"Cheapest and most expensive terrain pieces you have." Topic

I was thinking about this earlier this week when I took some of my Warhammer 40k minis over to Battle Honors/Old Glory15's for a Rogue Trader tournament they were hosting and I started to think about terrain its I've done for that system and others over the years and I pondered the most and least expensive pieces I have. I figured this might be a good topic to post to this forum. There are a couple of rules however:

1. No "Free" pieces or bits. In other words the spoils of your dumpster diving or picking up that neat looking bit of packaging do not count.

2. No "Given" bits either. This means no toys, minis, terrain bits given to you by others that would have "just been thrown away/sold/given to the Salvation Army" kind of deal. In other words you have had to pay cash for them.

3. ANYTHING can be considered for this. It doesn't have to be a piece designed for miniatures wargaming.

With those rules in place I'll go first.

– My cheapest terrain piece is a $1 USD blue plastic tarp that I picked up at a truckload distributorship sale. When I got I didn't intend to use it for gaming, however as had just started naval gaming my mind raced as to what to use for a seascape. Then I thought about the blue tarps I had in my garage. I grabbed one, opened the package and set some ships on it and stood back to take a look and thought to myself, "Wow that looks nice!" Didn't do too badly for a buck.

– The most expensive terrain piece I have is a Master Control Relay from my grandfather's 1984 Olds Cutlass Ciera. This happened about 12 years ago. I had been driving the car for a couple of years to work when it started to "die" on me. To be more precise, it wouldn't start. I had the car not start for me at a car wash, at work and the last time (not kidding here) upon leaving the cemetery from my father's funeral. I had it taken in and it was in the shop for three days. Finally my mechanic said he found the problem. One of the MCR's flickered while on the test equipment and he figured that was the problem child. The part was a $10-15 price range but because he spent three days on it he had to charge me a total of $120 USD bucks. I kept the old relay, cleaned, primed and painted it, slapped a couple of homemade decals on it and it now is a transformer station for 25-28mm games.

So what are your cheapest and most expensive terrain pieces?

Well, I bought five nice painted resin-cast rocks on ebay for $6, and a wonderful custom-built tramp steamer model from Richard Houston for $350.00, which was still a screaming bargain.

The steamer is big enough that we have played two games on it alone, no land in sight, so that qualifies it as 'terrain' in my mind.

Chick

cheapest: railroad trees (provided felt does not count)
priciest: a sci-fi cardstock building. (about 10 euros).
i am pretty cheap i guess…

I have some $.50 USD resin rock walls and wood piles I bought from someone at Historicon. Why can't I remember the name of the seller? I'm having a brain fart.

The most expensive are my John Jenkins buildings, with the most expensive in the $50 USD range. I painted them all myself.

On my wish list is the samurai castle by Adolfo Ramos. It's 395 Euros painted (US$560). I'd like to paint my own. I might buy one if the unpainted one is less than half that price.

I bought some jute and some florist wire and used that to make some very nice trees (for 6mm/10mm -- they also work well as hedges for 15mm/25mm.

Most expensive: well, maybe not the most dollars, but certainly the most sticker shock. A gaming buddy put some hills on his game table. Very nicely done with tree bark for cliffs. When I showed interest, he volunteered to make me one (he did three smaller ones for another guy in the group). Both of us were in shock over the final price, but, as the work had already been done, we paid up.

nyc: Probably Acheson Creations as they have the 50 cent resin bin. That is probably my cheapest terrain as well.

Most expensive is $150 USD Houston ship. Though some of my MBA buildings are close.

Rich

Cheapest by far are some trees I bought a couple of years ago for £1.00 GBP for 20 at a model shop who wanted rid.

Most expensive by far (until I can justify the cost of an ESLO castle) and continuing the car theme was a £5.00 GBP can of B&Q paint bought to paint a fortified farm but instead ended by leaking on my car seat causing £600.00 GBP of damage…. Said farm languishes dusty and unpainted as I can't bear the sight of the damn thing.

Cheapest: A Full Box (one of those scissor lid ones) of Lego Bionicle for $5.00 USD from a garage sale

Expensive: my 5 boxes of Dwarven Forge (2 Masters, 1 each Wiccked editons and corridor set).

Least: Palm trees from cake company were like $3.00 USD for a bag of 100.

Most: Grand Manner Normandy Cafe fully painted to a Collector's Standard, about $400.00 USD USD, not including shipping!

"nyc: Probably Acheson Creations as they have the 50 cent resin bin. That is probably my cheapest terrain as well."

That's it. Acheson. Great value. I'm not sure how he makes money on them!

No one got any Forge world stuff then?!!

All my terrain is hand made. Except buildings and trees most of which are model HO railway pieces.

--
Tim

Cheapest? I'm another one with 50 cent resin pieces from Acheson. That's without really thinking about flea market buys where I could divide pieces into a cost to possibly get a lower per unit price.

Most Expensive single piece is the $150 USD 28mm government building from MBA.

I do also have two self-made game boards that each have several hundreds of dollars of material put into them, probably $500 USD or more each. One of them has over 300 removable Woodland Scenics trees.

Hmmm.. Most of my terrain is handmade. The Punji Weed is pretty cheap: Dollar store toothpicks glued to AOL cds. There is a bit of paint on there, though.

Expensive end is still pretty cheap. I picked up an ENORMOUS aquarium decoration in the snape of some egyptian ruins. It's about a cubic foot in size, and absolutely glorious for gaming. I think a close second is the set of 25 trapezoidal 'dragon's teeth' blocks. Both those were in the $12-18 range.

Cheapest: 'N' gauge rail road tracks -- 10 cents or something like that at a yard sale.

