From wine bottle terrain to Geonosian Spires

Miniature wargaming is a deceptive hobby.

Everyone has seen those incredible wargaming boards from across all historical/ahistorical periods that look like they could be a static diorama. For many of us, these gorgeous boards and minis are what draw us to the hobby. For me, it was Sidney Roundwood's absolutely lovely First World War modular terrain boards. Seriously, check out his work (much more than just WWI!).

So I got to work, picked up some styrofoam from Home Depot and got some boards cut into 1' x 1' squares. I can get some dirt from the backyard. Oh and look! Textured spray paint, I don't even need to paint. This was gonna look great!

I don't have any pictures from way back then, but I think I can dig one of my first boards up... yes, here it is!

I mean, some WWI trenches looked pretty rough...

Most terrain builders with any experience will know what went wrong. You can't just take any old spray paint and spray it directly onto styrofoam. Honestly, if it had stayed intact, this would have been a pretty nice piece! But, as I kept working I ran into more and more issues all stemming from my lack of experience. The boards were not cut to exact measurements, the wood I picked out started warping insanely fast, and well, it was a lot of work!

And so, these boards went back to storage only to come out for a month or so every winter.

I eventually found a process, better materials, and more careful measuring, and some of what I ended up with was pretty okay! But, by that time, it had been 5 years (!!!) since I began the project. And these few board weren't built to fit any game system (see more about my journey into wargaming here).

But, once I got into Legion this past year, I realized just how valuable this experience had been when I looked at the terrain we were using for our first game.

Finally, a use for some of the alcohol bottles that have been under the bar for years!

This looked a little different than I had imagined our imaginary plastic battles to go. So, I got to work. You can see the test piece I had made as the centerpiece of our above table. I learned pretty quick using those 1' x 1' boards I'd used for my modular trenches weren't going to work.

This is where the internet saves the day. Star Wars is a little more popular that the Great War for miniatures, and I found Sorastro's tutorial on Geonosian terrain. Now, I don't follow this nearly by the book (which is why his looks much better than my work), but I recommend every fledgling (or experienced) mini-terrain builder to give it a look.

Here's what I've ended up with:

This, along with some scatter terrain comes together to build a pretty good looking Geonosis board. Get this awesome battlemat (made for Legion!) from the guys over at the Fifth Trooper.

 

These pieces started as 1'' x 2' x 2' Foamular project foam panels. I traced out the pieces with a permanent marker. Using a hot-wire foam cutter (here's the cheapo one I bought from Amazon), I cut out the pieces. You can be pretty rough as we'll come back and clean it up later. When cutting out your pieces, think about where minis will stand. Make sure you can get a full squad onto the piece!

Once I was happy with my stacked-up foam, I used hot glue to connect all the pieces. I'd try to focus the glue toward the center of the pieces while still getting a strong seal. We'll be cutting away the edges, and it takes a while for the wire cutter to get through the glue.

I also went to the local Michael's and picked up some of these driftwood pieces that I thought looked like some of the Geonosian hives we see.

Something I learned from past pieces was that playability is more important than looks for wargaming, hence these massive stairs. When I make another piece like this, I can spend more time disguising the stairs, but we needed another centerpiece ASAP for that night's game.

Then, using the wire cutter, I started cutting into the foam to create a more realistic texture. Here you disguise that it's just styrofoam blocks stack on top of each other.

On this piece, I wanted to have a Geonosian statue coming out of the rock, so I picked up an old Geonosian action figure on Amazon. These are much cheaper than other Star Wars action figures from the same time, I guess most kids didn't want these weird bugs for Christmas. I used a "pen" attachment on my wire cutter to carve more holes into the piece to try and connect the wood piece to the rest of the build.

After this, I covered the whole piece in Vallejo's Brown Earth acrylic texture paste. Looking back, this is not the most cost effective option. It's great for basing mini's, but these four pieces used almost an entire pot. Now, it's only about $8 US, so it's not egregious, but you may get more mileage out of flock and red-orange craft paint.

Then, I covered the whole piece in a black wash. Now here's where I really destroyed my wallet. I used Nuln Oil for the whole thing. That was a lot of Nuln Oil over these pieces. I'd recommend creating your own black wash (there are countless EASY recipes online) for terrain pieces - it's pennies compared to dollars.

Once that was done and dry, I came in with a dry-brush. I used Vallejo's Parasite Brown, as I was going for a more orange look, but here you can use whatever color you think captures Geonosis (or whatever rocky world) the best. The texture paste really picks up a dry brush well, and I'm pretty happy with how each of these pieces have turned out.

I absolutely love how the Geonosian looks as if he is carved out of the rock wall.

You can see where my impatience comes in here, the different pieces of foam can be made out pretty easy, and I would have to go back and re-wash the bottom of the piece.

And there we go! A quick-and-easy way to get pretty okay looking Geonosian terrain on your battlefield. There's room for improvement for sure, but I was able to get this piece from pink foam to complete in one Saturday and use it that evening.