How to paint our modular trench terrain: The Redoubt and Emplacement sets
Two new sets of trench terrain are available now from the Warfulcrum Games webstore: the Redoubt Bundle and the Emplacement Bundle. These are designed as complete sets of terrain, with straights, fortifications and end pieces to create a really dramatic and self-contained fortification for your WW1 gaming.
The emplacement has a groove cut in it for a field gun to fire in relative safety, while the emplacement has a Moir pillbox in it - an impregnable fortress for a Vickers heavy machine gun.
These pieces are immediately ready for the tabletop: they’re very finely detailed and look great even without paint on them. But who wants unpainted terrain? Sam, who designed them, has come up with a quick and simple scheme to get your new terrain looking amazing without weeks’ worth of effort!
Materials
Acrylic ground texture: Dry Earth Ground from Mig Ammo
Acrylic paints: German Camo Beige and Iraqi Sand from Vallejo Model Colour; Steel from Vallejo Metal Colour; Wildwood and Militarum Green from the Citadel Contrast range
Weathering pigments: Clay Brown, Green Earth and Sooty Black from Secret Weapon; European Earth from Vallejo
Modelling putty: Tamiya (this stuff is water based which is very nice to work with).
(Optional) Oil paints and white spirit: Umber and Lamp Black from Windsor and Newton (graduate paints are fine for weathering) and odourless artists white spirit.
Rather than show you every piece, we’ve picked one - the emplacement section - to show you the techniques we used. All the other pieces were painted the same way at the same time as a batch.
Step 0
Don't bother undercoating the terrain piece. The dark brown filament we use works well as the base colour (that's why we do it) and the paste/paints we’re using adhere fine to the PLA.
Step 1
Apply the ground texture paste to all the exposed earth areas of the model. Make sure to get the ones inside the trench as well.
Top tip: Use an old brush that you don't care about. The grit in the paste gets into the ferrule and will ruin the brush very quickly.
Step 2
Earth is never one colour. Separate a little of the texture paste and add a few drops of German Xamo Beige. No need to be precise about ratios. Splotch and stipple the yellow grey earth texture on random patches of the previous layer, covering around one third. If it's still wet and mixes a bit then all to the good.
Step 3
Brush a layer of the modeling putty onto the top flat sections of all the sandbags. This completely erases any of the (tiny) remaining print lines for a perfect finish.
Step 4
Apply a heavy drybrush to all the sandbag and timber elements of the trench section with German Camo Beige using a large makeup brush. Don't worry if some of it goes on the earth. It matters not.
Top tip: Don't wipe the paint off with a paper towel when dry brushing, it makes the paint go chalky as it takes away too much moisture. Instead, just mush the lightly loaded brush about on your palette until enough comes off and the paint load is right.
Step 5
Repeat step 3 using Iraqi Sand with a light application on the wood. Go heavier on the sandbags.
Step 6
Paint all the woodwork with Wildwood thinned 1:1 with water. Once it has dried (more or less) apply a patchy and uneven layer of militarum green to the woodwork. Don't worry if either or both of these get on some of the earth texture. It's all good.
If there is any metalwork, paint it steel.
Top tip: Try to avoid painting wood that has been exposed to the elements straight brown. A bit of green grey in there adds some realism for little effort.
Step 7
Pin wash all the non-earth elements with a dark brown wash. Ideally this would be an oil wash, as it has superb capillary action which makes this very quick. If not, you could use something like Ratling Grime mixed with Wildwood 1:1 and thinned heavily with water. Either way, chuck a few splotches on the earth as well to add some variety.
If you're oil washing, mix the brown umber and lamp black in approx 2:1 ratio and then add the odourless white spirit to around 10:1. After application, and once the spirit has evaporated, you can clean up the tops of the sandbags and any unwanted pools with a makeup sponge or cotton bud. Easy peasy.
Step 8
That's all the hard work done. It's pigment time. Load up a medium brush with each pigment and ‘tap’ it onto the model from above. The applications should vary based on the pigment:
European Earth - a fair smattering pretty much all over, but go lighter on the woodwork
Clay Brown - a few patches here and there
Green Earth - a few patches here and there, less than the clay brown
Sooty Black - very sparing, a few choice locations such as shell craters, dark corners, bits of burned wood etc.
Once those are down, get a soft brush and work across the piece mushing the pigments into the textures of the model and blending them together to give a nice natural variation of tones.
Step 9 (Optional)
Once you're happy with the pigment effect, give the terrain a very light dusting from 30-40cm with matte varnish from above. This seals the pigments, but is not essential.
Step 10 (Optional)
Add a few tufts and bushes here and there to taste.
Done!
The new trench terrain bundles are available now - they cost £60, which is a whopping 25% discount on buying each section individually! Click here for the Emplacement Bundle and here for the Redoubt Bundle. You can also pick up the Core Set - which contains enough sections to make a really solid, modular trenchline - for £100.
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