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Even more Warhammer 40k terrain: MDF ruins

 

ruins

After this post you won’t be seeing any new WH40K terrain for a while, I promise... To round out my urban terrain I picked up the Frontline Factory Ruins (Windowed) set from a Dutch company called Alliance Armoury. It’s an MDF kit containing enough parts to build four corner pieces (2 one-storey and 2 two-storey buildings). The construction of the kit is actually pretty nifty. Each wall consists of an inner structural layer and a thinner outer layer, which hides all the ugly slots used to assemble the pieces and simultaneously adds some nice 3d details like inset window frames. If I had one nit to pick, it would be that the doors are only demarcated on the outside of the buildings. There are just blank walls on the other side, so you’ll have to add some detail to the inside yourself.
  
Construction is very straightforward, as long you follow the building order outlined in the instructional video on Alliance Armoury’s website. Basically, glue the inner walls together and glue in the floor sections before the glue sets. Let dry and then glue on the outer wall sections, always starting with the left one which lines up to the edge of the inner wall.

mdf ruins
Flat-pack ruins... but much easier to assemble than Ikea.

mdf ruins

mdf ruins
A completed corner section.

You could leave the buildings as is and go straight to the painting step, but I decided to add some more details. I used a small file to carve in some cracks and bullet holes and added lintels and window sills using strips of cardboard. As the window frames are inset, I had to fill in the gap between the cardboard and the window frames with wall filler/spackle. I just dabbed it on with my finger and occasionally wiped off my fillery fingers on the walls for some easy extra texture.

mdf ruins
Details added to the walls.

I also glued bits of cork and coffee grounds to the floor sections as rubble and added some pipes (drinking straws) and corrugated iron (cardboard) for a bit of variety.

mdf ruins
Let’s get ready to rubble! (I regret nothing)

Then it was on to painting. I gave everything a coat of primer with an old brush, making sure to stipple it on to avoid brush strokes. I specifically bought grey primer for this, because I hoped it would serve both as a primer and as the base colour for my ruins. It turned out to be such a ridiculously light grey as to be almost white, so I had to come up with a way to darken it. I didn’t feel light buying a new pot of grey and then hand painting everything again, so instead I decided to add multiple black washes to darken up the grey primer. This turned out to be not particularly quick, but it got the job done in the end and it also nicely highlighted the carved details. I then painted the doors, pipes and corrugated iron and finally gave everything a light dusting of off-white from a spray can. Done! 

And finally, some shots of the finished ruins, looking nicely grimdark and ruiny. Don’t mind the very wrinkly bed sheets. The photo set-up that I normally use was too small for these terrain pieces.

mdf ruins

mdf ruins

mdf ruins

mdf ruins

mdf ruins

mdf ruins

mdf ruins

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