a while back for a fiver - I think it's designed for Rabbit Runs - I just cut it at an angle and stuck matchsticks to it. I'm toying with putting some razorwire along the top - will do a test later if I have time.

In other news, I just picked up some more polyfiller - I'll get to work on the guard camp a little later.

[Cradius]

Now you just need to make "s*** hole" to make the "bowel" theme complete.
Sorry
I'm lovin' what you've done so far.

[luck*is*my*friend]

wher did you buy that awsome jungel foliage? could need some of that my self=) nice terrain =D

[dreamwarder]

I picked up the foliage in a store we have over here called "Pets at Home". Not all of the stores have an aquarium section, but the one I went to did, and they had a sale on. The whole lot cost me less than £20 and I reckon I've got about 3 times more than you get in the GW pack which retails over here at £25 I think. It's about the same sort of quality as the GW stuff, just a little different.

Got a few more piccies for you as well. Poo Hill is still not dry, so I couldn't do any more with that, and while the other terrain boards are mostly dry, some are still a little damp so I thought I'd leave them another night to be on the safe side.

In the mean time, I picked up some great polyfiller from a local pound store - I'm not sure how great it would be for doing household stuff, but for modeling it seems perfect - lightweight and easily malleable, so I pressed on with doing the Guard Camp.



First I stuck down all the bits with a hot glue gun. I love hot glue, it's quick and easy and you very very rarely have to re-glue anything it sticks so well. Just watch out you don't burn yourself.



I decided to position both sets of gates open, partly because I miscalculated the size of the gates nearest the camera, so they were'nt quite big enough to properly "shut" - leaving them open should disguise that error.





While I was at it, I also made up the last terrain board which I couldn't do last night because I ran out of filler - this one will be a swamp eventually, but for now it's a squished ring of filler on a bit of hardboard.

[dreamwarder]

Next step, build up the hill that will double as a makeshift landing pad.





I want this terrain base to have another entrance into the underground complex, so I thought the best way to do that would be to embed a door in the side of the hill.



Had a hard time stopping the door from getting covered in filler as well. After taking this pic I went back and gently scraped and sponged off some of the filler that was obscuring details such as the access control pad.

While working, my wife was trying to sort out a chest of drawers with too many clothes in it - she took one of the drawers out and one of our cats decided he'd make himself a nice comfy bed. His name is Spike -



That's it for today - will try and get some more done tomorrow - next steps will be to add some finishing touches to the Guard camp, basecoat it, and hopefully start to paint up some of the other boards

[The Laughing God]

Looks great so far, the camp is really coming along nicely. I think an all jungle board would look awesome, but what about a river flowing through the middle? Then you could get some cool alien stuff, and plants and put them underneath before pouring in the resin. Might be hard to do, but just a suggestion.

Looking forward to more, I'll be watching this.

[Cradius]

Have you seen the film Predator? Coz I keep thinking it looks sorta like the rebel base in that... only more 40K.

[Wolf Scout Ewan]

Looking great so far!

Did you varnish the underside of the mdf?

[dreamwarder]

The baseboards are all made of hardboard rather than mdf - mdf would probably be better and more hard wearing, but I had a load of hardboard lying around and I was trying to keep the costs down.

I had thought about doing a river as well, but that would be pretty complicated - kindof a whole project in itself to do it justice, and I'm hoping to get this table finished within the week, although I may well do a river at a later stage.

Speaking of which I've not had any time to work on stuff the last couple of days, but will hopefully get a little time tomorrow and certainly over the weekend.

I have taken some pics of one of my guard armies though, which on reflection would probably suit this table quite well as an adjunct to an air cav force - maybe a conjoined regiment? The army is inspired by Dave Taylors 'Genswick' Bretonnian IG conversions with my own take on the "Ragnarok" tank. I'll try and get them uploaded tomorrow.

[Müller]

Hah! my girlfriend's cat is also named Spike xD

[Wolf Scout Ewan]

Ah cool! I too have spent some time looking at the plants in Pets @ Home. The Range have some too.

Will be watching!

[Skaven13]

Have you seen the film Predator? Coz I keep thinking it looks sorta like the rebel base in that... only more 40K.

Oh my goodness I was thinking the exact same thing!
Looking very nice sir. Keep it up!

[dreamwarder]

Ok, the basecoat on some of the terrain boards needed touching up, so I'm going to need to let them dry overnight again, so instead of more terrain pics, I thought I'd upload a few shots of an army that I originally concieved as trenchfighters along the lines of Dave Taylor's Genswick army, but am now thinking might work quite well in the jungle, even though they will somewhat be fish out of water. My intention would be to sometimes field them alongside my catachans, since the catachan force will concentrate on being air-mobile and will be strictly limited to a small number of infantry, the trenchfighters can bring in some heavier guns and greater concentration of firepower when needed to fight alongside them - a hybrid regiment if you will.

Anyway, here are some pics:

The Ginger guy is the army general with his little dog which under the old codex rules counted as his "trademark" item. To the left is a priest made from the bretonnian monk figure, to the right is a rough rider converted from one of the mounted yeoman figures.





A selection of infantry here - the guy in the foreground is a vet sergeant with an auspex. (used to count as a surveyor)


And another random infantryman



I've yet to think up a name for this regiment - they remind me very strongly of the french army from the inter-war period, with some other historical influences. Any suggestions folks?