Adding a reminder for when I come back to this video with a pencil in hand. (4:29) Outstanding work! I really value what you are doing right now, as I work on a ZM-compatible shrine world hive of my own.
I love the insight you've been sharing with these videos. It gave me a slew of new ideas on how to tackle a terrain set I have yet to build. Thanks for sharing :D
Brilliant! That’s exactly what I’m aiming for with this channel. Getting people to think about things in different ways to improve what you’ve got and make it work better for you.
You know I don't know whether to love you or to hate you. I find your test right after I buy four boxes of the new kill team into the dark, that I got for the terrain inside. Oh I wish I'd seen this first would have saved me a bundle. As always keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing your next video.😂
Lol!!! Just went on Amazon to look at some crazy straws. Scrolled down to see what other suggestions there were and in the Frequently Bought Together section it had crazy straws,chipboard and straight copper pipe solder ring fittings aka barrels. I about died laughing. Apparently a lot of us are buying those things together.
I got quite far into following this amazing videos instructions before realising balsa wood, was not what you used. 😅 Currently planning to try and coat the wood in something like PVA to remove the wood grain before painting it. It's salvageable, but feeling a bit stupid now. 😂
Ah that old chestnut. Shellac primer. Sticks to absolutely anything. Or oil paints thinned with white spirit. Then acrylic spray on top when dry. As long as you don’t ever bend the silicone too much, it’s just fine. Be we do t really bend terrain anyway so you’ll be good!
@@thestateofplay2023 I found the kids pipes on Amazon, but not finding anything under Balsa Foam Blocks. Looks like that product is only available in Belgium and The Netherlands.
But I like rummaging through the recycling bin! I feel attacked - first my wife, now you... seriously though, the idea of taking premium kits like GW's and then 'diluting' the super detailed bits with some plainer home-made parts to make a £50 set produce £100 worth of terrain (or whatever) is something I have always tried to do with this hobby. You're nailing it.
Thank you for that video. Really inspiring as I'm in the same situation as you with a Dark Uprising basic set bought second hand but not enough elements to fit a whole table. It got me thinking, how about mixing the cheap and easy to do XPS foam cubes like Eric's sandwiched with a 3D printed iron cladding ? It should fix the not-enough-walls-in-a-kit-for-that-many-columns problem and allow me to cut on the time and materials needed to print. l’d be able to print flat (huge time and money saver) and still manage a close to accurate look. Gotta try that...
I agree. To keep costs even lower you could literally cut the arches out of card. Two layers of that on top of each other with slightly wider arches would make them look inset. Poke trimmed dress making pins through to look like rivets. 😀. Saves both money and time on the 3D print.
Every time I find your channel I'm surprised that you dont have 100k+ subs, but then I have to remind myself that your channel is relatively new still. No question in another 6 months your numbers will skyrocket, everything is just far too high in quality for any other alternative
I'll have a look at this, was definitely wondering what to invest in in terms of plastic kits as like you say, a combined approach is probs the best balance between budget and utility. The columns and walls are clearly the biggest investment for the simplest terrain so I think I'll try this and instead buy another set of stairs and platforms which should both enhance these and add a few extra things like stairs which are way harder to make from scratch. What glues did you use btw? Was it just PVA for the balsa blocks then superglue for the extra plastics?
Very cool ideas. This makes Balsa Foam look like the secret, hidden uber-material we should all be using for building terrain ... and yet I don't think I've heard of it used before, despite watching too many "how to make terrain" videos. Are there any drawbacks to balsa foam compared to the other options? Why isn't it used as often? Thanks for your great content!
I guess balsa foam is a bit more expensive and doesn’t come in huge sheets like blue foam. So for making huge sculpted tables it’s probably not right. But for smaller terrain I prefer it as it holds its shape better. There’s also the thing in this hobby where no one really looks for new stuff. We all just do what everyone else does. 🤣
@@thestateofplay2023 Also where do you get it from? I had a search but the only thing coming up as specifically "balsa foam" is by AK and only seems to come in 10mm thick A4 sheets which are quite expensive for what they are, not the thicker looking blocks you seem to have.
