Terrain Tutorial — Alien Ruins, Ork Scrap & Ancient Battlefields

How to Make Free Terrain Look Like a Lost Civilization

Five Ways to Make Alien Ruins Look Ancient Instead of Newly Printed

How to turn templates, terrain kits, plasticard, and fresh prints into maiden-world monuments, Ork-occupied wreckage, trench-war shrines, and ruins that look older than the glue holding them together.

Apparently, the grand architectural legacy of an ancient spacefaring civilization now begins with a downloadable PDF and the box your cornflakes came in.

Fine. We can work with that.

The new Exodite terrain templates give you the basic shapes for pillars, obelisks, and elegant alien monuments. Print them. Transfer the designs to card. Cut everything out. Assemble your own fragment of an ancient maiden world using recycled packaging and the slow realization that your hobby knife is no longer as sharp as you thought it was.

It is a useful free resource.

It is also reasonable to look at the whole cutting-and-tracing situation and decide you have already suffered enough.

Whether you begin with the official templates, StellarBastion’s STLs, foamcore, plasticard, a terrain kit, or the mysterious pile of architectural leftovers at the back of your hobby cupboard, the problem is the same:

New terrain looks new.

Templates give you a shape. A printer gives you surface detail. Kits give you immaculate arches, monuments, skulls, totems, ancient towering trees, and whatever else the far future considers structurally necessary.

None of them gives you history.

Ancient terrain needs evidence. It needs damage that happened long before the current battle, grime deposited over generations, vegetation forcing its way through the architecture, and symbols that tell us who built the place—and who came along later to ruin everything.

We tackled those same problems years ago while building this large Imperial fountain and civic monument.

The build was obviously not Exodite terrain. It used Imperial architecture, a converted statue, pipes, paving, benches, scratch-built walls, and enough skulls to assure no one mistook it for a pleasant public fountain.

But the principles behind it haven't changed.

Here is how we approached the original fountain, why those decisions worked, and how you can use them now on alien ruins, Ork scrap, Trench Crusade battlefields, 40K city terrain, and fantasy temples.

1. Break the Silhouette

Before cutting anything, we planned what the fountain needed to do.

The structure had to fit on a 12-by-12-inch city tile. It needed a substantial wall capable of providing cover for a full ten-model squad. It also needed to look old and regal—less like a convenient barricade and more like a monument that had been standing there long before anyone started firing bolters around it.

That meant the design had to serve the game as well as the atmosphere.

The tall central building created a strong focal point, while the lower surrounding wall formed playable cover around it. Stairs created an entrance. Pipes projected beneath the platform. Benches, decorative columns, and broken sections changed the outline around the perimeter.

The result was not simply a building glued to a square base.

It became a place models could move around, hide behind, fight over, and possibly die beside in a manner deemed strategically necessary by whoever sent them there.

This matters even more with templates and printable terrain.

The eye recognizes duplicates almost immediately. Place six identical monuments upright at the same height and angle, evenly spaced across a board, and the viewer does not see the remains of an ancient ritual landscape.

They see six copies of the same file.

So, you change the silhouettes before you paint them.

• Cut the top from one monument.
• Sink another into the ground.
• Tilt a third where the earth has shifted beneath it.
• Bury part of the base under roots, rubble, mud, snow, sand, or leaf litter.
• Place a fallen section beside an intact one.
• Join two structures together.
• Let vegetation obscure part of the original outline.
• Add a later platform or support to only one piece.

Do not damage everything identically.

Six matching ruins with the same broken corner are still six matching pieces. They have merely endured an extremely organized catastrophe.

For an Exodite board, partially bury waystones and run roots through the lower sections. Let some remain pristine while others have cracked or fallen beneath the surrounding jungle.

For Ork terrain, keep the original alien geometry visible beneath crooked gantries, trophy poles, scrap platforms, and machinery attached by someone who considers structural engineering a form of cowardice.

For Trench Crusade, break the silhouette with timber supports, sandbags, defensive firing positions, shattered religious figures, and battlefield debris.

For fantasy ruins, add collapsed roofs, graves, later walls, roots, and crude structures built against the older masonry.

The original design gives the terrain its identity.

Everything that happened afterward gives it a story.

2. Add Accumulated Damage

The original fountain was built from a deliberate mixture of materials.

