Tutorial: Shipping Container

Shipping containers are some awesome terrain pieces and can be used for a number of games. I first decided to make some shipping container for Deadzone, to have some cheap line of sight blockers.

But this little piece of terrain is also perfect for The Walking Dead and in my games of Scrappers.

The shipping container is fast to build and really cheap. 

Materials: 

• Floorboard insulation foam
• Glue: Plastic, super and woodglue.
• Plastic sprue
• Hobby knife
• Ruler

Step 1:
Deadzone is played in a 3'' cube system, so I build most of my terrain to fit that. Cut out 4 pieces of 6'' sprue and 8 pieces of 3'' sprue. Glue two retangles.

Step 2:
Use the remaining pieces of sprue to make a box. I use a dap of superglue to build box shape. Then drowned it in plastic glue, as it'll make the plastic melt together.

Step 3:
The insulation foam is a great material. It's cheap, easy to cut an looks like curogated metal plates. You'll get 12 square metres for 15 EUR. Cut out four 3''x6'' pieces and two 3''x3'' pieces. Makes sure the pieces fit right into a frame. Here you'll have to work fairly quick. Add superglue to the frame and insert the foam. The glue will partly melt the foam, so try to be quick.

I've actually found that the limited melting of the foam, add a nice corroded look to it.

Step 4:
Add strength to the container be adding wood- or PVA glue to the inside. This will also hide any small holes made from uneven cuts in the foam and sprue.

Step 5: 
With you hobby knife make some angled cuts in the foam on the end, to make it look like doors in the container.
Voila. Done simple shipping container. Anything from here is extra detailing.

Step 6:
Add further details. I've gone with a lock in each end made from round sprue and some reinforcerment on the side made from plastic strip.

Step 7:
Base coat it. I use Army Painter base coat spray and it'll currode the foam a bit. I don't find that it's too much, but it does add extra texture to the build. For stone terrain (houses, walls, cobble stone floor) the corrusion is actually really nice.

Step 8:
Paint up the rest. I've done a simply rust effect with two different browns and a steel colour.

All done:
This thing will fit into a lot of different games. There's some cheap mdf shipping containers out there, TTCombat will sell you three for less than 10£. But I like building stuff myself, like that it fits perfectly into the Deadzone cube system and that it has cost nothing but time.