Ancients - A place for my pre-gunpowder historical games.

Let’s start with some pictures of the terrain I am just starting to build. Having spent a few weeks watching too much YouTube, all terrain and figure painting related, I have a good selection of ideas on where I want to go, and the first is a few basic homes to make a small village to fight in and around. Funds are limited, spent far too much on new rule books and figures recently! So, they need to be cheap to make but look good enough for the average gaming table.

My starting choice are simple A-Frame homes, with thatch roof, I can use this method to make the roof sections of larger dwellings once I am happy with my first builds. I have a few ideas to try out and want to see which I like before committing to larger buildings. Not having any XPS foam, Foam core, MDF, or similar “normal” model building material available at this stage, I decided the cheap alternative was to use the cardboard my recently purchased rule books came in! It’s being recycled, win for the planet, its free material, win for my pocket! So using a freshly emptied cereal box, more free cardboard! I used that thinner cardboard to make a basic template and started cutting my parts out of the thicker double wall book boxes. I had a cheap pound store hot glue gun available and set to work on the assembly. It went fairly well, not used hot glue much, but discovered cheap hot glue guns are not ideal, the glue just keeps running out! Luckily I was using a cutting mat and had scrap paper down on top of that, I wonder if I can use those assorted mounds of glue in a future build? I now have another hot glue gun on order from Amazon, recommended by Black Magic Crafts, so hopefully will be less wasted glue in future! First point to people reading this that may want to start their own terrain builds, get a tidy glue gun! Luckily, I managed to keep the glue on the inside of my build, although as you can see by the picture, it’s a mess in there! But it will be a solid building and not intended for figures to enter, so once finished the only ones that know what the inside is like will be me, oh and everyone reading this! But hopefully you will keep it between us 😉

I am not going in to full tutorials on my terrain and figures, there are a lot more experienced people out there with a huge choice of videos on all this, so just a few pictures here on the basic cardboard form I have so far, have made 3 so far, all the same as the one pictured, although a little less mess inside the other two! I have drawn the rough detail on the front and back, partly as a reminder to me of what I was thinking when I made it, and partly to show what I will be doing next. Hope to get some fresh modelling supplies over the weekend, Kitchen scouring pads to make the thatch, balsa wood for at least one of them for the wooden frame, most likely all of them will have this for the frame actually, but going to try different “wall” material, one will be PVA and sand, for a plaster effect, wattle and daub at this time period I guess, one will have planks, not sure if they will be coffee stirrers or more balsa wood or foam, apparently the polystyrene trays meat often comes on is XPS foam! And I had sausages today! Yes I did wash the tray well first, but recycling again and free, I do love that combo! Also got cocktail sticks, another possible option? But this is why I have made several to test methods with, and it will give some variety to them.

For the roof, I am fairly sure it will be scouring pads this time around, but I want to try them as one piece and as overlapping strips to see what the difference is in both ease of build and end look.  I already have some Wilko emulsion match-pots to do the basic painting with that I have been using on my 3D printed Frostgrave terrain, more on that in my Frostgrave project page soon.

So that is my long winded but basic start to my Ancients gaming table, if you are wanting to make your own terrain but not sure where to start, I got my inspiration from some of the following on YouTube, go do a search for them, also look at the side column for more names to view, I have forgotten so many, sorry to those, but looking at the ones listed below will lead you on to many more, enjoy 😉

Black Magic Crafts

Lukes Apps

The Terrain Tutor

Two Fat Lardies