The main architectural core used Cities of Death wall sections. We added pipes and several textured plastic sheets, including brick for the walls and cobblestone for the ground. Styrene strips created trim and structural details. One-inch ceramic craft tiles became the sidewalk, while foamcore formed the underlying structure.

The central statue began as a Chaos Knight converted into an Imperial hero from the city’s past. The benches came from Armorcast.

The point was not simply to use a lot of different bits.

Each material represented a different part of the environment.

The brick looked like brick. Its cobblestone floor had its own texture. Sidewalks were smoother and more regular. Pipes and machinery introduced industrial surfaces beneath the ceremonial architecture.

That gave us several layers to damage and weather differently.

Then came the cracks, rubble, rivets, bolts, and smaller details.

The more layers of believable detail you add, the more real the terrain begins to look. Ancient damage has stages.

Start with the largest structural failures:

• Cracked walls
• Missing corners
• Collapsed sections
• Broken paving
• Shifted foundations
• Sunken steps
• Large fractures caused by roots or ground movement

On the fountain, the main breach continued through the outer wall, the pavement, and the surrounding ground. The damage did not stop neatly at the edge of one component.

Whatever broke the wall also disturbed everything around it.

That connection is important.

A ruined wall standing on completely untouched paving looks staged. Crack the nearby slabs. Add fragments made from the same material. Let the largest rubble remain near the point of collapse, with smaller pieces and grit spreading outward.

After the major damage, add wear from ordinary use.

Steps become smoother along the path people actually walked. Corners chip where machinery, carts, weapons, or armored bodies repeatedly struck them. Metal becomes scratched around handles, hinges, access panels, and working parts.

Then add whatever collected later.

Dust gathers along the base of walls. Leaves settle beneath overhangs. Fine rubble fills the gaps between larger fragments. Roots push into existing cracks. Fresh impacts expose cleaner material beneath the old grime.

A believable ruin usually shows more than one period of history:

1. The original structure
2. Long-term weathering and decay
3. Recent occupation, battle damage, or environmental disruption

An Exodite monument could have ancient fractures caused by roots beneath much newer weapons damage.

A Trench Crusade chapel might show worn stone beneath fresh shell impacts, soot, mud, and splintered masonry.

An Imperial ruin can carry decades of rust beneath a comparatively recent blast scar.

An Ork-occupied shrine might preserve elegant alien stone beneath scorch marks, crude glyphs, smashed ornament, and a smoke-belching engine forced into the ruins with more enthusiasm than planning.

Keep the heaviest damage concentrated.

Choose where the main collapse, impact, or structural failure occurred, then reduce the severity as it moves away from that point.

Real destruction has a center.

The universe is not generous enough to ruin everything evenly.

The debris should also match the structure. If the outer wall is dark stone, place dark fragments around the collapse. If fresh damage exposes a lighter interior, show that color on broken edges and loose debris.

If a scrap platform fell apart, include wire, plate fragments, rivets, and structural pieces—not just a ring of masonry around it.

Damage should not feel painted onto the terrain afterward.

It should look built into its history.

3. Vary the Stone Color

The original fountain had one major painting rule:

Do not paint the whole thing grey.

Imperial cities may be bleak, but that does not mean every surface needs to resemble the same wet tombstone.

We used grey as the dominant architectural color, but then broke it apart with other materials and tones.

The pumping machinery became turquoise, creating a strong focal point inside the otherwise dark structure. The individual cobblestones received several different browns. The sidewalks remained paler. Bronze statues and ornament introduced metallic warmth, while rust, grime, blackened rubble, and stagnant green water pushed different areas in different directions.

The structure still belonged together.

It simply stopped looking as though it had been dipped into one enormous bucket of Mechanicus-approved grey.

The same approach works on alien stone.

Begin with one dominant color, then create restrained variation around it.

• A cool grey ruin might include stones leaning toward brown, blue, green, or violet.
• Pale alien architecture could move between bone, cream, cold blue, faint green, lavender shadow, and soft ochre staining.
• Sandstone can shift through tan, cream, rose, rust, and dusty brown.
• Volcanic stone may move between charcoal, brown-black, cool grey, and mineral orange.

The key word is restrained.