@@sonicwingnut I got it from Amazon in the U.K. amzn.to/3IQJHC2 Hope this links to the correct thing. I don’t know what country you’re in for the right link. It’s called “Sculpture Block” in the U.K. Amazon store.
Great stuff, you inspired me to make my own walls and later integrate with some GW terrain. Question about the length of your walls. Given that a GW collumn is 5.75cm wide and yours are about 5cm (2"), did you make longer walls to catch up the missing .75 cm? Also how long are double walls? Just double the length of one? Thanks a bunch.
Some excellent questions here! GW long walls are 9.5com long. As I cut everything by hand I needed some wiggle room for both assembly and glueing on the platforms. With a more precise way of cutting I could have probably got them totally exact but when I did a test I needed that extra .75 to be able to add doors anywhere I wanted. The doors slot into recesses on plastic columns and walls , as there’s a protruding ridge to do that. If you make the walls exactly 9.5 (long) and short (4.25) then you can’t put the doors in place. I suppose you could cut a recess but then the concrete walls look weird. So basically I picked an arbitrary.75 leeway to give me room for doors and to glue platforms. You could probably get it more precise than me and if you don’t want doors than just add the .75 to the walls. Anyway, I figured in an underhive the concrete walls didn’t have join perfectly due to age, wear and ruin so a few small gaps would be ok. Hope that helps!
@@thestateofplay2023 Sorry I am a bit confused, Do you mean that you removed .75 from the length of a wall making them about 3.5cm long or that .75 just comes from the collumns being shorter? 2 boards of 1" each equals 2" which is roughly 5cm making the collumns 0.75cm shorter than their GW counterpart but not the walls. I believe these are the measurements you ended up with: Short: 4.25cm Long: 9.5cm Collumns: 2" (~ 5cm) Am I correct?
@@thestateofplay2023 Thanks a bunch, on my way to making some. A friend of mine lent me a thermal cutting table. It's a breeze to well sized foam walls with this. I'll build some simple platforms and stairs with chip board afterward and perhaps buy some GW kits later to complement the foam walls... or maybe it's the foam walls that will complement the GW walls.
@@thestateofplay2023 Hi, I have a question after I built a bunch (it's great with a thermal cutting table) and I was wondering if you coated them in anything to protect them or wish you did? Did you go straight to coating with paint? Any primer? Thanks
Good thought. I did try that, trying to save myself from trimming off thousands of teeth. But the teeth aren’t “sharp “ enough to push into the foam well. So you can’t get the heights to match.
Yup very sturdy. I’ve used it for years and it’s as sturdy as any other terrain when accidents happen. Once it’s painted, varnished and done it’s great stuff.
@@brim-skerdouglasson To be honest the ordinary blue foam works just as well, I bought the balsa stuff as it came in the right thickness in the pack but it's not that different.
3:10 Exactly. Making this stuff yourself for 'free' is only 'free' if your time has no value. If you work in any kind of professional field, think about how much money you could make with 24 hours focused on working (extra job, contracts, etc) That's 3 working days. Now take that money and see how may sprues of ovepriced GW plastic you could have bought instead.
My sentiments exactly. A week building terrain is a vast amount of time value when you can cut and assemble a sprue in minutes. And the price of that single sprue will be way less than a week of lost finance.
Stupid comparison. You can't usually work infinite hours at your job. Every time someone missuses "Opportunity Cost" it makes me want to tear my hair out.
@@alexanderandrews6980 I don’t think it’s a direct comparison to a “job” but more a value on your “time”. Would you rather spend 8 hours building terrain or 2 hours on terrain, 2 hours on a movie, 2 hours watching sports and 2 hours of paid overtime and still get great terrain at the end. 👍🏼😀
