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Ruins-Kits
The AW ruins
kits are designed to not only to be flexible but so that the modeller can make a wide variety of possible "structures" from a single kit. As such the following instructions are only for guideline purposes and the structures built may not utilise all of the components from within each kit. In the case of the Temple Kit used below we only used about 60% of the HA blocks contained in the full kit.
1: Base.
Cut an MDF base to an appropriate size. We recommend a minimum size of 200mx150mm. After cutting the base make sure that you carefully "bevel" the edges of the board using a sharp knife. THis allows the finished piece to fit flush with any gaming table it is placed on and more seamlessly fit into a wargames table environment.
2: Fit foam/styrene layer.
If you wish to use foam board or polystyrene so that you can dig your ruins into the ground, then affix the polystyrene onto the MDF board now using PVA glue or similar.
3: Dry build
After laying out your HA blocks form the kit and having defined the size of the final piece by laying down the MDF and polystyrene it is no time to decide what your ruins will look like.
The best way to make a realistic ruin is to first "dry build" a wall, window or other structure as though you were building an undamaged one. Dry-build means that you don't use any glue, so just stack up the bricks or lay them out in a shape that end sup looking like a real wall or window etc.
Once you have a good structure in mind stop for a moment and consider what you are building the ruin for: if it is for a diorama then almost any structure is fine, but if it is for wargaming then you should look to maintain 3 key things:
i) Strength - the wall, window, ruin should be strongly built, any fine or fancy bits are likely just to get broken during gameplay
ii) Open-plan - you are going to want to be placing and moving figures throughout the ruin, so try not to make the space too cramped and try to ensure you can reach around both side of the ruin. Narrow openings, arched windows and entranceways all look good but can seriously restrict gaming access.
iii) level playing field - figures need to be able to stand up, so always try to have enough room in front, behind or on top of any areas of the ruins that you will want to place figures e.g. if you intend for them to use a wall or window to shoot out from them make sure their is space behind the wall or window to actually put a figure without it falling over on a steep edge.
4) Break it up!
Once you have decided on your ruin, dry-built it and ensured there is room around it for gaming now is the time to break it up!
If you look at the picture above you will see that it has been made to give the "impression" of graceful and large windows, with flowing columns and smooth flagstones inside "whatever it was". This is the real art in making convincing ruins - enough damage so that it looks ruined but not so much damage that it just looks like a pile of rubble.
Things that look good include:
i) broken bits lying inside and outside a wall
ii) broken flagstones
iii) broken columns
iv) "robbed-out" walls (ruins make for good building materials and the locals love to steal the big stones to build themselves new houses or barns. Almost all real life ruins are "robbed-out".)
v) broken stones - make sure you chip and damage stones especially along the ends of walls
vi) rotten and splintered woodwork, broken pottery, broken barrels, other debris
Things that look bad include:
i) perfect walls without any damage
ii) delicate stonework that is still intact (unlikely after fire, flood and rampaging hordes have been through it a few times)
iii) undamaged woodwork, cleanly painted walls, intact glass
iv) anything useful looking and not tied down (if it had any use left in it it would have been looted already, so don't leave good doors, carts, weapons, crates and such like in your ruins.
So, taking the above advice we will now break off the edges of some stones with pliers, snap a few columns and use a hobby knife of the corner of some pliers to put nicks and dents into smooth surfaces. Remember to keep all those bits that you snap off though - we will use them later.
5) Glue it down good!
Ok, so now is the time to glue down our ruins blocks. If you have used the polystyrene then you can "dig-in" your first row of blocks so that they look as though they are coming up through the ground - this is what real walls do after all.
If you have any areas of flagstones or smooth floor then consider digging it in so that the surface is uneven, this will look like natural subsidence as shown on the image below.
Glue the blocks in distinct rows using a glue such as Speed-Bond or another strong PVA glue. Standard PVA glue may not be strong enough for fixing delicate parts but is generally ok for large square blocks and for fixing down rubble and such like. Delicate pieces or those with only a small surface area for fixing should be glued using stronger adhesives or super-glue.
make sure you leave the bricks for at least 24 hours to dry
and preferably 7 days if you are using PVA (yes it can take that long to set!)
6) Gunking Time!
"Gunking" is the name i give to my first undercoat. This is a thick exterior masonry paint which is very gloopy and needs almost forcing into gaps and bricks. You don't have to use masonry paint and normal acrylics will work fine, but i don't suggest using your best figure painting paints. Try finding brands like "Anitas", "Plaid" or "DecoArt" who make much bigger pots of paint for cheaper prices - this acrylic paint is just fine for painting scenery.
Make sure your first paint layer is a black undercoat and really "gunk" the paint down into cracks, around joins and in, around and under any bits of rock, rubble or bricks that stick up form the ground or point out from the walls. Try not to leave any white bits of the HA blocks show through at all.
Once that is done then change colour to a dark brown and "gunk"
in around all the surface areas between the ruins blocks and such like. What you should now have is your black ruins with each area of ruin surrounded by an area of dark brown paint.
