When you get that itch you just cant help but scratch

Hi Guys,

Thanks for stopping by!

I know I've technically already given you a post 'this week' on my paint racks but as that was more of an ad-hoc review rather than a regular post I thought I'd treat you and post up something else, aren't you lucky!!!

You may or may not have been aware but recently +IDICBeer ran a terrain competition which I initially planned to enter due to a few things but namely an increased workload in my final year of Uni I had to pull out of the comp, but I messaged Nick and he was pretty cool about it and I promised him that I would look to continue my planned terrain piece in future..... I do and it is one of 4 terrain projects I have in mind at the moment 1 of which is what I wanted to go through today. But first just a bit of background as to where this has come from. Way, Way back when I was originally finding my feet in the hobby my friend and i used to battle it out on a regular basis, Games workshop produced a whole load of punched card terrain that fit into the old necromunda plastic bulkhead at this point, I think it was around 2002 ish. But I happened across a post on a forum where people were posting pictures and asking if people had any for sale and just generally pointing out how awesome they were which got me to thinking....... but I'll save the rest for a future blog post!

I've always been told that it's a good idea to start small and ease yourself into something, especially if it's new or your just simply out of practice. With that in mind I started looking through scratch builder resources, print and play terrain sites and various other places to see if there was anything that took my fancy terrain wise and stumbled across this little gem http://paperwargames.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/bunker-40k.html

The idea of paper terrain seems a bit flimsy to me though and with a few bits on hand I set about making a bunker using the paper terrain piece as a guide to follow.

Here's what I started with.:

1 A4 sheet of blue foam 0.5mm thick,
Sharp Xacto knife,
Metal ruler,
Hot glue gun, you could use PVA or wood glue but I found the hot glue was great as it dries solid pretty quickly and allows for easy construction.,

Probably with a general disclaimer at this point, Xacto knifes will be very sharp and they do glide through the foam with little resistance so it's very easy to cut through and has the potential to cause injury, on a similar theme the glue gun (if you use one)  does get really really hot, as does the glue itself, you don't want to touch the metal heated element at the end of the glue gun to the foam as it will melt it and if it comes into contact with your skin you will burn yourself.

At the end of the basic construction of the project I was left with roughly a third of the blue foam left so in terms of material cost it was pretty cheap.

The instructions are pretty easy to follow and the guide itself is very well presented so I've simply taken a few shots throughout the project with a 'final shot' of the basic level of construction with some models around it for size comparison. I do intend to and have actually started doing further detailing work to this bunker, even though it's just to ease me back into terrain making there's no point doing something if your not prepared to give it a good shot.

these three pictures show the angle the edges were cut at in order to create the joins the the main angles of the bunker, the middle shot shows how I used the paper terrain as a guide to creating the foam pieces, these were especially useful when getting the angles right as I was able to hold them in the correct position while the glue was setting, the right hand picture simply shows a few of the pieces cut out of the blue foam.

These shots were taken part way through construction and show the angled pieces put together and the basic shell of the bunker. 

These 2 shots are the same views as above but at the completed stage. This is as far as the papercraft guide takes you and as you can see from below you end up with a decent sized piece of terrain which you can fit around 10 models inside. I've put a couple of dire avengers inside the bunker, a war walker and my current painting project the warphunter in shot for a size comparison.

In terms of time to make this took me no longer than 2 hours total to get to this point and if i'm honest it was pretty easy and I think it actually looks pretty decent too. Let me know what you think, keep an eye out for more terrain oriented posts from me in the near future, including putting the finishing touches to this bunker as well as some more old school oriented terrain stuff.