Nostalgia Trip- 40k Card Terrain Showcase

Today, I wanted to highlight some of the old 40k card buildings that I have been collecting over the past few years. I think that these are still interesting pieces that add a lot to the battlefield and give you some interesting terrain to fight over.

 

GW has long since evolved from selling printed cardboard terrain, put together with the ubiquitous, long serving plastic bulkhead. They now produce some fantastic highly-detailed plastic terrain that is easy to assemble and paint (if you have the time or the money). I love their terrain kits, the bastion is a great model and I have visions of building massive structures featuring dozens of kits, if only I had that much cash lying around. However, there is still something about the old card kits that I still love.

Every gamer should have a few of these bad boys lying around.

My first purchase was the Storm of Vengeance campaign pack. This pack came with a power plant building to be used in the campaign. I got this from ebay with the intention of updating the campaign scenarios and using them in a narrative campaign featuring my Orks, Guard and Dark Angels.

 

I really like this model as it adds a sizeable line of sight blocking element to games of 40k and has a central platform that is just crying out for an objective and brawl in the middle of the battlefield. I undercoated the bulkheads in black and gave them a drybrush of Boltgun metal, then glued the structure together. I mounted it on an MDF base to make the model a bit more sturdy and flocked it to match my gaming table. I originally had a chainlink fence around the power plant. It looked nice, but proved to be prohibitive during gaming as it discouraged people from moving onto the platform.

 

Next up, we have an Imperial Bunker. This piece was languishing in the terrain box of the St Andrews Wargames club. I felt that this was a shame, as all the card pieces and bulkheads were there, but the model was never being used and in danger of being damaged. I gave the bulkheads the same treatment, glued the model together and added a base. It now makes a nice centrepiece for a guard army and I used it as a defensive centre in a narrative mission in a campaign, where a guard outpost was being assaulted.

 

Another piece that I have is the fantastic GorkaMorka fort. I had one of these when I originally purchased the GorkaMorka game in my early days of wargaming. I loved that game and keep meaning to get a campaign started at some point. The fort was a great building, it is very large and can take up a lot of space on the table. I had many a fond battle over this fort in my youth (or should that be yoof?), attempting to capture kidnapped mob members or stealing the enemy warband's scrap. Unfortunately, my original fort was lost to the ravages of time. I purchased a new one from ebay to build up once I started on my card building collection. I was very fortunate that when it arrived, the pack actually included the parts for two of the forts. I was able to re-sell one of them, essentially getting it for free!

 

I was a bit more elaborate with this base. I used filler to make a textured path leading into the fort to represent the path of the trukks going to and fro. I also added some tank traps on the entrance. I plan to add more detail to the fort interior- maybe a wrecked trukk being fixed up or some pet squigs.

 

This week, I have made a few new additions to the collection. I recently won an Imperial Firebase and Imperial Command Tower. I look forward to getting the Firebase built and based. This is a huge kit and should provide some interesting battlegrounds. I was really happy to win it this week for a decent price. The kits have come up on ebay quite a few times in the past, but were always too expensive for me to take the plunge and buy them.

 

I have had a few missteps when building the collection. Some of these pieces are over 15 years old and frequently get listed as almost complete, only to have over 50% of the components missing when they arrive. At the moment, I currently have ~80% of an Imperial Bastion from two separate purchases. Unfortunately, I am missing the main front and one of the sides of the Bastion, so have been unable to build it. I have the card outlines of the buildings, so may try to build my own to complete the piece.

One day, my pretty. One day you shall be mine!

 

I like using these card building in my 40k games. They are large pieces that tend to form a focal point for the battle and bring up some evocative scenarios. It's nice to fight over a power plant or enemy stronghold, rather than the masses of ruins and forests that tend to make up 40k battlefields. I might use them all in my next Apocalypse game to set up a really interesting Imperial world.

How about the rest of you? Do you still have any of these relics from second edition? Do they still regularly feature on your battlefield?