Author: Brigadier Tony

At our recent Open Day I ran a 6mm sci-fi game using the Hammer’s Slammers:The Crucible rules. I created a lot of new desert terrain for the event and thought I’d write up some of the methods I used to create it. If you want to read about the game itself, there’s a report on the Hammer’s Slammers website with lots of photos of the game in action.

Sacred Sands
One major component of almost every item of terrain is the ground texture. I used a mixture of sand (bird cage sand from a pet shop), household emulsion paint and PVA glue in a ratio of roughly 3:2:1. I had a litre of paint mixed by my local B&Q to match Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone spray paint (I sprayed a small square of plastic card which they stuck in their scanner) for a very reasonable £18. I made up batches of the ground texture mix in an ice-cream tub so that it was always ready to go – and after building all of the terrain below I have about 2/3rds of the paint left.

Once dry, the ground was washed with a decent coat of Citadel sepia shade, then drybrushed with Citadel Tyrant Skull. This pretty simple method gave me a quick to apply, good looking and consistently repeatable ground texture.

I scoured eBay for suitable grass tufts in various sizes and shades of dry grass and found a good pair of sources in Boontown Metals and Serious-Play. These were used sparingly, the desert was supposed to be arid.

Happiness is the Road
The roads were made them from Busch model railway roads, which are a sort of very thin self-adhesive foam with markings printed on in white. The two-lane roads were 40mm wide, maybe a little overscale but some sci-fi tanks are pretty big so they look fine. As a base I used 3mm sheets of black Foamex – this is less likely to warp, as card or MDF is prone to. The edges were roughly bevelled with a knife and textured. I made some T junctions and crossroads by butting up sections of road surface and drawing in the road markings with a white acrylic paint pen.

2-4-6-8 Motorway

I had visions of making a big four-lane highway for a couple of reasons – firstly, it would be an impressive large terrain piece, which 6mm scenery can sometimes lack, and secondly it would cut down lines of fire and prevent heavy tanks dominating the battlefield and being able to fire from one side of the table to the other (heavy tank guns have no maximum range in Hammer’s Slammers). The motorway was mounted on 2″ thick insulation foam – I used normal white polystyrene, pink or blue foam would have been better but I already had the polystyrene to hand. This was cut into four 8″ wide, 18″ lengths with a hand saw – do this outside, it makes one heck of a mess! The edges were then bevelled at a 45° angle with a hot wire cutter resulting in a 4″ wide plateau. I ran two lengths of Busch roads down either side of this plateau, leaving a narrow central reservation. The edges and centre were textured as normal, and I put in a small piece of tiled plasticard in each section – the intention with this is so I could put in road signs at some point, although I haven’t done that yet.

One length was cut in half, and one end of each short length bevelled to match the sides. I scratchbuilt a simple bridge from plasticard and Plastruct girders, which was long enough so that one of my normal two-lane roads could pass underneath. The bridge was made so that it could be lifted out – this was for two reasons; firstly, I thought that attaching the bridge to the two end pieces would be too fragile, and secondly it gave me the option to add a destroyed version later.

I’ve learnt in the past that linear obstacles need more than one crossing point, otherwise you end up with a nasty bottleneck and the whole game ends up revolving around this one point. So I used the hot wire cutter to make two tunnels under the roadway – one larger one which is big enough to take a road, the other smaller one which is big enough for infantry on foot or small vehicles. For the larger one I used a piece of plastic cable trunking to make the concrete tunnel, the small one was made from plasticard. This left three crossing points so gives the attacking side more options. The sides of the embankment are rather steep, too much for heavy vehicles, but I allowed light vehicles (jeeps and infantry skimmers) and infantry on foot to climb them as if in bad going.

Houses in Motion

All of the buildings are from Brigade Models’ various desert-themed resin scenery ranges. I stuck them on more 3mm Foamex with Uhu glue and textured between them with the usual mixture. The buildings were sprayed with Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone, washed with Agrax Earthshade (GW) and drybrushed with Terminatus Stone (GW again). To add a splash of colour, doors and details were painted using GW Contrast Paints which give a decent effect in one coat.

One of my main sources of inspiration for the look of the buildings was the various Star Wars stories set on Tatooine. One standout feature of these is the fabric awnings across the entrances and frontages of many of them. I tried to replicate this using pieces of textured paper hand towels (some nasty thick industrial ones that don’t so much dry your hands as redistribute the water…) which I soaked in watered down PVA and strung across paperclip wire supports. Once dry I used Contrast Paints and drybrushing, often matching the awning colour to the other spot colours on the buildings.

I put some buildings on sections of road which allowed me to do some more interesting things such as a footbridge that passed over the road, or parking bays/side roads. The obelisk outside the tower below comes from Brigade’s 2mm range.

The objective of the game was to capture a series of radar stations that controlled the approach to the nearby starport. These all came from the Brigade range including several with ‘golf ball’ style radar enclosures and another tall tower with a radar on top. I added extra small buildings to the bases of some.

The Temple of Doom
I had a ruined ancient temple that had been cluttering up my office for ages – it was an aquarium ornament picked up from a pet shop. This was stuck on a small polystyrene hill with ramps and steps up to the summit. I repainted it in the same way as the other buildings. I discovered that the resin was rather fragile – it had an accident that lowered the heights of all the columns at one end…

Hanging on the Telephone
I scratchbuilt some simple telegraph poles using lengths of cocktail stick and short pieces of plastic strip for the crossbars superglued together, based on 20mm wooden discs from The Works. Ground texture, a single coat of brown contrast paint and a quick drybrush and they were done.

We Got the Power
In a box in my shed o’ stuff I unearthed three 3D printed power pylons, bought back in the days when they were still a sensible price on Shapeways. These were duly stuck on Foamex bases, sprayed with gray primer and drybrushed – again, job done and some welcome height added to the board.

Blood on the Track
A monorail ran across the town, made from Brigade Model’s elevated track and a selection of freight wagons. The pylons were based on 30mm wooden discs and the track was painted in the same way as the buildings. I initially painted the track silver and washed it but that made it too dull, so I went over the rail again with a silver paint pen to make it brighter.

And finally, a few shots of the game on the day. The Slammer’s Regiment (silver hovertanks) were mostly painted by Jon Roche, the Zaporoskiye Regiment in their superb green/white/brown urban camo’ were painted by Mark Johnson. The blue tracked vehicles are Guardforce O’Higgins, painted by me.