Trees and hills

[junior elf]

Ok, so just today I asked my year warden at school if we could start a warhammer club and he said yes as long as there weren\'t any costs involved. So now I need to learn how to make cheap terrain. Any advice would be nice but particularly on trees and hills as I don\'t want to spend 20 quid on 8 trees :evil:
PS: Don\'t worry too much about how they look, as long as its not a pile of books used to represent them, it\'ll do fine. Honestly, the cheaper the better as it\'ll be me who\'ll be spending the money to make them.

Thanks in advance to everyone.
JE

 

[Amazon warrior]

Not a suggestion as to how to make trees, but if you get a few people to join, you could ask them each for a small sum towards terrain (or things to make terrain}. It would be a little like a joining fee.

If you wanted *really* cheap and cheerful, you could always cut out tree outlines from thin card, reinforce them with wire (perhaps stick two cutouts back to back), then secure them to a base. Slightly more elaborate would be cutting slits in two cutouts, then slotting them together at right-angles to each other. Then they\'d be a bit more 3D.

 

[airhead]

home center store and get some 3/4\" extruded polystyrene (styrofoam). Not the white bead board stuff.

A hot wire cutter works wonders from the flower craft shop. Alternates include a sharp long knife or a surfoam cutter (messy - think rasp in a plane handle)

white glue and flock (static grass) and your are set.


***

play notes:
As cool as steep slopes and realistic cliffs and hills look on the table, remember that minis have to go up and down them. Either keep the slopes very shallow or terrace your terrain so that everyone know what level they are on.

 

[PegaZus]

Right off the top of my head: Toliet brushes. I\'m sure I\'ve seen an article either here or on another site using the single wire strand (not the type with a loop). It looks sort of like a half-pill-capsule. Spray paint green, roll the bristle ends in glue, roll it in flock, then finish by painting the \"trunk\" and you\'re done.

 

[ScottRadom]

Not free but pretty close!

Soon the dollar stores will be flooded with christmas stuff. Bags of pine cones for 1.00$ will make you about 60 trees, and you can spray \'em a particular color and they\'ll look OK for a starter.

Also things like small pieces of felt from dollar stores for dirt cheap can be cut for bases of area terrain (Tree\'s and other difficult terrain) as well as roads, rivers, straw fields etc.

The best place to get super cheap terrain stuff is to avoid hobby stores and go right to the hardware shops. As stated get the extruded polystyrene sheets for cheap and cut hills. I also reccomend a bag of sand. Fine sand around here is 3$ a bag for 55lbs. With watered down white glue you can coat your terrain for tecture with this stuff and paint for fairly cheap. I use latex primer first then a coast of brown or green followed by a drybrush. Static grass and flock can really be expensive quickly if you\'re basing larger projects.

Christmas decorations go on sale for pennies in the new year, and there\'s lots of scale appropriate items to be had.

Not free, but hopefully it\'ll help.

 

[mikesilk]

cheep cheep

go outside and snap off a couple or a few small brances from the nearest evergreen shrub......next take some flour from your mommas cupboard and some newspaper from your brothers cage. mix the flour with enough water to form a thick paste...soak said newspaper in paste and begin to form lumps which resemble your brothers head and or nearby hills....later after drying sneak down to the arts room and pilfer some green poster paint and apply to said lumps...viola....some very ugly but usable terrain.:beer:

 

[DaN]

Aquarium plants are a cheaper alternative...

Just look around some cheapy-pound / hardware stores for things you can use

You only need brown / green paint.

If it\'s 40k, you don\'t even need that - you can make up the colours for alien plant species

 

[junior elf]

i like the idea of having cardboard trees as they can be put away easily (and are cheap). And this is my thought for hills, using books to represent them. But now I\'ve got another problem, buildings for 40K. Any ideas?

 

[DaN]

Anything box shaped

 

[hestan101]

cardoard, plasti card and patience? ooo, you can get brill ruins from railway shops and pet stores, fairly cheap as well, but not that city like

 

[PegaZus]

Originally posted by junior elf
i like the idea of having cardboard trees as they can be put away easily (and are cheap). And this is my thought for hills, using books to represent them. But now I\'ve got another problem, buildings for 40K. Any ideas?

Well, if you\'re okay with cardboard trees, then cardboard buildings should be fine. Just do the little slots, so they can connect with each other and stand up. Here\'s the kicker: if you\'ve got access to a color printer, you could print out some building pictures, scaled correctly, and simply glue them to the cardboard. Worth a shot.

 

[junior elf]

Don\'t worry. The school will let us print color. There not that cheap .
+cardboard boxes are fantastic and I don\'t have to worry about someone stealing them am I lol. Ok, then. Thanks for everyones input

 

[PegaZus]

Be sure to post some pictures of what you finally manage to work up! I\'m interested to see what becomes of it.

 

[Amazon warrior]

Plus if you don\'t stick the lids down, you can use them to store your trees and smaller buildings!