Very sorry for the long delay. As mentioned before I had copyedits. And then
I was a guest at New York Comic Con. And
then I came home to a week’s worth of emails and messages and it turned out my
publisher already had layouts done. And
all of that finally got squared away... well, yesterday.
Anyway...
Some of you may remember this little tent template from
about fifteen years back. Games Workshop
actually just gave it away on their website at one point, no strings attached. I went looking for it but couldn’t find it
anywhere there.
This template was originally designed for the Kroot. There’s a large one and a small one, but they
don’t look that different side by side.
I think it might be a 1/2” difference, tops. Even on this scale, that’s not much.
The template’s pretty solid and can be built as-is with no
problem. I put together five tents (two
large, three small) in about two hours.
That’s printing them out, gluing them to some old frozen pizza and
cereal boxes,
cutting them out, and assembling them.
It’s goes together very easily, too. My only suggestion might be to make the tab
on the tent body a bit wider. I scored
the corners, pre-folded, and then clamped the tab with a few clothespins. I let those each tent body sit for about ten
minutes as I assembly-lined through them.
I glued the entryway and the front panel together as a separate
piece. I tried this template back when
it came out and this is where I had trouble with it. I decided to assemble this first, then attach
it. The tabs fit in the slots, then I
folded them over and glued them for extra stability. Again these sat for about ten minutes each
with a clothespin holding them together.
Once they were dry, I glued the flaps of the front panel,
set the tent body over it, and wiggled it until everything was in the right
place. This helped me make sure that
entrance sat flat on the ground and didn’t end up “floating.” Again, maybe ten minutes for the glue to
dry. I didn’t glue them on to bases, but
really any irregular piece of foamcore or cardstock would work.
Helpful Hint—If you want to do a cardstock
base, stack two or three layers on top of each other, glue it, and let it dry
under a stack of books for at least half an hour—preferably longer. Wrap it in wax paper, too, in case glue
squeezes out onto the books. This will
give you a heavier and much more solid base that won’t bend or flex when things
dry on it.
Here’s a large and small tent side by side. As I said, not much difference in size. That’s a pretty solid little Kroot camp,
though, and three or four can cover a good-sized space on the gaming table as
an obstacle, objective, or whatever you want to use them for. With the assembly
line and drying time, I ended up building four tents in just over an hour.
Now... let’s look at some options and variations.
I wanted to make the tents look a little more unique and
handmade, and I remembered something from way back when the Ogre line was first
released for Fantasy. There was a great article in White Dwarf (remember those
days?) about how to scratch-build oversized yurt-like huts for an Ogre village. And there was a great detail idea in there...
Get a paper towel or some textured paper. Or get some better cotton paper (
dollar store envelopes work great), crumple it up, smooth it out, and repeat until
the paper has some fine texture to it.
Then trace out some simple “pelt” shapes on the material. They don’t need to be exact, but I try to
average most of them closer to 1” long.
I glued these around the tent at a few places to help hide seams and add
to the “primitive” feel of the whole tent.
The texture contrasts the smooth cardstock and will look like fur or
hide when it gets painted (in an appropriate color).
Helpful Hint—When you’re gluing the pelts in
place, don’t put the glue on the pelt or the tent. Put it on your finger and wipe it on the tent
that way. This will keep it from getting
too thick and wet and soaking/flattening your material.
Helpful Hint II – do
not do what I
did. Some of you may have already
noticed the material in the above picture is actually toilet paper, not paper
towels. My paper towels had a very
distinct linear pattern to their texture, so I decided to use a few squares of
toilet paper. Problem is, toilet paper’s
made to dissolve once it absorbs... well, not much moisture. So once my pelts touched the glue they turned
into... well, mush. I managed to salvage
them, but it ended up taking me almost twenty minutes per pelt.
Save yourself a headache.
Do what I say, not what I do.
On a more positive note...
I didn’t do it, but it’d also be easy to cut a small opening off the top
of the tent and put some round toothpicks up there as tent poles. Just flip the tent over and glue the
toothpicks into the interior creases.
It’s a tiny detail, but it’ll look really cool and makes the tents look
even more handmade.
The Imperial Guard... sorry, Astra Militarium... use tents,
naturally. I’d just build the template
as-is so they look more mass-produced and use a color scheme that works for
your army or whatever scenery you use often.
Jungle tents, desert tents, arctic tents, or just a flat-looking
canvas. With such a big expanse of flat
surfaces, it’s an easy place to practice your camo painting, too.
Once that’s done, there are
so many decals available to make this look Guard-issue. A large aquilla or a few stencils pretty much
sell it. You could make a larger scenery
piece by putting two or three of these in a row as if they were in-the-field
barracks. Or base them individually and
just set them up that way.
They could also work for traitor Guard, naturally, but you’d
want different symbols on the tents. And
maybe lean even more toward the primitive.
Perhaps a blood splatter or three.
And there are tons of skulls and ruinous symbols on the Chaos Marine
decal sheet.
What about the Tau?
It makes sense that Fire Warriors would have temporary housing of some
kind for exploration missions, but I’m sure the Earth caste wouldn’t send them
out with something as flimsy as fabric and poles. So what about using this template as a sort
of pre-fabricated, lightly armored outpost?
It actually wasn’t hard to do this. The two different sizes of tent are identical
except for the scale. I printed up one
of each size and built the large one as is.
While that was drying, I cut up the small tent into its individual
panels. I mostly wanted the sides of the
tent body and the top two panels from the entranceway.
Each component was centered on the corresponding panel of the larger tent
(remember, it’s the same template) and glued in place. Once they were all attached, it gave the
whole thing kind of an “armored” look that made it feel more assembled. Giving it a bright color scheme will make it
look more like hard plastic than fabric.
And, again, a few spare decals will look fantastic.
Last but not least, if you’re a Fantasy/ Age of Sigmar
player, I’d imagine a tent like this would work for a bunch of armies. Brettonians peasants and Empire troops would
definitely be sleeping in simple tents, if they had anything. So would Chaos Marauders. Even Orcs could manage something simple like
this. So they’re a quick set piece for
lots of armies.
Tents. Fast, cheap scenery for almost any setting, almost any
army.
