“GorkaMorka Junk Piles” Mostly-Scratchbuilt Scenery

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These three pieces of terrain were something I was inspired to build way back after building my cardstock GorkaMorka fort, sometime between the game’s release in 1997 and about 2010 when I had to move from the place where I had my desert mat set up. The fort turned out really quite well for the time, based on a large piece of thick card with a few bits of additional plastic kit and random stuff added for extra detail. I should take some pics and post it up here, really. Maybe when I do my next Ork army showcase…

Anyway, the first part, where I stuck things to the card worked pretty well. The second part, where I stuck sand to the bases was ..okay. I used sand that was much too coarse, much oif which can still be seen on these. The third part, where i added thinned paint to base coat the sand was when the real disaster hit, and as you can see, warping was a pretty severe consequence. This led to them being pretty much abandoned until, well, last week. After I finished the “Dug-in Tank” that was sitting on the side of the games table, I brought these three pieces in, as they were also sitting on the games table with the vague plan to finish them, well… sometime.

The parts used are a mixture of spare GW parts (tank wheels & tracks, some regular buggy/bike wheels and parts, oil drums) parts from a 1:48-ish scale die-cast 4×4, plasticard of different types, and a lot of bits and pieces from various old broken toys, including a few G1 Transformers.

As with the tank hull piece, despite the wonkiness of the bases on these pieces, they actually finished up decently well. Like, not amazingly, but they’re now pieces I’ll be happy to decorate a tabletop with that also work across a decent number of genres and time periods. While I’ve called them “GorkaMorka” junk piles, that’s simply because of their origins, but they’ll work for most any sci-fi or post-apoc game, and even a lot of modern settings in that a pile of metal and mechanical refuse isn’t exactly something unknown to our modern world. Additionally, I now have another three submissions for Dave Stone’s Winter of Scenery Challenge!

23 thoughts on ““GorkaMorka Junk Piles” Mostly-Scratchbuilt Scenery”

    • Yeah, I don’t believe that we ever actually got to play Gorka in the end as it never had the interest that Necromunda did, aside from a bit of a solo play I did myself to look at the rules.

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      • Card can be a bugger for “warping”, I used to us it myself for scenery because of it’s narrow edge (so had no step with the table), but any shrinkage in the filler (and I think they all shrink a bit despite what it says on the tub!) will cause the edges to lift.

        Now I use hardboard of MDF (as it’s known over here) and sand/shanffer the edges with my sander. and that seems to have solved the problem.

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      • Yeah, these were very old – and I simply couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, to redo them from scratch OR to make myself finish them – so they sat in limbo for roughly forever. Now they’re done and as you say – they look okay for gaming but also as you suggest, I wouldn’t use the same sort of material like card again with so many better options out there. old CD-ROMs/CD-Rs, MDF place mats, coasters and even bevelled wooden kettle holders and the like from my local hardware store are all much easier (and better) options these days!

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    • Sheesh, John. Just say what you mean about my pile of painted crap!
      Having that little bit of colour and variation in thhere without going full skittles (or GW 1995) is what makes things look a bit more realistic and interesting than just the old silver drybrushed over black. It took me a long, long time to learn a reasonable balance between limited palette and muted colours rather than skittles, too!

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  10. The rust on the I-beams rust is really, really well done. I like that you had some of the rust go onto underlying pieces too. Did you assemble all this first, then paint, or vice versa? Clearly the details here are perfect.

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  11. All of the terrain pieces you’ve finished lately would go really well together on a board. Each piece has great character and quite honestly your terrain looks better than most of what I see people using so I’d say job well done, mate!

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