Brick by Brick

Tuesday Tutorials

This is How I build things... WITH EYE LASERS!

I was puttering about other day when, with sudden terror, I realized something shocking: Other than my trusty green flocked mat, I have absolutely NO terrain to play wargames on. NONE. Zip. Zero. Ziltch.
My gorge rose into my throat.
My stomach fell out.
I broke into a cold sweat.
I'll even admit... there were tears... teeny tiny bitter tears of a sad sad man.

What caused this sudden realization?
A clutch of my friends were coming out to play said wargames at my apartment THE NEXT DAY.
There was only one answer:
Cancel games night  Oh NAY NAY!
TO THE DIY STORE! (Staples, natch~)

Warning! Warning! Warning! Warning! Warning!

What follows is but one mans ill-conceived and fevered attempts to build a 4'x4' tables worth of terrain in 6 hours! MADNESS WILL ENSUE! (also backpain)

Step 1: Buy the right stuff

Seriously, This is a majorly important first step. 

• Foam-core board (it's a piece of styrofoam sandwiched between two pieces of cardstock)
• Steel Ruler (A steel ruler is invaluable as, to my chagrin and stupidity I thought I had one and, by my 5th building realized that my plastic ruler was no longer straight. I had shaved down the edge with my razor...)
• T-Square/ 90degree right-angle ruler
• (brand-new) razor/scalpel blade (you need a very sharp edge to avoid tearing)
• White glue or a low-temp Hot glue gun
• Pencil
• A safe Cutting surface (don't want to ruin your table!)
• A marker/sharpie pen
• A couple of models of your chosen game for sizing. (in my case, a pair of 28mm Infinity models, specifically a Veteran Kazak with HMG and a Tankhunter with Autocannon from Ariadna. They are in Heavy armour so they stand a little bigger than unarmoured models which I reason to be the equivalent of 6.5ft in height game size.)

 My tools/victims. Note my pretty pink Mouse next to my laptop and my exhaustively detailed map traced on the finest of hand-pressed vellum.
Aka I needed a new mouse and they only had clit female parts pink, and I quickly sketched out a rough 4'x4' table with my desired(ish) shapes for buildings on it to give me an idea of coverage. Note the distinct lack of a steel ruler.

Step 2: Draw out your buildings footprint

 Draw any shape you like (I suggest rectangles or squares for ease). Then for each wall measure along the same length and expand your wall by 2 inches. Do this twice per wall to make a total of 4 walls. As a Rule of Thumb  I reckon 1"(2.5cm) = 5 ft in game terms. Therefor if a model stands 30mm, it's roughly 6 ft tall. What this means it that, for standard 10 ft floors on a building (9 foot ceilings!) you'd be looking at 2 inch high walls.

Step 3: Cut Wall brackets/braces

 Cut a strip of foamcore 1' tall and 2' long. Bisect the piece into two 1'x1' squares, and then again running top left corner to bottom right corner on each piece to create 4 triangles. These will be placed 1.5 cm from the top edge of the wall sections, in each corner, which, when glued together, create wall brackets that ALSO act as braces for the roof to sit on.

Step 4: Glue the walls together with the brace/brackets in each corner to keep straight right-angle walls.

 

 Step 5: Correct roof.

 With this, admittedly hack-job method, your roof piece (the footprint you cut earlier) will be slightly too large on 2 edges due to the thickness of the foamcore. Place your building wall construct on top of the footprint-cum-roof piece and line up two edges which will leave the other two edges hanging over the roof piece. Trace this part with your trusty pencil and trim it down with your razor. Now just place the roof in (don't glue it yet) and make sure it fits. If not, trim a little more, always remembering to use your straight edge steel ruler to keep your lines clean and you won't end up with nasty wibble-wobbly trim lines. This is where my use of a plastic ruler cause some issues...

And voila! all done. I drew some windows and ladders and such onto my buildings until I get around to painting the buildings up all pretty like.

And there you have it. Beans guide to making foam-core buildings. Just rinse and repeat half a dozen (or in my case, a dozen!) times and you'll have a whole tables worth of buildings ready in a single day.

Until next time,

Keep your lines straight.

Bean out~