Terrain Talk Pt. 21 – Building Orklahoma City!

Many years ago, when the world was young, White Dwarf contained many useful and interesting articles on scratchbuilding terrain (and models) from various items of household junk.

And many years ago, Ork buildings looked like this:

And this:

And this:

And lo, it was good.

And following on from our first 40k game with the 1991 Blood Angels mixing it up with Da Black Ork Cav, which (SPOILER ALERT) saw Captain Tycho laid low by Warboss Pat Ton Bludguzzla IV and carried off to his lair in the dark jungle of Armageddon Secundus.

So with the 2020s still busy doing their thing, we’ve managed to carve out a little piece of 2nd Ed technicolor heaven.. and I figured, why not carry on with that by building an Ork village in the style of the time?

I began with foamboard and a bit of that EPVC stuff I got a speaker packed in a few months ago:

You can see the measurements scribbled out on the foamboard walls, and note the exposed foamcore from some slightly wonky measuring.. no matter, this is an Ork building for a start, and we’re also going to be slapping on some texture paste.

I glued everything together with tacky glue – basically PVA mixed with isopropyl to make it quicker to dry – and the wooden textures came from snipped down lolly sticks and coffee stirrers that I got a huge job lot of from eBay. The doorway was cut out with a craft knife and then measured a piece of cardboard roughly to fit and glue it to the inner wall, then added coffee stirrers to create wood. I snipped down cocktail sticks, pushed them into the foamcore, and glued them in place to create the bars in the windows.

Roof was some plastic corrugated cardboard stuff that I’ve been trying to find a use for.. note the elastic band holding everything in place while the quick dry PVA bonds

Next I added some buttresses with scrap foamboard offcuts and girders from kebab skewers pushed into the foam and glued in place.

And then came texture paste… bit of light grey paint, PVA, sand and filler (spackle) powder… great stuff, but beware it’s a one use substance, as once that filler powder sets, it ain’t going anywhere!

And then, off to the paint shop! I gave everything a solid white prime – 90s style GW, how could I not? – and then tried a form of “leopard spotting” .. basically a yellow wash followed by a brown wash splodged randomly.. followed (in this instance) by an all over light brown wash.

Now this didn’t entirely go to plan as I wasn’t really patient enough in waiting for these to dry before adding the all over brown wash… a mistake which I repeated when I came to a bone drybrush.. but it came together OK. Brown craft paint washed with Vallejo Brown Ink for most of the wood, red washed with brown for the “feature” planks.. gun metal washed with brown inkfor the metal parts. Then It was brown drybrushed up and flocked for the groundwork and off to varnish:

I did a little bit of weathering around windows etc with thinned Vallejo Skin Wash to create the illusion of rain streaking.

But what is a 90s GW building without a flag? Nothing, that’s what! So, copying the emblems and paint scheme of Da Black Ork Cav, I cut out and painted some banners and flags and superglued them in place.. and voila, a little slice of 90’s heaven!

With a cameo from Dan’s Blood Angels – worthy of a White Dwarf back cover of yore!!

This took a little longer than planned, but hell, it was worth it, and I reckon I’ve got enough stuff to make a whole village here! And next time, I’ll remember to sand the base after beveling.. d’oh! So we’d best get ready to blow the dust off the 2nd Ed armies, even Captain Tycho can’t be expected to stand Orkish captivity for ever…

Stay safe and thrifty out there, we’ll see you again soon!