Most Expensive: Watch Your Six canvas matt. I made this myself but wound up spending at least $80.00 USD to have the canvas hemmed and painted.

mjc

Cheapest: $1 USD sheet of plexiglass. 4 ft. by 4ft. used to cover folding gaming maps. (I'm ignoring smaller bargains that have less impact on the game.)

Most Expensive: $100 USD Mage Knight castle and walls. Can enclose an 5 ft. by 5 ft. area though.

Cheapest = black felt paved roads for my Ambush Z Memorial Day game. About $1.50 USD

Most expensive = MBA ruined building deal I picked up at this past Historicon. 2 ruined townhouses, 1 demolished townhouse, and 1 ruined farm house for $150. USD

GregS

Cheapest= 20 pack of 1:64 scale cars for 3 bucks. Made them into wrecks

Most expensive= $25 USD building from JR minis

Most expensive a couple of terrain mats for about $70-80 range.

least expensive felt or maybe some cheap trees.

The half-dozen card model buildings I made this weekend were both…

The models themselves were cheap (maybe a nickel worth of cardstock and a tiny fraction of the ink cartridges' cost).

The digital cutter I used to cut and score them cost $300. USD

cheapest might be my craters made from aluminum tart pans.
most expensive is a cardstock castle I had printed @ Kinkoe's for around $30 USD (never again)

I have an ERTL Cowtown set, all painted and a hand built steambaot thrown together.

I have some blue fabric for naval gaming that was relatively cheap. Not more than $10 USD or so.

Have an entire WH40K city made from their city sets augmented with pieces from armorcast, and other terrain makers. Probably around $1,000 all told. Too bad we don't really play 40k anymore.

The cheapest – probably from Acheson's bins, or similar from a flea market. (The cheapest vehicle would have to be a BOX of 20 or so Flash Gordon style Jet Bikes I got for a buck at one of the HMGS-E Flea Markets.)

The most expensive: $1,200 USD

TMP link

altfritz – I seemed to have missed that posting. Amazing terrain! Tell us it's getting some use.

Cheapest: $1 USD "stone walls" from Lemax Christmas village on sale. Very cool stone walls.

Most expensive, My ruined full cruciform cathedral from Armorcast. Complete with altar, pews, and stained glass at $250 USD (I made it really big)

Sakbe Road looks great, Altfritz !!

Cheapiest – $1 USD for brillo pads to make hedges
most expnsive – close to $200 USD worth of Armourcast sci-fi line

Cheapest: various terrain pieces made from laminated paper. Adding up the costs of paper, printer ink, and laminating plastic foil can't end up at very many cents per piece. (The laminating machine would have been quite expensive to buy, but I borrowed my mother's.)

Expensivest: a two-part resin palisade camp atop a hill. Cost ~$15.

Making terrain has never captured my imagination the way building and painting armies has.

Cheapest – none, I rather spend the time painting miniatures
Most expensive – Elso city board set. I really enjoy it.

All my terrain is card stock as I need to fold it flat after the game as I have a lot of terrain (the term too much is not one I recognise). U guess the woks out at about £0.20 GBP (around $0.50) with glue and card for small 1/72 bits.

Cheapest – One of my latest items is a 6mm Fission Nuclear Powerplant; the perpex base, pipes, main turbine house and the admin/control building where all free found items, the cooloing tower ( Plastic premix shot glass) containment dome ( Roll-on Deodorant cap), and cooling plant building (small plastic section of a card and plastic package, forget the term ) were all ancillary costs of other purchased items, so the whole thing would have cost before painting less that $15.00 NZD

Most Expensive – An Old Crow resin apartment building, base extension and roof.

So all the islands I have made from vacuformed plastic toy mounts don't count? I did buy the paint I used on them. I did get a number of survialist tent key chains at a sporting goods store for $.50 USD each. The most expensive a middle eastern fort that cost me about $200 USD

Uh, the cheapest is felt pieces for various area terrain definition. something like $6 USD for 6 different colors, plus some various spraypaints, and I've got enough felt to cover an entire table thrice over.

Most expensive is still in construction, the 40k-scale scratchbuilt Thunderhawk from a Trumpeter A-10B. Roughly $150 USD so far.

Sand, dirt. Cost, nil.

Also found some accidental cat puke on my game board. Brushed it off after it dried. Left an interesting design. Can't wait unti someone asks about it.

Cheapest: felt squares.

Most expensive: Bachmann On30 4-4-0 steam locomotive, a bargain at £105.00 GBP (unless you count the whole train as a single terrain item, in which case somewhat north of £200).

One time, some years ago, when I happened to have the cash available, I paid $280.oo for a huge Vauban fortress. I've probably used it three times since!

Cheapest would be some excellent railway trees from a supplier in China.

The least I've spent is for a bag of five hundred 2 1/2" craft sticks that I bought for $2.50 USD or less to build fences.

The most I've ever spent on one item is the Armorcast Gargant that I bought years ago, painted, and then sold on eBay. It cost $330.00 USD I don't think it is really a "miniature" since it was over a foot tall! And I only used it in a few games, mostly as a stationary terrain piece, so I consider it terrain.

Here's a picture of it: picture
I should have placed a figure next to it so you can better tell the size. A 28mm figure barely clears the blue part of his feet.

As far as the "cheapest" most of my stuff is made from pilfered stuff from work: container tops, styro, cardboard, packaging materials and a case of skewers that went missing.

The most expensive, well there's Two.
One: Some of my dads old Lionel train stuff. Some of the buildings go for over $200 USD

Two: Made some spikey plants using foam balls and nails. Someone at a game dropped one on the floor, i didn't see it and stepped on it,a few swear words, 8 stitches, and a $300 USD doctor bill later, i ground down the points on those pieces