This post is for those budding terrain makers out there for whom safe storage of there terrain is the most important factor (mainly here i’m thinking gaming clubs, but it also covers anyone whose storage space is limited).

The normal way of building terrain is to build big cool things, e.g. my Necromunda Terrain set for 6s2hit, and then when coming to store them scratch your head as how your going to fit this round peg into the square hole (p.s. sorry Kenny but it looks cool at least;).

The alternative, i’m gonna call the ‘club option’, is to start with the box (or shelf, cupboard, etc.) that your terrain is going to be stored in and design inside this area. Now lets take a quick sideline onto boxes, personally i’ve found that Really Useful Boxes are the best option for terrain storage as they are tough, stackable, and parallel sided (means things don’t have too much jiggle room). Particularly the 20L, 33L, 50L, 64L & 84L boxes as they have the same foot print for stacking:

33L box at the top, with two 50L boxes below

Large foot print area for terrain & parrallel sided so terrain comes out easily

Now as well going into the box the terrain also needs to not damage itself whilst in storage, so it needs to stack in such a way that the beautifully crafted surfaces aren’t grinding into each other. The simplest option is to design your terrain with a flat bottom (i.e. the base) and top so can be stacked neatly, and be of shapes that can interlock to fit within the box footprint:

The hill – perfect example of flat top/bottom stackability

Here is a bit of a mind experiment i did over the weekend, drawing out the footprint of a box base then designing some multi level necromunda terrain (flat top/bottom) that would fit within the area

And here is a single terrain piece of the same that just fits with the box. Note the red boxes would be internal voids that other scatter terrain could be stored inside of (terrain within terrain, its how i role :P)

And in case the coloured line throw you here is the key (dark blue base, light blue top, other colours show structure at different levels, dotted lines indicate covered structures & unsupported gantries… confused ;)

However there is only a limited number of terrain styles for which such a convenient flat top/bottom structure looks good. So your other options are some sort of protective wrapping (sheet foam, kitchen towels, etc.) around the terrain when tetris packing it into the box, or building some internal structures in the box that surround & support the terrain:

So in summery when you run (or ran) a gaming club, or have limited store space for some other reason (like real life!), then its worth considering how your going to store your terrain before you start building it.

Hope this helps ;D

Nick

In other news i’m continuing with baby prep (/stress) by having a clearout and redesign of the hobby room. Some way still to go yet but here are some in progress pics and some terrain bits’n’bobs built from leftovers:

Table now up against wall, second desk (nee cat bed) to be cut down for new toys (watch this space:)

Now have floor space woo! but still need to clear out some more chairs, terrain, boxes, etc.

Gaming board now in the corner, hopefully someone will buy this from me so I can clear more space.

‘Some’ trees…what can I say if you buy in bulk you get alot of leftovers.

Most of the spare stuff from building the Necromunda terrain for 6s2hit, this is the sort of small scatter that would fit inside the above design terrains ‘internal storage’