How to Paint: Modular WW1 Trench Terrain
- warfulcrumgames
- Aug 4
- 4 min read
With the release of our fully modular 28mm WW1 trench terrain system, James is here to explain how he went about painting his set for the Warfulcrum Games battlefield. If you like what you see, you can buy yours from the Warfulcrum webstore right now, including individual sections (with lots more sections planned and coming soon!)
One of my favorite aspects of historical wargaming is the research that goes into a project. So when I got my own set of WW1 trenches, I went straight to work thinking about where they were on the front line - and how they were lived-in, real spaces. British soldiers tended to personalise their spaces with signs and names that matched the streets and places they lived near, so I wanted to add them to it (more on that later).
Then I considered my own British force - members of the 20th Battalion, London Regiment, a territorial regiment recruited from the London borough where I live. This helped inspire my choices going forward - even if I do find the research the longest part of any project, as I inevitably go down various rabbit holes…
Preparing your trench terrain
There’s minimal clean-up required by FDM printing - but it’s wise to go over each section making sure there are no left over supports and generally cleaning it up.
After that, the first thing I did was layer the outsides of the trenches with textured paste and grit. We’ve got plenty of detail already, but I wanted to really give my trenches a texture that showcased the more chalky terrain of Cambrai - where my British company would have served during the latter part of 1917 into 1918. So I created what I called ‘forbidden pudding’, a mixture of grout, brown paint and grit that I liberally spread all over each section over an afternoon. I kept this just on the sides of trenches to emulate the build-up of debris after repeated artillery barrages.
Priming your trenches
Once this had all dried, I then went about priming it an earthy brown - using Colour Forge Trench Brown primer - as a base colour for the entire trench section. Then, I got into the great drybrushing - a task that really does require tenacity and a distracting podcast. I wanted to get these done in a weekend, and I’m quite an industrious painter, so I settled down and gave every single section a heavy drybrush of Vallejo German Beige, bringing out the detail with a big brush. I then continued with a lighter layer of Vallejo Khaki to brighten everything up, and finally, Stone Grey.
With the entire section drybrushed, I then shamefully forgot to take pictures, and instead moved onto the woodwork. Our trench terrain pieces have an absolutely enormous amount of detail in them - and the duckboards in particular really stand out. Sam (who designed the trenches) wanted to showcase that first world war trenches were designed to sit above the waterline, so soldiers (ideally) wouldn’t be getting their feet wet (they did, constantly), and it also means that if you so wish, you could fill them with water effects.
I wanted to let the detail stand out, so I elected to paint up every bit of wood with Citadel Contrast Wyldwood followed by Citadel Garaghak's Sewer, letting them blend naturally, before giving a second - very light - drybrush with Stone Grey to help the details pop. Any sandbags I went over with German Beige, and then shaded with Vallejo Umber, drybrushing them with Khaki once that had dried.
Fine details
I picked the metals out with Oily Steel and Brass, shading them both with Umber. Finally, I went back to the mud and earth - and gave it all a liberal dusting with a 2:1 mix of the Vallejo pigments Light Sienna and Natural Sienna.
Now that each section was dry, I needed to personalise them, so I got a hold of several coffee stirrers and went about cutting them up to make bespoke signs and a trench bridge or two - painting them the same way as the woodwork. For the signs, I then painted them with Off-White, being sure to give it that rough, hand painted look, before I went about writing little signs that really made the trench feel lived in. These were tied to areas around me, and emulated that habit soldiers made of naming their trenches after their own communities back home.
This is the kind of project that can be completed in a weekend, and it’s perfect for batch painting. It doesn’t matter if you’re not neat - the first world war was a muddy, messy affair and the trenches were dank, smeared and dirty. You could brighten your trenches up with a dusting of summer grass that’s survived all the shell.
We reckon you’d need about 8 to 10 pieces to cross a standard size of map - and double that if you want to make two lines of trench terrain. At present, we’ve released about a third of the pieces we eventually plan to make, and there’ll be crossroads, pillboxes, switchbacks and flood sections - enough to make the trenchline on your corner of the Western Front come to life.
Our modular WW1 trench terrain is available from our webstore now - we offer a bundle deal and individual pieces.
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