7) Drybrush time.
What we will now do is dry brush our ruins from black through to white using a dry brush technique. (I am using a Black-WHite paint series so that the ruins come out looking like granite or marble stone, you can use other colours, especially v-dark brown through to light tan/fleshtone if you like) .
Don't worry about over-painting onto the surrounding ground.
The two pictures above show what our "finished" dry brushed ruins should look like and once you get to this stage it is now time to start on the detailing and ground work as the ruins themselves are almost finished.
8) Tidy up the ground.
We will now tidy up all the edges around the ruins where we have over shot with our dry brushing. It is important to do this carefully and to ensure that all light colours are covered up on the ground and pay particular attention to covering the ground right up to the edge of the brickwork and down into any pits you have.
We are going to cover up all of the ground area but even so bits of the brown will still show through and leaving a spot of white or gray paint you think nobody will notice will guarantee that everybody will notice is.
We have now painted the entire "ground" area in one shade of brown or another right down to and including the beveled edges of the MDF board and your ruin should look something like the image above. We are now ready to add scatter.
9) Scatter it up.
The trick to using scatter to maximum effect is to use it as a "mid layer" between the brown-painted "earth" and what will be our "top layer" of static grass.
When we put scatter down we won't be worrying too much about "blending" the different colours into one another, this is because our top layer of grass will obscure most edges. having said that what won't look good are any straight lines, so also try to put the scatter down in rough shapes without straight lines and, if you have the time and inclination, blending the scatter from one mix to another will look better... but you don't HAVE TO do it.
We are going to put the scatter down in a distinct order, starting with the colour that would be lowermost in real life - earth/soil. Any area s of the ruins that you want to represent bare earth should be covered with out "Earth Tones" scatter mix. Travel-worn areas and especially "pits" around sunken stones or walls should have Earth-Tones put down. If such areas run to the edge of the board make sure that you also glue down the scatter on the beveled edge of the board as shown above.
The next colour i use is a very light green/yellow mix, typically our "Winter Mix" or "Autumn Mix". THis represents grassy areas that are poor growing areas; low light or sunken, and are best along the very edges of stones, walls and sunken masonry as shown above.
Next we add our Spring, Summer and Autumn Mixes in patches to suit yourself. TO get natural looking ruins it is best to stop and think of what colours the grasses/ground would be at each area you are covering: Is it on top of bank? If so then it might be very dry and the grass might be yellowed. Is it at the bottom of a depression where water would gather? If so make it a nice dark green to represent lush grasses.
10) Rockin'!
We now add any extra "talus" or rock debris. In the picture above I have added in coarse talus around the sunken pits that stones have sunk into and in piles that slip down the beveled edge of the polystyrene and MDF. Because we are using coloured talus we aren't painting over this debris with dry brushing colours (although you could do if you were very very careful). Instead, to give a good appearance of natural looking weather-worn stones, we will use some of the AW "Weathering Powders".
These are a very refined raw paint pigment that you can very lightly dust onto objects to give them very fine colouring. With just the four AW Weathering Powders you can make almost any external structures look aged, mud stained, lichen covered and old within minutes.
Just dab a tiny amount of the powder onto a soft DRY brush, then lightly flick it across the object you wish to colour: in this case i have added some "rust", "ploughed earth" and "clay mud" to the piles of talus, lower edges of some stones, and then "lichen green" to some areas of the columns and lower rocks and talus to represent the tiny green lichens that always grow on such objects.
If you compare the picture directly above with the one above that you will see the HUGE difference in appearance and how much "Older and worn" the lower picture makes the stones appear.
11) Static Grass et al
We have now, essentially, finished our ruin and all that is left to do is to put on the final layers of natural products. In the Kits this is usually static grass and maybe some long grass or even reeds.
I prefer to place the long grass and reeds first, typically having them sprout up from underneath stones and through piles of talus (it looks good and means you can glue them down with more glue than out in the open).
Once that is done you can then add the final layer - static grass. Using either watered-down PVA or "scenic cement" or "matte medium" spray a fine mist of the glue over the scatter areas, trying to void the rocks and stones of the ruins themselves (don't worry too much when you overshoot).
Once that is done apply static grass, preferably with an applicator (a little puffer bottle) or if not by dusting t on with your fingers. Feel free to alter the colours of the static grass from area to area or just mix up colours into one Mix and apply it all over.
Remember! The static grass is there to break up the lines of the scatter underneath it and to give our "grass" some 3D texture. It isn't there to give colour and shading, that is done by the scatter underneath it and the brown paint underneath that.
Before the watery-PVA, scenic cement or matte medium dries, make sure to CAREFULLY wipe off (preferably use tweezers) any static grass that has become stuck to the stones or columns where there shouldn't be any. Then take the ruin and put it somewhere relatively dust free and where it wont get knocked about or prodded at by little brothers, dogs, cats or careless parents.
And there we have it - one nicely ruined temple.
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