Low cost future terrain your recommendation.

[carlos13th]

Hello there people of the future.

Wanting to get into infinity I am going to need to acquire suitable terrain. What are your recommendations for cheap terrain for someone with limited scratch building skills?

What cheap terrain do you recommend at retail? What good sci if terrain tutorials do you know of? And advice would be great.

I have some deadzone stuff I will use but not a lot of it. Don't want to pick up more of it because it's a little to much like a paintball arena and not enough like somewhere you would expect people to live and work.

[Ironworker]

Try making simple buildings then dressing them up with interesting junk.  The above buildings are all very simple.  The roofs are made from meet packing trays and the support are made from plastic hair curlers. 


Here is a small multi-story building I made from some cheap crates and a drawer organizer I picked up at the local Dollar Tree.  There are less than $5.00 in materials in this building. 

 
Here are some simple buildings I made from cork tile with some extra bits made from random junk. 


Chemical storage tanks all made from gluing random junk together.


100 chemical barrels made by gluing plastic bottle caps together. 

Check out my blog.  It's most sci-fi and I have lots of examples of cheap sci-fi terrain. 
http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/

[No Such Agency]

100 chemical barrels made by gluing plastic bottle caps together. 

Wow @ the sheer number of barrels.  Also, what is that wacky blue flyer in the background?

[Ironworker]

Wow @ the sheer number of barrels.  Also, what is that wacky blue flyer in the background?

That is a G.I. Joe Skysweeper Jet.  I think I picked it up on Amazon for $15.00. 


that's a slightly better shot of it. 

[Ironworker]

Here is an excellent compound built from several different cheap items you can acquire at most department stores.  I didn't make this one.
You can find more information on it here:
http://doctormerkury.blogspot.com/2014/07/sci-fi-terrain-on-cheap.html#comment-form

[eilif]

Good suggestions so far.  My additions would be

1) Battlezones can look quite realistic and good for infinity if you assemble them in a realistic manner and then glue them that way.  

2) Search your local resale shop for toy playsets that you can hack apart and rebuild. There's a few examples at the top of my blog right now. http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com  This is where most of my terrain comes from and I rarely pay more than 2-8 bucks a building.

3) Electrical junction boxes can be very usefull if you cut away the nailing points and give them a bit of detail.

4) Just wanted to echo the suggestion of crate buildings. Each crate usually costs 1-2 bucks each. With a little paint, they can look like this.  Even the green one is a crate.

If you glue things to them, either use epoxy or buy some plumber's PVC solvent cement. Really nasty stuff, but it's about the only glue that really fuses the soft plastic. Sanding the surface and using superglue works ok, but sometimes thinks just pop off later.

5) Here's one that some guys made for Infinity, but I haven't tried yet.. clear plastic jewlery boxes. Put address labels over where you want them, then paint them and remove the decals to reveal nice windows. I don't have a good picture , but the furthest back table in this pic has a bunch of them Each is a stack of 2-4 of them.

[aliensurfer]

some places to start are

matakishi's site
necromundicon
terragenesis

all very useful for tips on building scenery on the cheap.

[The_Beast]

Plenty of other items made of cheap plastic to use.

Ironworker's demonstrated crates and food tubs, even disposable ones.

Another mentioned and demo'd elsewhere is plastic parts bins, turned upside down. I think they can look like discarded shipping containers. I want to do a shanty town using them as the local 'market' buildings.

Doug

[nic-e]

Just horde anything that has a nice shape and then see which ones stick together.
Personally i love the mantic battlezones combined with some old pvc pipe with wire mesh walkways to break up the height levels.

[Whitwort Stormbringer]

The plastic blister packaging on all manner of things is in odd shapes, and can make great sci-fi terrain as buildings, some kind of industrial machinery, etc., just keep an open eye whenever you buy something.

You can reinforce it, or you can use it as a mold for plaster-casting or something like that.

Back in the day, when GW paint bottle lids were screw-off (and had the little divits around the lid), I used some of them as either large canisters or stacked a few and used them as pillars.  You need to cover the side of the bottle that says "citadel" with some card or something, though.

[Major_Gilbear]

Ikea (and lots of other places) sell nests of boxes with lids that all stack inside one another...

Get a couple of packs, spray all the boxes and lids in greys, whites, and whatever other colours you want. Turn all the boxes over and add window and door details. Done! Now you have lots of sturdy buildings, with roofs (thank you lids), that not only store well (because they stack into each other) but which are sturdy too (upturned lid placed on upturned box can take a good weight, and the edge of the lid proves a little cover as well).

If you leave the lids off some of the boxes (so you have some flat plain roofs), you can convert those lids into walkways to connect the building.

Examples here, here and here.

[Giger]

My first two thought are Mantic's new Battlezones and Battle System's card Stronghold (which I have just wrote a blog post about, http://cruciumgiger.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/build-be-stronghold-worthy-of-sci-fi.html).  Both are relatively easy to put together and with a minimum amount of painting (or non for Battle System) you can have a very good looking board.

[eilif]

Ikea (and lots of other places) sell nests of boxes with lids that all stack inside one another...

Get a couple of packs, spray all the boxes and lids in greys, whites, and whatever other colours you want. Turn all the boxes over and add window and door details. Done! Now you have lots of sturdy buildings, with roofs (thank you lids), that not only store well (because they stack into each other) but which are sturdy too (upturned lid placed on upturned box can take a good weight, and the edge of the lid proves a little cover as well).

If you leave the lids off some of the boxes (so you have some flat plain roofs), you can convert those lids into walkways to connect the building.

Examples here, here and here.

That's pretty brilliant. For some reason I find the simply painted boxes with a bit of card or foamcore greebling much better looking than the boxes with color printed sides glued to them. This setup you posted is particularly nice and something that really anyone can do.


I love my plastic crate buildings, but they sure take up alot more room than these boxes that next inside each other.

[The_Beast]

...
I love my plastic crate buildings, but they sure take up alot more room than these boxes that next inside each other.

Fair dinkum, but you can find some crates that will nest a bit.

The ones I want to use for '15mm' could be small, cramped buildings at 28mm, and if you turn same sized crates, the nest a bit as well.

And even if they don't, they're CRATES. Fill them with other terrain pieces... 

Doug

[Blue in vt]

For more of an interior experience you might consider the Battle Systems Sci Fi terrain that they recently had a kick starter for...here are some examples

http://www.battlesystems.co.uk/gallery.html

Cheers,

Blue