Strange New Worlds – a TerrainFest of alien forestry

One minor flaw in the number of ground base parts supplied is that when you use all of them, you can’t build too many tall plants before you end up with empty spaces. This could easily represent plants that have been cut down by the local villagers/xenos. But this is me, and I like to do things as complete as possible.

Ripping apart some of the cheap plastic plants from Temu (see earlier posts), I glued them back together and filled the trunk so I could add a magnet at the end.

They’ll get painted up accordingly (at least the trunk will) and allow me to easily build tall trees and fill in gaps along the way.

I’m not going to be able to post any more updates this week, as we are now on holiday in Rome!

October has gone so fast – I’d love it if this TerrainFest could last as long as the Spring Cleaning Challenge. Next weekend I’ll try and finish what I can, and hope that it’s enough.

Here’s a base piece which I’m happy is now 99% complete.

I’ve added quite a few of the Gamers Grass paper plants, along with some little floral tufts. You can see I also painted up some of the MTG resin Monstera (cheese plant) leaves and added those in too.

As final details, I’ve dotted around a fair few snail shells, with a glitter nail polish mucus trail – to make the jungle look lived in.

I’d not heard of the Codex Seraphinianus that Gerry @avernos recommended. It’s an absolutely gorgeous, batshit crazy looking book which I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for.

However, I do have Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel- which I’ve had for many years now. This book has some absolutely gorgeous spreads showing really alien looking but realistic flora and fauna. I’ve used these as inspiration to give ideas for that balance of fantasy jungle and distant worlds.

Here’s some (what I think are) awesome progress pictures showing how all the base pieces are coming along.

I’ve been working away with contrast and drybrushing to get the first 4-5 of the 10 base sections completed. I love the brightness of them, and this style of bright hue is definitely outside of my comfort zone!

With those colours all in, I’ve put the magnetised flora pieces onto the bases so that I can arrange the plants closely but without getting in the way.

Using contrast paints, I’ve started blocking in broad groups of colour. This is always the stage in a terrain project where things look at their clumsiest. I’m letting the colours bleed into each other a fair bit, allowing the paint to do some of the blending for me. It looks messy, but helps me establish the feel and get that balance of alien world and fantasy jungle.

Once I’m happy with the over-all colours, I’ll then start drybrushing, adding additional washes and picking out details.

Colours I’m using are GW contrast:

• Gutrippa Flesh
• Plaguebearer Flesh
• Aeldari Emerald
• Nazdreg Yellow
•  Blood Angels Red
• Gryph Hound Orange
• Shyish Purple
• Skeleton Horde

I’ve sprayed all these bases using a kind of zenithal priming. It’s harder to get true zenithal on very flat pieces, but I tried.

Sprayed with grey, then white before finishing with a dusting of wraithbone. It instantly makes all the precious work look more cohesive, and allows me to see what order I can start painting the different textures and elements.

This is the stage where things start to look messy. Hopefully before they become awesome again.

I’ve added some polyfilla to alter the height of the bases in some places and make more uneven ground.

After that I’ve taken a mix of dried elderflower and mixed herbs and glued it all over the bases with a generous amount of slightly thinned PVA.

At this stage they look messy – but smell amazing!

I ordered these aquarium plants on Temu. I have mixed feelings about these sites, but I figured for cheap and cheerful and placing a low-value order that I’d give it a go.

I’m planning on breaking these apart to use as smaller ground cover and suchlike. Let’s see what they are like when they arrive!

I’ve glued the main elements down now, and started gooping some texture down. This is caulk being used with a caulk gun – which is far too unwieldy for this kind of job. So I’ve paused on that for now.

Just going to let the glue and caulk there dry and then go over more carefully with some polyfilla using a small spreader and a damp brush.

Last quick update for today, some more materials I’ve collected for this project.

I’ve had these Magnolia seed pods in my garage for a couple of years now. They look exactly like weird alien trees. So they’re definitely going into the project!

I need to do something to add other non-plant elements to these pieces.

A trip to one of our local beaches turned up these fascinating pebbles with hardened worm casts. I cleaned them by soaking in boiling water and bleach to kill any bacteria. These will make really interesting alien style rocks, and I may collect more.

I cut the pieces out with a jigsaw, which i did not enjoy. I don’t know what it is about a jigsaw but it’s my least favourite power tool and is always so much harder to use than I expect it to be.

Once cut, I then bevelled off the edges with a rasp (? That really scrapy big file) and then sanded. The look amazing already and I am super-pleased.

Oh, and I’ve got the rough side up to glue the textures and pieces to, so the smooth underside will be placed onto gaming mats.

I’m keeping the structures as modular as possible with the magnets, but I don’t want to be farting about with 30 seperate pieces every time I set up a table. So, I’m going to arrange them into nice textured and detailed basing groups.

I picked up a small sheet of 3mm hardboard from B&Q. This is 81x40cm and so plenty big enough for what I need.

I arranged the base parts into pleasing groups, aiming for odd numbers on most of them. Then I drew round them with a sharpie, and adjusted a bit here and there.

With that done, I’ll cut these shapes out and start bevelling them before adding texture, rocks, height and all kind of lovely details.

The pieces in this set have 5mm diameter indents to allow them to be magnetised. These pieces can be combined in all kinds of awesome ways, and I don’t want to lose that versatility – so I’ll be magnetising mine also.

I counted up all the holes and calculated that I’d need about 80 magnets.

Mostly, the magnets fitted into the holes quite snugly. A dab of superglue holds them permanently in place.

There were a few pieces where the hole was just too tight. Fortunately I have a small flat-end file from a multipack of needle files that was just the right width. Giving it a good twizzle around a few times helped make the holes the right diameter.

For any project beyond one or two miniatures, I always create a moodboard so I can bring together imagery and examples of the kinds of things I’d like to achieve.

I want this terrain to be usable in a few settings:

• Star Trek (naturally!)
• Age of Sigmar exotic Jungle
• Victorian steampunk/War of the worlds

Fortunately, the Mortal Realms for Age of Sigmar have massively opened up the opportunity for all kinds of exotic Flora beyond green jungle. And a steampunk/War of the Worlds setting allows great scope for alien plant life or genetically engineered oddities from Victorian geneticists.

Project system keeps timing out which will definitely make this months TerrainFest harder…

Here is a look at the box contents.