With the release of the new Cities of Death supplement, everyone is thinking about Urban terrain. Some poeple are thinking about buying GW's building kits. Some people are thinking about cheaper alternatives. Here's how HGC terrain nutter Owen (aka Pudding Wrestler) killed two birds with one stone.

The bit you actually want to read:

Ubran Ruins What we're doing here is making the old 40K gothic ruins look better as well as getting some awesome urban terrain out of it. The Gothic ruins came with the old version of 40K as well as many of the battle force boxes. You can also pick up a set from your local GW at a reasonable price, or they often turn up on Ebay.

The thing with the ruins is that they don't take up very much space. If you want to play an urban combat scenario, you want plenty of terrain, and you want nice big ruins. Fear not: the solution is simple. All you need is a lot of rubble and sand bags to turn a simple ruined building corner into a fortified storng point which takes up a lot more ground.

Urban ruins First off, get yourself a piece of MDF (medium density fibre-board, also known as Craftwood) from the local timber yard, Bunnings or building supply joint. The stuff I have used is 6mm thick. 3mm will work fine, but it might be a little to flexible. All you have to do is cut a rectangle of MDF to size. This is the 'foundation' of your building, a nice solid concrete block. Now, glue down the ruined corner on one corner of the base. Leave some space between the ruin and the edge of the base.

Once the ruin is well and truely stuck down, you can start in on rubble and sand bags. Rubble is just a mixture of sand and gravel, glued down with PVA glue. If you want really big piles of rubble, cut some polystyrene foam into a rough mound shape, and glue it down. When it's dry, glue rubble over the top.

Urban ruins

Sand bags are really very simple. Get yourself some air drying modeling clay (you can get it at any craft shop, Spotlight or most toy shops) Make a sauasage of clay about 1cm in diameter. Roll it out so it's flat, and about 5mm thick. Now cut 2.5 cm lengths from this, and you have sand bags! Glue them into place and leave them to dry. The clay will probably need to be left over night to dry out completely. You have to remember to glue the sand bags together, as the clay itself will not stick when it is dry.

When everything is dry, spray paint it all black. Now, drybrush the ruin itself, and the base with codex grey. Paint the sand bags with Snakebite leather, and wash with brown ink. Give them a light dryubrush with Bleached bone. The rubble is drybrushed with Vermin fur first, then a light drybrush of bleached bone is applied.

Urban ruinsYou can add all sorts of great finishing touches to your ruins, like corpses, disguarded weapons, ammo crates, oil drums or inporvised fortifications. You can also use very similar techniques to make sand bag walls, great for fortifications! You can stick sand bags to almost any terrain piece, even tanks! They even work in Fantasy if you're careful!

Have fun!

The Pudding Wrestler's warning:

Always remember that when you are making terrain, you will be using potentially dangerous kit. Carefully experience. Spray paint and Super glue will melt polystyrene, and while they do it, will give out poisonous fumes. And most important of all: don't make terrain on the dining table with your Mum's best table cloth on it minutes before the guests arrive for a big dinner party. with those knives! Don't chew on the miniatures or drink the paint, and be careful not to glue your fingers together. Hot glue is REALLY hot. Don't touch it. I speak from experience.