Alternate terrain

As 40k players, we tend to fight our battles over the same terrain all the time.  Making your own terrain will alleviate that issue, as you can do an entirely different theme from what you normally use.  Here are some suggestions for interesting and unusual terrain to create to fight your 40k battles over.  There are two ways of going about this.  The easiest way is to build one unusual feature, such as a bunker or a tower or a ruined cathedral.  This would be a piece that you could incorporate into your current battlefields easily, but would add a little zest, since it was something new and different.  This method also has the advantage that you can add a piece as you make it, so you don’t have to spend a huge amount of time making terrain before you can use it.  Never underestimate the power of instant gratification!  You can also go hog wild and build an entirely new set of terrain.  This will take longer than making a single piece, but it makes a drastic change from your old scenery.

Single piece scenery

These are some suggestions for the one piece method.  Some of these are more complex than others, but they all offer you the option of making something basic, or giving lots of detail, depending on your personal preferences.  Due to the singular nature of these, they might make a good modeling challenge for your group, so that each person in turn could create a different thing, or you could each make your own version of something, and see what everyone came up with.  I will give a general suggestion first, followed by suggestions for how it might be made and some suggestions for added detail.

Tunnel.  A toilet paper tube sticking out of a Styrofoam hill.  Perhaps a rusted grating and some leaking toxic sludge for details.

Crater.  Mounded up clay for the roughly circular edges, with scrapes to roughen it.  Perhaps blast marks and bits of wreckage as details.

Wrecked vehicle.  Cardboard or plastic pieces for the shell of the body, with some GW vehicle bits to give the type of vehicle.  Details could be rust and blast marks, or even dead crew in and around the vehicle.

Standing Stones.  Think Stonehenge, with Styrofoam as pillars.  Weathering and pitting on the stones and maybe a skeleton or altar as details.

Whole field scenery

These suggestions are for replacing the whole battlefield with something new.  They tend to be more exciting, but they are also more work.  Before you start, you should consider whether you will be using set pieces or mix and match scenery.  With set pieces, the terrain is all connected together in one fashion or another and the configuration cannot be changed.  Most of the really neat boards you see in gaming stores are this way.  This option tends to make it easier to do really cool things, but it makes it harder to store, since it is all one piece.  Alternately, you can make a series of individual pieces that can be arranged on a mat or table of some sort, giving you more freedom to change the terrain around from game to game (The volcanic spout is not always next to the chasm) and making it easier to store it somewhere.  Again I will give the terrain style and explanation first, followed by suggestions for how to make it.

Volcanic field

Lava mounds and solidified bubbles and steam vents and lava tubes, oh my! Perhaps a lava river or lake would be a nice addition and even a small eruption could be modeled.  You could use Styrofoam or expanding foam sealant (such as Great Stuff) for the lava mounds and solidified bubbles.  The sharper edges, such as vents and spouts or lava tubes, could be Styrofoam or cardboard.  If you make an eruption, a few gobs of lava on clear posts or tiny wires could really add to the feel, as would a little bit of cotton wool or something around steam vents.

Asteroid or lunar surface. 

This terrain will feature no grass, but there will be craters, hills, ridges, crystal formations, rock formations, and maybe veins of different colored minerals in the ground and on the ridges and hills.  Styrofoam would be good for this.  You have an opportunity here to play with color schemes.  Is it gray like the moon, or red like Mars, or black like a volcanic landscape, or is it something else entirely?  Sharper edges on terrain features (instead of the weathering you usually see) is a good thing here.  Note that if you like playing with really different rules, this can be a fun place to try them.  If it is a large Asteroid, play is normal.  On a small or medium asteroid, the playing area is the entire surface of the Asteroid.  The edges of the map wrap around (ie: if you go off the map on one side, you come in on the other.) which will really change the way you deploy your forces.

Canopy

Treetop height in dense Jungle.  Ground is not even represented on this map.  The primary terrain here should be mounds and hills of tree branches and leaves, with a lower level featuring stronger branches (and the spaces between them) and fungal growths and rotted out hollow logs that could be moved through and rope ladders and maybe even the top of a Weather tower or something.  Perhaps there is a hole in the canopy where a great tree died.  Although you could make these tops like a regular tree, but on a large scale, I would actually recommend you create them like you would most mounds and hills, (perhaps out of Styrofoam) and then add the leafy bits on top to give the right feel, since this is the area the troops will be moving over, and it’ll need to be strong so that they don’t tear up your terrain.  If you want to add some “scenario rules” for this terrain, you could only allow vehicles and Walkers on certain areas (such as the stronger branches on the lower level) and treat any non-flying or skimmer model that goes into an area that has no solid support as instantly dead from the long fall, with no save. 

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