Sunday, 20 February 2022

BUA Terrain

Some years ago when we were playing quite a few games of Bloody Big Battles, I knocked up some quick test pieces to represent the BUA's needed for the game. They were OK, but I was never really that happy with them. A week or so ago I stumbled upon them and thought that with a bit of tweaking they would be really useful for me BKCII campaign that I'm currently running. So after a few evenings of the odd hours spent here and there they were finished and ready to go.

For those that are interested:
  • The bases are all 2mm mdf and are 3" square (75mm).
  • The buildings are all from Leven Miniatures.
  • The broken stone walls in the damaged BUA are made of cork coasters, about 2mm thick.
  • The bases were covered with railway base mats that come with a 'flock' already attached. Additional flock and foliage were added as required.
  • The fence is plastic HO/OO stock that I had left over from when I played in 15mm and was simply cut down to a more suitable height for 10mm figures.
  • The stone wall is from Commission Figurines and is laser cut mdf (and very nice it is too).
  • The old enameled sign is from a rang of posters for 28mm that I was given years ago by a friend, pre good quality printers I might add. Nowadays just go online and select what you want and print it out. It was stuck to some 0.5mm card, then I distressed the edges, added some holes and then bent it to suit the terrain it was to sit upon. Areas were painted to look like rust and then when dry, some gloss lacquer was applied to give it a nice sheen.

The row of houses with Pendraken 10mm miniatures in front to give an idea of scale.

I'm really happy with how the enameled sign came out.

The Leven Miniatures buildings are removable so that I can put a unit in it's place to show it's in the building.




The Commission Figurines mdf wall come up a treat, even with a quick and simple paint job.

I really enjoyed adding some extra details to these and am very happy with the result. I have plenty more ideas for this sort of stuff, but really should spend more time painting figures rather than terrain, but I do enjoy scratch building too much!

Well I hope you liked these and that they might give you some ideas for your own terrain etc. So until next time stay safe and keep healthy!

16 comments:

  1. I, for one, certainly admire and envy your skill at terrain works.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jon. I'm lucky in that my former career has given me the skills and tools to make this sort of stuff, plus as mentioned, I really enjoy it!

      Delete
  2. The terrain pieces look great and lots of useful tips in there Steve!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Many thanks there Keith and I'm glad that you found some useful tips too:).

      Delete
  3. Steve,
    Beautiful terrain. Any gamer would be lucky to play on BUA bases like that!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Many thanks for your kind words! I'm trying to add some detail to my terrain and some more period specific things too. More updates to come soon, with luck...

      Delete
  4. Some lovely terrain there Steve. Well done.
    You’ve certainly got “the gift” for making well crafted terrain items that merge perfectly with the rest of your battlefield set-up.
    Having a consistent base size for items (3” / 75mm in your case) is a good idea. I suspect it also helps to make sure you have a large stock of other stuff, such as flock, paints, lichen etc as that also helps maintain the uniform “look”. Presumably somewhere you also have a large floor mat, which is slowly-but-surely getting smaller, every time you need some new crop fields.
    Cheers,
    Geoff

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Geoff! I do have a large supply of various flocks etc to try and maintain a cohesive look to my terrain. In the smaller scales it goes a lot further compared to say 28mm. I do in fact have an old shoe box full of door mat shapes that I cut some years ago that I keep meaning to base up for a bit more variety to the table top. another thing I need to do... ;).

      Delete
  5. Steve, very nice, cutting down the 20mm fence to a suitable size is such a good idea ..... it should have been an obvious solution to me ... but it wasn't, Doh!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Norm. Luckily the thickness of the slats doesn't look out of scale with everything else. Nowadays with the wide availability of laser cut mdf or 3D printed stuff, there is less need to do this sort of conversion. However as I still have quite a bit of it, it seems a shame to waste it.

      Delete
  6. Hi Steve...I agree with other comments....you have a gift for terrain building...well done...some very nice pieces. Regards.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wonderful stuff Steve, the gardens really bring the buildings to like and make such a difference to the table.
    Excellent stuff.
    Cheers
    Stu

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Stu! It was my gaming chum Dave who first suggested that I should add detail to the bases and I'm glad I did.

      Delete