CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS

As anyone who has spent any time rummaging around t'interweb will know, there are myriad different suppliers of myriad different brands of materials with which to make terrain.  Also, there are myriad different ways of making terrain.  I can only show you my way.  It may not be the best way, but it is the way I know best.

I use hardboard bases - I buy mine as a single 8' x 4' board from a local timber merchant, who happily cut it down to more useable sizes (12" square).  The next most important material is extruded polystyrene. Note this is not *expanded* polystyrene (the stuff made of little white bubbles). It is best known under the brand name styrofoam, which is usually light blue in colour.

It is great stuff for building - it is reasonably robust (as long as you don't bash it - you can dent it with a fingernail if you push too hard), very lightweight, you can cut it very easily (more on that later) and you can sand it too.  It comes pre-cut in various thicknesses (25mm/1" ; 50mm/2" ; 75mm/3"), but I use the 25mm thickness, simply because it makes a useful 'step' size for wargaming in games workshop figure size (28mm).

I have a box of goodies that I keep all my terrain modelling stuff in.  It's not big enough for my hot-wire cutter or my electrostatic grass applicator (technically tools of the trade, admittedly, but I bought them after I'd made my hobby box). I rarely get the opportunity to unpack the lot, but the kitchen table was vacant for a good deal of the morning, so I here you go:

I'll go through this merry little lot in more detail at a later time, but you can download a high-res version of the pic (as you can with all the pics on my blog) by clicking on it.

Enough scratchbuilding stuff for trees, rocks, bushes, grass and anything else you can shake a terrain stick at.