Category: Terrain

First Foray Into A Neglected Shed Space

After sweeping away the cobwebs at the door, and running the dehumidifier for a while along with a small heater. All I had managed to do was awaken the hibernating lacewings and other crawly things that share the shed with me. In hopes of maybe evicting them before they start to annoy me I thought I might have a tidy up and check the state of play of the ‘To Do’ pile.

Unsurprisingly it hadn’t gotten any smaller while it had been neglected…

As I had been off my rhythm for some time I thought – start simple – so I grabbed a couple of scenic items from the shelf and sat down to try to get my mojo back.

Bronze dry brushing over silver base coat (why I didn’t just paint them bronze at first is beyond me at this point). Oxide green wash in some creases here and there.

Dirty up some MDF plinths (supplied by the talented Coronasan) and I have my first successes for this new push at getting back into the swing of things.

One an Alien hero (the pilot from my martian flier if I recall correctly) and the other a simple space marine in a suitably static pose.

Well, Its a start…

Steam Wars – Martian Cephalopod – Hidden Base Entrances

Yep, you guessed it still no change in the little green skinned fella pile.

I have been productive though! I recently bought a couple of these… (actually one of these Retro Americana bunkers and one of the original Burrows and Badgers sets).

I cant see any real difference in the way these are designed.  Only that one was planned to be more ‘buried looking’ than the other…

Scale wise they will work well with my Steam Wars 28mm Martian force. I plan to use these two on the red Martian earth terrain set as their entrances to the secret subterranean base

With a slightly buried in cracked red earth look, and overgrown with some Martian red weed, they should work fine.  I plan to add a small light or control panel over the square hole to the left of the airlock.  The hole was for a very retro American post box that just wouldn’t be found in a secret Martian Base.

But mounted on a small MDF round, and suitably based and weathered, it will fit in perfectly outside of any number of my existing houses.  Never throw anything away…

Warhammer 40,000 – Galvanic Servohaulers, Or Just A Couple Of Old Tractors And A Crane.

An age ago it seems, I purchased the Ork Kill Team Expansion from my local game store.  In said expansion were 5 Burna Boyz and a set of scenery pieces that appealed to me almost as much as the Orks.

The scenery has now been made up, and all it was ever going to be getting was a very simple paint scheme. I didn’t, therefore, worry too much about the need to start the painting while it was still part made. In hind sight this may have been a better idea.

Although most of the parts in this set have all the details on easily accessible areas, and a lot of detail is included.

Sadly, when constructed, some of the details are hidden behind tracks and wheels.

In some cases the tracks themselves are hidden by other parts…

However it turns out, I suspect that I will get enough detail painted to make them look passable.  I may even look to the possibility of not painting some of the details, as the level of ‘grim dark’, in the form of skulls and cogs, is almost too much in some parts.

A couple of the smallest pieces in the set have plenty of character and no lack of detail themselves.  I have to admit that these pieces are likely to get used more than the larger items, especially as usable items in our games of Fistful of Kung Fu and such like.

Steam Wars – Martian Craters Complete (I Think)

Painting lots of craters in red by hand gets a bit tedious in the end…  Even with a 1 inch paintbrush!  Once they are done though, what felt a bit like hard work, proves to be worth it.

The BBQ also doubles up as a great drying area for jobs that, in the end, would just clutter up my small painting space.

Once the dry brushing and washing was done they were reunited with their smaller cousins.

I also managed to get a better photo of the craters and the flesh tone highlights.

On the table they match nicely.  Giving low level, surface terrain, offering cover to small units but without blocking many lines of sight.

I now have plenty to get the full 6 feet of table sufficiently covered but without being too cluttered.

I still need to find some blocking terrain pieces (likely more derelict structures or crashed craft of some sort). I also want to get a few bunkers/ shaft tops that will go someway towards finishing the table.

I have a picture in my head of an advanced civilisation (the Martian overlords) that have retreated to a subterranean city, to avoid the harsh surface of the planet.  A planet surface strewn with crashed space craft that are stripped bare to supply plenty of off world tech that the Martians use to advance their own knowledge.

Do the Martians instigate their wars against these other planets, just to draw more craft to the inhospitable surface of their home world?

Steam Wars – Fair Weather Undercoating The Crashed Airship Scenery And Some Plinths

As the weather was holding up this week I decided to spray a few pieces with a base colour.  In hindsight, which is always 20:20, it was slightly too windy at the BBQ for spraying and I suspect more paint was blown into my neighbours yard than onto any models…

I did manage to get the Airship base coated in silver though.

Army Painter, like most sprays these days goes onto MDF well, with no real loss of colour by the base materials absorption of the moisture.

As I had my silver spray can out, a couple of figures that have been slated for use as statues, got done at the same time.  Along with a couple of Coronasan’s new MDF plinth designs.

These were test pieces, knocked up quickly, to see if the builds were fitting together correctly. He handed them to me, to paint up while he was on holiday, in order to see how they finished up.  I popped the base off one to get a different base colour onto it. The other was too firmly stuck to paint separately.

One plinth is designed for a 25mm base the other for a 40mm base (sods law says I based these two figures on 32mm bases just before he gave them to me.  All these bits should get some more attention over the next few days…

Steam Wars – Martian Scenery

With the Martian red earth craters now well under way, I have been looking at other items that might be usable as Martian scenery.  I have a few ideas lined up, including some bunkers and shaft tops, that I might get Coronasan to draw up for the laser cutter. However, before these get done, an item that has been in a drawer for a week or so has to be made up and prepped for use…

The item in question is an airship frame from an MDF kit maker/ Steampunk Art site that I discovered recently online.

