How To: Build An Alternative L-Shaped Wall

Hey folks, Bailey here from Dank Lists Wargaming and today will start the first of our How To: series of terrain building for miniature wargaming. The first piece of terrain we will focus on works well in the competitive Warhammer 40,000 scene, an L-Shaped Wall. Of course, we added our own dank twist to it.

On the left below exists our finished product but we start with the white foam to the right.

Next, we cut a 4" high strip. We suggest cutting outside as the foam will make a mess and to use a serrated-edge knife.

Followed up by a 6" long piece. In the end, we want two 6"x4" rectangles.

We follow up our cuts by mixing concrete sand with paint. We used latex house paint. We found a 1:1 ratio makes a good mixture similar to Games Workshop texture paints.

The end result will look something like this:

It may take several coats to get the stucco look on the foam as well as a few hours to dry.

Now, we want to prime our foam with a matte or satin color paint. Make sure the priming happens outside and the foam receives a good cover of the sand/paint mixture otherwise will melt releasing nasty chemicals the human body wishes to avoid.

Finally, we take the terrain inside.

Once inside, we choose a light brown color to dry over the piece.

Follow up the brown coat with a khaki dry brush and don't worry about switching brushes. I like to blend colors on my brush while dry brushing terrain.

One might consider the project done here but we like to add zest to our wall with flock. We use regular Elmer's glue to apply the flock. Flip the wall over and flick the bottom of it to knock off excess flock. We usually try to put a collector down to save these leftover bits for later.

With both pieces painted and flocked, we want to put them together. My current technique involves pushing toothpicks half-way into the foam and then squishing the two pieces together. My word of caution here consists of looking for places where the sand ended up thin because a thick blob of sand will prevent the toothpicks from penetrating the foam.

And tah-dah! We now own a fun, L-shaped wall.

We added a clear matte varnish last make it more survivable. We tend to use 4 of these on one tournament table. The wall blocks line-of-sight for 1 squad, 2 small squads, or 1 tank. We hope you enjoyed our how to article and we plan to make in the same vein in the future. If you want to ask more questions or offer suggestions please contact us through our website.

Keeping It Dank,

Bailey