Lustrian Mordheimby XhilipepaINTRODUCTIONNow let me make a few things clear about myself. I am one of the most inherently lazy people on the planet. I don't have a long enough concentration span to paint an entire army in the traditional way, much less make my own terrain. Until recently, buying terrain was good enough, but it was basically too expensive. I needed lots of terrain, with minimum effort. And so I introduce Papa Xhil's Solutions, a series of articles on converting models and building terrain for those with 3 left thumbs, no money, and even less time. Papa Xhil Enterprises is sorry to report that any individual with more than 3 left thumbs will be unable to utilise these articles fully. I fully accept that there are better modelling articles and techniques than these. However, for the money and time spent, I feel that these solutions are pretty good. THE LIZARDMEN CITYPapa Xhil's version of the Lizardmen city is ideal for Mordheim. It is not all covered here, but the basic component is - the two sizes of skink barrio and interconnecting bridges. Equipment- Cocktail sticks (the little ones) * Cardboard Rolls: The key to the varying size of the barrios is cardboard roll size. To make a large barrio - lower tier or stand alone size - you should use the common toilet roll of 4.5 cm diameter and 11 cm length. The 4.5 cm diameter is the important bit. To make a small barrio - higher tier size - use packaging rolls of 3.5 cm diameter. Small BarrioChop a piece off your packaging roll of about 5 cm. Squash and fold your cylindrical piece of card into a rough rectangle. It won't be a perfect rectangle, which is fine. Don't score it to fold it, just squash it into shape. Your roll should now have a cuboid-with-rounded-corners cross section, a door of about 2 cm width and 2.5 cm height in the bottom of one of the wider faces. Drill two pairs of parallel holes in the tops of both wide faces. Chop about 2/3 off two cocktail sticks, and insert them through the holes, piercing both faces. Cut off the points of both sticks. Cut out a piece of paper which will be the roof of the barrio. For this purpose, it should have tabs to go up the sides of the barrio - it is not placed directly on top, but slightly beneath the parapet. Fold the tabs in and tailor the paper to fit inside the top of the barrio. Put PVA glue onto each of the tabs. Place the paper on top of the cocktail sticks which go through the barrio, and glue the tabs to their corresponding walls. Leave to dry, and the PVA gives the structure incredible rigidity, helped along by the cocktail sticks which look great as well. To paint, cover in textured paint and then drybrush as usual. These are really quick to make at about 5 minutes per barrio so you can have nice big avenues of them. Large BarriosThe construction of large barrios is identical to that of the small ones, except that since you are now using the larger toilet roll the paper roof will have to be bigger, and the cocktail sticks slightly longer. You should cut the toilet roll in half, so the height should be approximately 5.5 cm, whereas the smaller barrio's height is 5. The difference should be small but noticeable. Double Tiered BarriosTo make a double tiered barrio, you require 1 small and 1 large skink barrio. Place the smaller one on top of the larger one, and you have a double tiered barrio. Ceiling CapacityIf constructed correctly approximately 2 small based models ought to be able to stand atop the larger barrio comfortably, and only 1 on the smaller ones. The following is a good rule for ceiling and interior capacity for the barrios for Mordheim and the like: Large Barrio: 2 small based/1 large based model Monster based models cannot stand in or on top of either of the barrios. Interconnecting BridgesThese bridges are designed to stand between any combination of double tiered and large barrios. Cut a strip from a GW mail order box of optional length - I suggest that the average bridge length is 12-14 cm - and a width of 2.3 cm. The mail order boxes are ideal because they are corrugated for rigidity, but also thin so they don't look ridiculous. The angle that these bridges meet the barrios at is customisable. If you want the barrios parallel then obviously leave the ends flat. If you want a 45 degree angle between the barrios, chop one of the ends so that it is 45 degrees. These are so quick to make that you can make 5 for every degree available, so don't be conservative. On the underside of the bridge, score a line about 0.5 cm in from each end, and fold the resultant flap in. Chop a cocktail stick up so that its ends only just protrude from underneath the ends of the bridge, and PVA glue them into the corner of the crack (this is for extra rigidity on the corners). Congratulations, you now have a fully functional bridge. PaintingTo paint all pieces of scenery described so far, follow the same procedure. Paint them all over with textured paint, preferably a sort of sandy yellow. If you can't get hold of a sandy yellow textured paint, just use normal textured paint and paint it yellow later. Whatever happens, drybrush in a brighter shade of yellow so that the little bits of sand or grit stand out. Due to the nature of the paint this makes everything even more rigid. And there you have it! Other terrain tips include using the WH40k trees as jungle trees, which work brilliantly. Leave the green plastic of the leaves as it is, but put a green wash on it for darkening and bringing out the full detail. 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