Do not paint every block a dramatically different color. Most changes should remain close to the base color. Use stronger differences where they make sense:

• Fresh breaks exposing lighter stone
• Darkened lower courses
• Soot near impacts or fires
• Damp gathering in recesses
• Mineral streaks beneath cracks
• Dirt collecting between paving stones
• Separate materials such as metal, brick, timber, bone, or tile

On the fountain, we varied the brown cobblestones individually because it broke up the large repeated ground pattern. The colors remained related, so the area still read as one cobbled surface.

That's the balance. Variation keeps the terrain visually alive.

Shared grime keeps it in the same world.

Drybrushing alone is useful, but it tends to age every surface in exactly the same way.

Follow the broad highlights with targeted washes, glazes, filters, pigments, and stains.

Darken the areas where soil and damp accumulate. Add pale exposed chips to damaged corners. Place soot around vents, fires, machinery, and weapons strikes. Let rust or mineral color spread onto the stone below its source.

For Exodite terrain, use cool, pale stone with warm chips and green or turquoise environmental staining.

For Trench Crusade, mix stained limestone, soot-darkened brick, muddy lower walls, rusted metal, and pale recent fractures.

For Ork scrap, the same rule expands across concrete, stone, faded paint, exposed metal, rust, and whatever vehicle door was welded over the window.

The material may change.

But the need to break up the monochrome does not.

4. Use Moss, Algae, and Mineral Staining

The environmental centerpiece of the fountain was the water.

We wanted it to resemble a partially drained hotel pool that had been left growing algae through the winter. This was inspired by growing up on a tourist island, where abandoned seasonal pools had their own special ecosystem and probably several undiscovered diseases.

The water needed to look stagnant, layered, and neglected.

Painting the bottom green and pouring one smooth clear layer over it would not have been enough.

Instead, green foliage material was dropped into repeated layers of wet effects. After roughly eight layers, the algae appeared to exist at different depths inside the water rather than floating decoratively on top.

It was simple, effective, and involved waiting for many things to dry.

Civilizations rose.

Empires collapsed.

The seventh layer remained slightly tacky.

That depth is the important part.

Real stagnant water contains material on several levels. Some debris floats. Others remain suspended or settle to the bottom. Algae gathers around edges, submerged structures, drains, and areas with little water movement.

Build the effect in stages:

1. Paint the bottom of the pool.
2. Add dark submerged stains and discoloration.
3. Concentrate algae around walls, drains, pipes, and machinery.
4. Pour or apply the water effect in shallow layers.
5. Trap selected foliage and debris between those layers.
6. Finish with floating material, surface scum, and wet staining around the edge.

The same environmental logic applies without a fountain.

Moss grows where moisture remains. Algae forms near water. Rust begins on metal. Mineral deposits emerge from stone, mortar, cracks, and leaking water.

Streaks run downward because gravity remains operational, even when reality is being consumed by extradimensional horrors.

For Exodite terrain, run roots into the cracks instead of placing them beside the monument. Let vines disappear behind one section and emerge through another. Build soil and leaf litter around the base so the lowest parts appear partially buried.

Use moss, lichen, pale fungi, mineral staining, flowers, roots, and fallen leaves to make the ruins feel absorbed into the maiden world.

Do not coat every surface evenly.

One side may remain pale and dry in direct light. Another may be dark beneath the jungle canopy. Moss should favor shaded recesses and lower areas where moisture collects.

For Ork terrain, replace idyllic woodland growth with rust, soot, oily water, toxic runoff, fungus, fuel stains, and pipes leaking substances that should not be that color.

For Trench Crusade, use standing water in shell craters, mud splashed onto lower walls, damp crypt floors, moss-covered cemetery stone, soot-blackened chapels, salt deposits, and rotting timber.

For fantasy ruins, use the same methods on wells, temples, graveyards, abandoned keeps, sewers, shrines, swamps, and sacred springs nobody should have drunk from despite several extremely legible warnings.

Environmental effects should also connect separate materials.

The bronze statues and ornamental creatures on the fountain received heavy green patina. The verdigris echoed the turquoise machinery and green water, while stains beneath the metal helped it feel exposed to the same damp conditions as the surrounding stone.

The original verdigris was created primarily with watered-down Vallejo Bronze Green mixed with a little turquoise. A second wash using Bronze Green and a lighter green added more variation.

The precise paint matters less than the placement.