The kit was more complex to construct than I had expected, as the few parts that make it up all need to be held together while the others are added. You probably need 15 fingers or a couple of rubber bands (I used rubber bands as I could not find any spare fingers…) It is worth the effort though as the resulting airship is a good size and has a nice traditional shape.

A spare yellow Space Marine is used here for scale. As per usual, I had just put all the Steam Wars figures away.  Thankfully I had just gotten out all my unpainted 40k stuff in order to either box it up or sell it on.

However nice this airship is, I had other plans for it…  A few brutal snips from my clippers and the job was done…  One crashed airship ready to be strewn across the surface of Mars. A reminder to all other earthling invaders that they will not be tolerated on the Martian home world.

The question now is, do I base it, or leave it unbased so that it can be used on normal ‘green’ wargames table?  Suitable as cover for small units (perfect for the 5-6 man Steam Wars units) but not blocking line of sight too completely that it obstructs gameplay.

What ever I decide this is now ready for the undercoating pile, which should be quite high up on the list of things to do, before the weather starts to fail me again…

Steam Wars – Martian Red Earth Craters

Well, one down side to owning a very nice red Martian earth wargames mat, is that green hills and scenery looks a tad ‘off’ when used on it…

The answer is to make my scenery red.

I have started these small craters in order to try and learn the combination that is needed (paint and wash wise) to get a similar red tone to the mat.

My final effort is a GW cracked red earth paint (thinned down to make it crack less) with a GW orange shade wash.  To take some of the shine off and to lighten the overall colour a touch, I have dry brushed some GW flesh tone on the out side of the crater only. All this was done with the biggest brush that I own, so no finesse or detail work to be found here…

I will need to varnish them and then add a coat of matte spray, as presently they are a bit too shiny.  All these photos were taken at the same time, but from 3 distinct angles.  I find it interesting that the colour they throw off is different in each shot.

I have a couple more of these to do, so should really get off the computer and back to the grind.  There is something strangely soothing about painting with an inch wide brush.

Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Knights Missile Pods

A while ago I got a few comments suggesting that the proxy Missile Pod that I made for the Imperial Knights might look good if it was double height.  A great suggestion that I hadn’t considered, so I scoured eBay again and found that all the deals I had seen for the parts I needed were no longer available.  A little time and patience has sourced only one more rocket set so far…

A quick mock up shows me 2 important things…  1) That I have not even managed to paint the original yet, despite it being on the paint table for a couple of weeks and a simple job to finish… 2) That I will need 2 more if I am going to get all 3 of my larger Knights tooled up in this way…

For now I will make it up as a single layer pod so it can be used on the third Knight.  When I find a couple more on eBay, I will add them to the (hopefully by then finished) missile racks and have the pods looking exactly how I wanted.

Steam Wars – US Navy Deck Guns

So my excitable little self has grabbed the first set of deck guns and given them a very simple, quick paint job.  I will likely make up the other two sets that I have with more care and attention but for now I have some I can use in our games of Steam Wars.

The US Naval Air Corps is fully armed with new weaponry.

Electro cannon and ships mortar now mounted to the rear of their aether steamer

Deck mounted autocannon and steam truck mounted rocket launcher.

The heavy heat ray has been allocated to their new sky ship and will soften the enemy while it delivers a unit or two of assault rocketmen.

Scale shots with the Black Pyramid gun crew and their gallant officer (available separately).

Autocannon.

Electro Gun. (I have added a small nail art gem to the end of the barrel as a beam focusing lens).

Heavy Heat Ray.

Mortar.

Rocket Launchers.

And now for something a little different…  In honour of Justneedsvarnish some 20mm figures included for scale shots…

In my opinion these 2 guns are most likely to get nearer to the scale.  Remember that the resin is nice to work with, so it should be easy enough to shorten the mountings to get an even closer match to 20mm scale.

Hope you like them.  If so, they are available from Black Pyramid Gaming (sadly I am not on commission I just want to see what other more gifted people can do with them).

Steam Wars – Martian Planet Surface

The postman (or at least a delivery driver) has again managed to distract me from any planned work in the shed.  I took delivery of an item that I had planned to buy months ago, but had been putting off, while I waited for just the right item to pop up on Google.

With so many Martian forces at my disposal I had a mind to get a Martian red earth gaming mat.  The problem is that so many of them are not actually red…  They are either more realistic and have a brown/ red colour, or are more artistic with an overly orange/ red hue.  My Martians are on bases that are more…  Red!

This mat from Gamemat.eu who supply mats that are reasonably priced and actually have one in red Martian colour…  6×4 feet and printed on a rubber backed ‘Mousemat’ material it fits my needs perfectly.

I have a few different mats now, and one of the things I like about this mat, compared to the vinyl ones, is it lays flat instantly when you unroll it. It also has a non-reflective surface. Sometimes it is hard to see your figures when playing on shiny vinyl.

I already have a few test craters prepped and in need of some slight toning into the base colour.

Once I have the method correct I have a few more to do before finding some Martian looking buildings.  I had been looking for some ideas/ inspiration but have still not decided on what I will get quite yet…