I’ve made a tile that I am planning to cast as a start of some CD related terrain. To be used perhaps for roads, or the floor behind defensive walls etc (I’ve been inspired by the GW trench terrain).
It’s 4" x 4", with 25 20mm squares ontop. Yes, I know I could have just used the GW modular movement tray cut to shape, or indeed just scored lines in plasticard to make a paving slab effect.
What I am planning is to sculpt/ cut out of plasticard a detailed design to go ontop that will look interesting from all 4 sides. I’ll press the slab lines ontop so it looks like it’s been assembled.
It has to be interesting enough, but not so fancy that it will look silly being repeated over a large area. Of course I could make more than one design…
So any ideas where to start?
The only I idea I had was something like the star design ontop of the new warshrine. But that perhaps is too similar to the 8 point star for CD?
I like your tile idea. I don’t really have any suggestions for you though. I can only think of the typical cobblestone effect, which is more Human than Chaos Dwarf.
Have you thought about making some semi-random pieces of metalwork that would fit between floor tiles - where the grout would be. If you made a partial ‘grid’ of sorts, you could cut off pieces and incorporate it randomly (or not) between the floor tiles.
You wouldn’t have to worry much about repetition because you could cast several resin ‘grids’ which you could then trim and incorporate - maybe after painting them copper, or another metallic colour.
It could help break up the monotony of the sea of grey tiles, and would look pretty cool, I think. Having a few of the stones being ‘gripped’ by the metalwork having runes or symbols carved in them would look pretty cool, too.
If you plan to cast the floor tile sections there would be quite some freedom for different designs. For example you could make elongated, hexagonal tiles akin to the new Chaos Dwarf scalemail, which would be somewhat tricky to achieve in plasticard. The positive effect of using hexagonal stones would be the differentiation made between the CD architecture on the one hand and human and Dwarf styles on the other. With or without the hexagons you could expand further and incorporate Chaos star patterns (or perhaps just patterns with three out of eight spears in the Chaos star, like the 5th edition big hats featured), designs involving bull heads, stylized fire and lightning or even scenes with bull centaurs or slavedrivers whipping bent-backed slaves. Metalwork could be incorporated in the casts.
Now I don’t know the scale of terrain you plan to construct, but nevertheless if I were you I would probably try to arrange them in a single-line “chessboard” pattern, or like a band of beads where every other bead is different to those in between. Say that you make the first sections (which would be outmost at the corners of a battlement) square and then make the second sections rectangular, with squares in between the rectangles and rectangles in between the squares. With the tile sections arranged in this every other way you could perhaps make the square sections a fairly complicated pattern, such as a Chaos star, whilst the every other rectangle sections could me simpler.
Or, the rectangular sections could be more complex, such as featuring two bands of runes at “top” and “bottom” of their long sides, with ordinary stone tiles or carved scenes (of supposedly historical or mythological importance) in stone or metal in between the rune bands. In this way you could incorporate lots of Chaos and Chaos Dwarf imagery, such as cracked skulls, slaves and overseers, or daemonic faces.
For Chaos Dwarf terrain with walls and facade you could always take an inspirational look at capitol of the Chaos faction, the Inevitable City from Warhammer Online, even though it’s not a CD settlement. Perhaps there are a few design elements in there that could prove useful.
Try quarter circles (maybe more like cogs to fit CDs) where you have two quarters on each 25mm square. Going in and out left and top, with the other going in and out bottom and right. It will allow you to make wobbly lines and if you play around create patterns. use the same idea as that warshrine star for the ctual lines in the tiles to make them interesting.