Oxidation should gather in recesses and around areas where moisture would remain. It can then stain the surfaces beneath the metal.

Rust should begin around rivets, joints, exposed edges, and damaged paint.

On the fountain, rust washes gathered around the rivets and metal fittings, while dark brown washes settled into the porous sidewalks to represent years of accumulated dirt.

Nothing should look weathered in isolation.

The point is not to glue moss onto the terrain.

The point is to show what the place has endured.

5. Add Symbols With a Purpose

The original fountain needed to feel old and regal, so its details were chosen to reinforce that identity.

The converted mounted figure became a local Imperial hero from the city’s past. Statues and ornamental creatures occupied prominent positions around the fountain. Skulls, plaques, buttresses, and repeated Imperial devices established a consistent civic and religious language.

The symbols told the viewer what the place had once been. This was not a random wall. It was a monument. And it had been designed to impress people, remind them who held power, and make the city’s dead feel permanently present.

Apply the same thinking to alien ruins.

Do not add runes simply because the surface looks empty.

First decide what the structure was for.

• Shrine
• Memorial
• Boundary marker
• Gateway
• Power node
• Burial site
  
• Monument

For example, a waystone might use navigational or territorial symbols. While a shrine could contain ritual patterns, offerings, names of the dead, or imagery tied to the surrounding ecosystem.

Power nodes might use gems, circuitry, repeating bands, or directional markings.

A memorial should usually have one dominant emblem supported by smaller secondary designs.

Symbols need hierarchy.

Use one strong focal motif, several supporting elements, and smaller repeated details. Leave parts of the structure plain so the important marks have room to matter.

Ancient civilizations understood negative space.

This puts them several thousand years ahead of a design philosophy built around asking, “Could this use another purity seal?”

Later occupants can add another layer of meaning.

Soldiers might paint unit numbers, warnings, directions, or tally marks.

Cultists may deface an older icon and replace it with their own.

Pilgrims could leave offerings beneath a carved figure.

Names may be scratched into memorial stone.

Moss might conceal half an inscription. A weapons impact could destroy part of a sacred image. New markings might be painted directly across the old ones by occupiers who have no interest in preserving the original civilization’s visual branding.

Tools for Marking the Ruins

Elven Tribal

Flowing ceremonial markings, shrine designs, waystone symbols, and decorative borders for larger terrain surfaces.

Shop the Stencil

Elven Tribal Digital Bundle

Resizable vector artwork for monument faces, ritual floor markings, architectural bands, and oversized alien symbols.

Get the SVG Bundle

Magma Stone

Fractured stone, glowing fissures, volcanic surfaces, magical cracks, corrupted floors, and geology taking orders from something with horns.

Shop Magma Stone

For corrupted temples, hostile ruins, raider architecture, and darker alien sites, the Evil Elven Tribal Airbrush Stencil provides sharper, more aggressive forms.

Do not leave those designs perfectly clean unless they belong to the terrain’s current occupants.

Fade them. Chip them. Stain them. Cover part of the pattern with moss or grime. Let newer damage cut through it.

A clean symbol was painted recently.

But a symbol buried beneath weathering belongs to the dead.

When the Orks Move In

Alien ruins become even more interesting when somebody else has occupied them.

Especially when those occupants are Orks, whose approach to historical preservation generally involves adding more guns.

Keep enough of the original architecture visible that the viewer can understand what the place looked like before the change in management.

Then add the Ork layer:

• Scrap plates bolted over damaged stone
• Checkers painted across ceremonial surfaces
• Dags and glyphs declaring ownership
• Crooked gantries and firing platforms
• New pipes punched through ancient walls
• Trophy poles and chains
• Vehicle parts turned into structural components
• Soot around newly installed machinery
• Fuel stains across polished stone
• Barricades placed directly in front of doors that once had profound religious significance

The contrast tells the story.

Elegant alien geometry underneath.

Ork engineering on top.

One civilization built a monument intended to stand for ten thousand years.

The next bolted a gun platform to it because the view was good.

Games Workshop, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, and all associated names, logos, illustrations, images, models, and concepts are the property of Games Workshop Limited. Fallout Hobbies is an independent company and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Games Workshop. Trench Crusade is referenced for comparative hobby inspiration only; all related names and intellectual property belong to their respective owners.