What Is Build Your Battlefield Terrain Made From?

Build Your Battlefield terrain is made from high-quality polyurethane casting resin, produced in-house using silicone moulds made from our original 3D-printed masters.

We chose polyurethane resin because it gives us the combination we want from tabletop terrain: sharp detail, a solid feel, good durability and the ability to produce larger modular terrain sets without sacrificing the character of the original designs.

Why Polyurethane Resin?

The designs we create in Blender contain a lot of surface detail. Cracked concrete, metal panels, exposed structure, stonework, bolts, vents and other small features all contribute to making each battlefield feel like a believable place.

Polyurethane resin reproduces those details extremely well. The flexible silicone moulds capture the surface of the original master, while the casting resin creates a strong, rigid final part that is well suited to regular tabletop use.

It also allows us to keep production in-house. Rather than outsourcing the terrain to a large manufacturer, we can design the models, create the masters, make the moulds and cast the finished terrain ourselves.

That gives us much more control over the finished product and allows us to continually improve both the terrain and the way we produce it.

Made for the Tabletop

Our terrain is designed to be handled.

Build Your Battlefield is a modular system, which means the pieces are intended to be assembled, taken apart, rearranged and used again. The material therefore needs to do more than simply look good on a shelf.

Polyurethane resin gives the terrain a satisfying, solid feel while still being straightforward to work with as a hobby material. It can be sanded, drilled, cut and modified if you want to customise your battlefield further.

The terrain can also be primed and painted using the same general techniques you would use for other resin miniatures and scenery.

Preparing Unpainted Terrain

Our unpainted terrain arrives ready for you to make it your own.

As with most resin modelling products, we recommend washing the parts with warm water and a little dish soap before priming. This removes any dust or residue that may remain from production and gives your primer the best possible surface to adhere to.

After washing, allow the pieces to dry completely before applying primer.

From there, you can paint them however you like. Airbrushing, drybrushing, washes, weathering powders and traditional brush painting all work particularly well on terrain because of the amount of raised texture and recessed detail.

Hand-Cast Means Every Piece Is Slightly Different

Every Build Your Battlefield resin component is cast by hand.

Because of that, very small variations can occasionally occur between individual pieces. You may see a minor mould line or a small amount of excess material around the casting point, just as you would with many other resin hobby products.

We clean and inspect our terrain before it leaves the workshop, but part of small-batch resin production is that each piece is physically made rather than coming from a completely automated manufacturing line.

These small differences do not affect how the terrain works and are part of the nature of hand-cast resin products.

Designed, Printed and Cast In-House

The material is only one part of the process.

Every Build Your Battlefield terrain piece begins as a digital model created in Blender. From there, we produce a high-resolution master, use that master to create a silicone production mould, and finally cast the terrain itself in polyurethane resin.

Keeping those stages together allows us to design specifically for the material rather than simply creating a model and hoping it works once manufactured.

Wall thickness, details, recesses, structural elements and even the way a piece sits inside a mould are considered during the design process.

The result is terrain that is designed from the beginning to become a physical product.

Built to Become Your Battlefield

We could make the terrain from many different materials, but polyurethane resin gives us the balance we are looking for: detailed enough to bring our environments to life, practical enough for modular tabletop terrain, and flexible enough as a production method for us to continue developing new themes and components.

Whether you leave the terrain relatively clean, cover it in grime and weathering, turn it into ancient ruins or build an entire industrial city, the material is there to give you a solid foundation.

What happens to it after that is up to you.