Warhammer 40000 Display Shelf

This display was designed to span the entire width of an Ikea 'Billy' shelf, so I had the thought of two opposing forces - Space Marines on one side, and icky, Nurgle Plague Marines on the other. I'd never played Space Marines, nor had I played Warhammer in some 20+ years, but on seeing some of the latest designs in 2023/2024 I had an urge to build a display after I had cleared the shelves of this bookcase of clutter.

The scenery building ended up being loads of fun, and reminded me of one of the main reasons I started playing miniatures games all those years ago. It's creative in a way that building and painting models alone can never match.

I also got to use some bits and pieces that I had stored away decades ago, and would have simply sat in a box otherwise.

The Space Marine (specifically for Deathwing Dark Angels) was intended to be a ruined/bombed out gothic chapel, with some ancient tomb in the centre. It would be surrounded by typical 40K style concrete, blasted and smashed by countless battles.

Since I wanted both display tiles to be seperate, and I knew they would be fundamentally different, I decided to use some simple resin concrete barriers at the edge of the Space Marine tile to act as both a divider, as well as a barricade against the attacking forces of Nurgle.

Parts list

• 10mm XPS foam board (38cm x 25cm)
• Very old set of Warhammer 40K ruined buildings, from the 3rd edition box set
• Bag of assorted grit/small rubble, etc
• PVA white glue
• Resin 'concrete barriers' from an Ebay seller
• Resin 'ruined gothic tomb' from an Ebay seller

The concrete 'tile' effect was created by slicing the foam board with a craft knife against the edge of a steel ruler, than using a blunt object (a ballpoint pen works well), scoring down the existing cuts. After that additional random scores and pock marks were created into the foamboard to appear like battle damage.

The ruins were then glued in place and the grit and rubble placed around the base of the ruins to represent collapsed walls. A little bit of flock was dusted here and there to give a bit of texture to some of the concrete tiles. Everything was then sealed with a watered down mix of PVA glue.

A base coat of black was sprayed over the entire tile, and progressive layers of lighter greys were applied with large drybrush, highlights were given to the edge of broken concrete slabs. The ruins themselves were painted in Vallejo 'Sombre Grey', with some light grey drybrushing around cracked columns/edges. A sepia wash wash applied along brickwork, edges of windows etc.

Parts list:

• 10mm XPS foam board (38cm x 25cm)
• 3D printed 'Alien Bile Spires' from an Ebay seller (I didn't want to print anything this large!)
• Assorted grit/rubble
• Model railway ballast
• Cork boulders
• Static grass and flock
• Epoxy resin adhesive (approx 100ml)

I mixed a very small amount of Vallejo Game Colour Camoflage Green into the resin, no more than 4 drops, and it produced a wonderful, disgusting, vomit-inducing dirty green/brown/yellow water effect. Just what I was hoping for!

For any normal water effect, I would have probably used a hair drier on warm to get the bubbles out of the resin, but for this Nurgle-tainted river of slime it actually looks better all frothy and putrid.

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