Recycle Your 40k Trash!
Pimpcron becomes a long-hair this week with his earth-friendly terrain tips.
Hi ya, readers! Your favorite robot Pimpcron is here! We’ve all been there, you buy a lot from eBay of 40k stuff, and when you open the box: there it is. Among all of the stuff you did want, sits some terrible, mangy, mistreated model. I have found that Space Marine Land Speeders are a particularly common species of abused model. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s punishment for being a pain in the butt to glue that hood down during assembly. Have you ever tried assembling a Land Speeder? They are annoyance incarnate. Any-who, you probably just keep this poor malformed model laying around for years on some shelf or in a box and try not to make eye contact with it.
But! That’s Where Captain Planet Comes In!
I was a child during the 90’s and loved me some Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Wheeler was my guy, but admittedly liked Kwame’s power better. And if I learned anything from that show, it’s that hot Russians with wind powers was pretty neat. That, and that we should recycle when we can. I have trouble prioritizing things.
So it doesn’t take much of a creative leap to see that damaged and otherwise unsightly models such as vehicles make awesome terrain!
But Pimpcron, I Can’t Terrain All The Stuffs. I Know Not How
Listen, I am definitely not the world’s best terrain maker and am far from an expert. But just relying on common sense, you can do some pretty sweet stuff and really add personality to your gaming table.
- Objectives look better when on a base. Preferably you should use something sturdy and with weight to it like masonite board; but foam board will work too. But foam board tends to warp over time and generally looks less impressive in my opinion.
- Look over the damage to the model and decide how that damage could get there through fighting.
- Set up the base with terrain or bits that match that.
- Spread glue on the base after everything is attached and sprinkle sand on it. Let dry.
- If you are going to spray-prime the model, think twice if you used polystyrene pink foam. The acetone used to make it dry quickly will eat your foam pretty badly. One way I get around this, is take brush-on primer or even some cheap paint like poster paint ($1 a bottle) and cover the entire foam piece in that before spray-priming. But be sure to cover it entirely or you may still eat some of your foam. Alternatively, you can buy foam-safe spray primer that won’t eat pink foam. But those spray primers that are foam safe will still eat the blue foam.
- Paint as normal and viola! You have a cool objective that adds purpose to your mission.
Here Are Some Of The Objectives I’ve Made
My friend had a Monolith that was missing a panel and some bits, and I bought it for like $5 to make terrain out of. The base for this is actually a canvas board for painting. It’s almost a foot by a foot big. The scene is a treasure hunter found this partially sticking out of the ground, and decided to see what was in it. Scarabs came out and wrecked his face. This monolith is not my Necron color scheme (of purple and gold). One thing that is fun about these projects is that you get to play around with a new color scheme without having to do an entire army in it. You can try to take some time on it and play around with stuff.
This one was one of those aforementioned derelict Land Speeders. The from was all messed up and it was missing a fin on the side. So I covered up the hood by making it smash into a rock! I always make my objectives into dead Ultra Marines because I don’t like them. And look! He was texting and driving with his Auspex! I’m not trying to make a statement, I just thought it was funny. I made this piece before the blood for the blood god technical paint came out. If I ever get back to it, I will add that.
This was a model that was horribly painted so I put an important data device in his hand that we must retrieve. This also makes a great relic. I don’t play vanilla marines at all, so painting some Ultra Marines for these was pretty fun. My Squat army is play-as Space Wolves and my other marines are Chaos.
So What Have You Recycled? Post It In The Comments!
