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Making Epic Scenery - Dysartes | |
| The main problem with Epic, or indeed Warmaster, is having to get a new collection of terrain at a completely different scale. At least if you start playing 40k after Fantasy, or Mordheim and Necromunda, the terrain is at the same scale, and will be pretty much interchangeable. This isn't the case with Epic or Warmaster, with their 8mm and 10mm scales respectively. Most of the terrain you already have will be completely out of scale, even things like woods or hills, and buildings are right out of it from the start. Unfortunately, Games Workshop don't produce much, if any terrain, for these scales, so we must look elsewhere. Having attended the Triples show recently, I noticed something odd - despite a large number of historical games being at the 10-15mm scale, the amount of terrain available at that sort of scale was surprisingly small. This is even odder when you consider that Triples is primarily a historical games show, with no GW presence at all except on second-hand stalls. Most terrain on sale at that scale was mostly generica - rivers, hedges and trees; all of which are useful, but don't generally help provide the image of a gothic future setting. If you're after generic terrain like hills, rivers, etc, the 15mm scale stuff at Gladiator Games could be very useful - their stream set (BZ7S), priced at £12.50 for 7 1/2 feet, looks really nice, and is definately on my "To Buy" list, while their dune set (BZ22S) could be very nice for an Ash Wastes setting - I wasn't able to see that set on the day, but if it's to the quality of the river set, it should be very nice. Unsurprisingly, Forge World have stepped into the breach when it comes to Epic scenery, with some nice, yet reasonably priced pieces. OK, the Tank Factory and Cathedral are a little bit expensive, but buildings like the Librarium are nice, while the defense line set will be helpful for anyone planning on playing the Death Korp of Krieg in Epic. If you're lucky, you might be able to get hold of the plastic ruins that came with the base sprues from Epic 40,000 - some would say the best thing about that version of Epic. They're ideal to give a ruined city effect to the board you're using, and with a bit of work can look really nice. There are some things to remember when putting a ruin together, mind you, such as to remember to make it actually resemble the structure of a building - it may sound a little obvious, but it is possible to assemble your ruins without doing this, making them look a little odd. The other thing to remember is to make the ruin spacious enough that you can fit the strip bases in it on either orientation, otherwise It becomes a bit unweildly to fit your unit in as you want to. For an example ruin, take a look at the one below:  The ruin was painted quite simply, and pretty quickly. A basecoat of Codex Grey was applied over a black undercoat. Once that had dried, a watered-down mix of Codex Grey and Chaos Black was applied in a similar fashion to an ink, to add shading to the model. Once that dried (and it took a fair while), I drybrushed the ruin with Codex Grey, and then followed that with a drybrush of a Codex Grey/Fortress Grey mix as a highlight. The base was painted Scorched brown, then drybrushed with a Scorched Brown/Bestial Brown mix, with a second highlight drybrush of just Bestial Brown. A few small patches of static grass was applied to break that up a bit, then the ruin was varnished. Job done. Of course, not every terrain feature in the 41st Millennium is going to be a ruined gothic building, is it? Tere's a lot more you can do, whilst still retaining the feel of Epic. For instace, take a look here, at some of pixelgeek's work. The Comm Center and power relay are things you could see used in the 40k Universe, that are too big for 40k - which means they fit nicely into Epic. I've created my own version of the Comm Center, which can be seen below:  My version of the Comm Centre is a mix of components from the Space Marine Vechicle accessory sprue, some Tau crisis suit weapons and some aerials off the Battlefleet Gothic Imperial cruiser sprues. The main body of the complex is the torso from the Accessory spure, the one designed to look like the driver sticking his head out of the cupola. The dish is the random scanning dish off the sprue, mounted on a slightly cut-down Nova Cannon from the Imperial Cruiser sprue for Battlefleet Gothic. The two small tower structures on either side of the main body are a pair of cut-down Tau fusion blasters, with the barrel removed and the ammunition canister cut at an angle so it will fit flush with the base. The two sub-antennae are aerials from the Imperial Cruiser sprue, mounted in elements of the Hunter-Killer missile front plate from the Accessory sprue. It was painted in the same manner as the ruins, though some lights were added in shades of red and blue. A bit of work can give you a terrain board suitable for a Grand Tournament, and hopefully some of the ideas above will be able to help you obtain just that. | |
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