How To Make Urban Barricades

Hello again and we have another treat for your visit to Father Nurgle's cupboard, another terrain tutorial. This week I will be telling you how to make some urban barricades from left over bits. For this terrain you will need to gather:

• Masonite or thick card for the base
• Sandpaper
  
• Scrap pieces of polystyrene or high density Styrofoam
• Straws or any other type of plastic tubing
• Corrugated card (I got mine from the 'sleeve' of a Starbucks coffee, but it can be bought in craft shops)
  
• Left overs from your bitz box or anything else you can scrounge
  
• Green stuff
• Mesh
• Crafts knife
  
• PVA glue

OK, step number one is to cut some Masonite to your desired length and width. An important tip here is to cut curving shape, so it is not too straight and rectangular, this makes the edges of the Masonite stick out less. Once you have cut it out sand the edges so that they are rounded.

Now the next step really allows a lot of freedom on your part because basically you will stick random stuff onto the base, try an imagine the defenders have hastily constructed the barricades from whatever is at hand. For example rubble, scrap pieces of metal and tubing, parts of vehicles, sandbags, barrels, etc. Do a 'dry run' first placing the items the best you can before gluing them to make you are happy with the layout. I used a model to make sure the wall was the right height. Once you are happy with the layout start to glue your bits along one of the long edges of the Masonite using the PVA glue.

In my urban barricades I used some left over barrels from some stuff I bought off eBay, straws for the pipes, polystyrene and Polyfill for the wall sections, corrugated card and some left over tank bits from my bitz box. I had two little rubble sets from one of Games Workshops old corner ruins set and some barrels and half a barricade from GW's Battlefield Accessories set that I got cheap off of eBay. Once the glue is dry your barricades should look something like this.

Once the glue was dry I decided to add some sandbags to the barricades, further enforcing how they had been hastily thrown together. I followed a tutorial I found on Miniwargaming on how to make a sandbag barricade and strongly suggest you watch it for this next step as I cannot describe it any better. I have attached the video below.

Once the sandbags are in place, the next step will be to base them. I just based them with sand. Just before it time to base coat them your urban barricades should now look like this.

I did not use a spray primer to base coat the barricades as this would melt the polystyrene. I used a tin of matt black paint i got off eBay that I have used before. At this point I have a bit of a confession to make. You may notice on my finished barricade pictures that the rubble walls look different. The paint I had used before, I had not used on polystyrene and guess what happened. It only went and ate my polystyrene! I had to pick off and clean the sandbags and then use Polyfiller to build up the walls. This took 3 lots and then carved it and sanded it. Put in some bullet holes. I think it looks OK but some areas do not look very good at all.

Now obviously I will be giving you a tip here. Always and I mean always test your paint before using it on some scrap piece of the material you are about to use the paint on. This will avoid the frustration of your models or terrain getting eaten up like a virus only Papa Nurgle can be pleased about.

Anyway, once you have finished paint your barricades, they should look like mine below. I took the photo's with the barricades in my light box (the same one O'Shashar uses) with a spare Chaos Space Marine model I had lying around for scale.

And so there you have some lovely looking Urban barricades for your game board for any type of 40K game, especially for Planetstrike or Cities of Death. Until next time my fellow plague bringers.