Build a Great War Ravaged Space Base FREE!

Due to outstanding review, great support and high demand for totally awesome mini war gaming foam projects i was absolutely inspired to make another wicked awesome project.  Lets begin with becoming inspired, it has taken me a year but i had a few cool ideas.  I knew i needed something big enough to contend with my last project (both instructable and actual battle) so it had to be a bunker of some kind, and it also has to be as big as a mountain.  I was thinking a lot about building a tank depot and maybe something big enough to have a landing pad on it...and so it begun.

Step 1: Get Your S#%T Together

as always a hearty supply of parts and scrap stuff has to be accessible, i mainly use foam core for most of my projects my other favorite is poly styrene (insulation for between buildings and brick or concrete) working for a construction company it is easily accessible and if you are brave enough and kind enough it might be worth approaching framers or foreman's on a residential construction site for there left over materials.  if not local hardware stores or dollar stores will have the major supplys, for anything else inspirational just consult the recycle bin.

Step 2: Get Creative

after you have gathered some of the main supplies you need to make a sketch (yes get ur stuff together before the doodle seeing parts will give you some crazy ideas) this is the sketch I made, as you can see i have a bunker at the top, a "landing platform" for small craft and doors big enough to house a tank repair depot.
Check out the image so simple it leaves room to make just about anything you could possible imagine, and that's the point.  I love foam!

Step 3: Bunker Building

the basics of building a bunker, sometimes I make doubles of all the parts on the bunker this way the walls look thick and lots of gouging damage can be placed on, tapering the walls is also much easier with thicker walls.  For this project I was working with a single sheet of partly used foam core and the poly styrene for the window space when the A/C is in.  its Family Day in Ontario and February so this is what I have to work with

I wanted  a Tank depot so measure the size of the tank that will be repaired, you will see I added a door later, so i could get "Dreadnaughts in the hanger as well.  measuring all the characters and vehicles that will be using the facility is important if you want to at least make it seem like your miniatures could use the building to repair the Armour the enemy just blew apart. 

Starting with a square base large enough to accomidate the vehicles we will now start to build the basic structure, this is a bunker and must look structurally sound so I am going to basically build a 3 walled box out of the foam core and build the doors separately.

Step 4: Bunker Top Floor

I like to start from the top and work my way down this way I can make modifications to the shape and structure as I put it together.  on top of my bunker I need to have room for a heli pad and somewhere for my troops to shoot, making sure the walls are all the same for a 360 view of the battlefield, the first and highest point will be a box.

after the 4 (or 8) sides and roof are cut you have a few options, where do you want your windows, do you want the walls to appear blasted apart and where your characters guns are located so it looks like they could actually reach and fire out the windows.  This is also the time where you will want to add small scratches and small bullet holes with your knife, poke the end of the knife into the paper of the foam core and turn, that's it you have a scale bullet hole.  hold the blade flat on and gently cut into the paper and flick, now you have some gashes, if you are using SM and want to make cannon holes use a cigarette amber, place it close to the SM and it will slowly melt the SM into a nice cannon hole, make it look messy by flicking your knife around the hole!

Step 5: Building the Bunker

Once the generic pieces are cut its time to glue it all together, I use Gorilla wood glue but basic white glue will work just as well so long as it is used liberally, usually this dries clear, don't worry about making it need the more messy the glue on the base is the more fun you will have adding the finer details later. 

using a heavy book glue all 3 sides together and onto the cardboard base, carefully place the book on top so everything is pressed together tightly, you may want to do this on a flat surface not the carpet like I did just to ensure everything gets glued nicely. 

once the glue has dried or before if you prefer a uniform colour, use a water based (not oil it will eat the foam) base primer this can be aquired at your local hobby store!  while the glue is drying we will cut doors and the second story of the project, you will notice I glued 2 pieces of SM (polystyrene 2" construction insulation) together to add some height to the bunker. 

Step 6: Doors

The best part about making doors is that you get to be creative, the troops that will be using the bunker are space aged Human guys so most of their technology is heavy blast proof steel so everything will appear boxy with unclean cuts so it looks well used, if your characters are more organic or more advanced you may want to make the doors more rounded or add raised sections to appear like vines or cables (string or yarn will work nicely). 

The main door will need to be big enough to fit my tank, I also need a door for my troops to enter because opening a giant blast door during an invasion or a cold winter day is not the greatest idea.  Start by building the bunkers 4 sides and deciding how big the door needs to be, on this ground floor my doors are gonig to appear closed if you want them to look open just dont add the backing and glue the doors open. 

These space age doors are split slider doors like Star Trek and slide raised doors for the big bay! cut 2 identical pieces of cardboard to fit around the door hole, one will be for the backing the other creatively cut a split for the door opening and glue the 2 split pieces to the backing with a slight gap between them

The bay door is largenough to accomidate my tank and will have the same style door on it, but because it is a much taller door it will need more pieces, these pieces need to look like they will slide together, just cut a bunch of rectangles long enough to cross the door and one with a cool shape in it for the bottom and glue them all together onto a piece of backing. 

Finally glue the doors in the respective places

Step 7: Finishing the Bunker!

Now that you have all the doors in place prime and glue the remaining pieces together, it has finally taken shape, but before we can start adding scenery we need to add some cosmetics.  You can see in the picture I added some blast panels and a few cap doors and entry points to the main building. 

Building columns and pillars is fun and easy and once they are painted they can look like steel or stone or anything, this is the joy of working with SM, I made a few outer support pillars on my project to make it look more rustic, using the scraps I carved stones out to make secure entry points on the front of the facility. To do this simply use a ruler to cut some nice straight rectangles and then slice them on irregular angles add some bullet, and cannon holes also slashes need to be added to these to make them look beat up or well used, once you have added all the little details you want like this finish by painting the entire project with the black primer paint and read my other Instructable to add grass. stones, trees and paint everything to look like rocks or steel!!

Good luck with your project I will be adding a few more detailed stone making projects and such but I will need suggestions!!