Electricity sub-stations

This week I have been blitzing a new generation of Necromunda terrain for my collection - here are a trio of scratch-built ancient electricity sub-stations.  I still have a lot to learn about painting rust effects, but I'm very pleased with these.  I made them from empty plotter & printer cartridges that I had been saving, & detailed them with wooden lolly & toffee apple sticks & BBQ forks.  The 'lights' are the caps from the little soy sauce fish bottles that you get in supermarket sushi packs.  Having been inspired by the truly awesome Necromunda/Inquisimunda scenery that can be seen on the internet, I really want to capture the utterly decrepid, rusted-through, & caked-in-grime look that the Underhive should 'realistically' have - the subterranean bowels of Hive Primus date back up to ten thousand years to before the Great Crusade.  I want that complete industrial waste-zone look on my tabletop!  Hence I textured these sub-stations with coarse modelling paste to help with the rusted look.  This machinery will have been non-operational for thousands of years, but I imagine arcs of blue-violet electricity would have originally passed up & down those vertical prongs when functional.

I'll need to add a lot more vertical scenery with aerial routes & line-of-sight yet, but as basic blocking terrain which captures the right feel, I think these will see plenty of use.  I used PVA glue to secure the bits, strengthened with hot glue gun in places.  They have a nice weight to them, & seem very durable.  A black matte spray paint undercoat was essential as the plastics of the cartridges wouldn't take brush paint without it.


Lastly, here is a photo of these pieces prior to detailing & painting, where the components are clearer to see  >

Pile of rubble

To celebrate the forthcoming re-release of the legendary Warhammer 40,000 gang skirmish game Necromunda, I completed this rubble pile that I built from various bits a while ago - perfect for the crumbling urban chaos of the Underhive.  I used an old CD as the base, & added chunks of polystyrene textured with coarse paint thickener, Gale Force 9 concrete chunks, plastic lolly sticks as pipes, corrugated card as sheet roofing, plus a spare bit from an Imperial tank sprue, & a metal cable clasp as other junk.  Then I added grit using PVA & sand.  Only a quick & dirty drybrush paint scheme, but it'll do for tabletop gaming.  I added various hints of green-wash in places to suggest grime / slime / pollutants, but maybe it could do with a bit more.

Here is a WIP photo, before I painted this piece  >

The Underhive has long been one of my favourite settings - so evocative & full of unexpected variety.  I'm looking-forward to adding more urban / industrial scenery to my collection, for Necromunda / Inquisimunda gaming.

Lustria-themed 'Ronin' markers

This week I painted some test markers for the Ronin Lustria side project.  This would be using custom Lizardman & Conquistador warband lists & the Osprey Wargames Ronin rules for skirmishes of 8-or-so figures a side.  First I painted these Fenris Games Ø10mm laser-cut discs in the same slightly-slimy stone style as I have been painting my Lustrian rocks & flagstones, & then I tried freehanding some symbols that hopefully lend a Lustrian feel - One blood drop signifies a Light Wound, two blood drops a Frievous Wound; one 'Aztec spiral' indicates a Stun, two 'spirals'  equals two Stuns.

I'm a bit divided over whether I should drop the 'Ronin Lustria' idea & focus on my original Lustrian Warhammer Quest project - especially because I am a big fan of classic Samurai & chanbara films, so maybe I should use actual Ronin figures & play the game as intended (I would choose the late Edo period & create a little Yakuza gang & an honourable katana school to oppose them).  One of the reasons that I am considering 'Ronin Lustria' idea is to give me a reason to scratchbuild jungle & Lizardman building pieces.  But perhaps I could simply expand upon the standard subterranean Warhammer Quest tiles, & have some open areas for that.  Shown here is one of my test dungeon tiles for Lustrian 'Quest.  I'll probably add human-height sections of block walls to better capture the claustrophobia atmosphere, & allow all sorts of Lizardmen totem & skull decoration!

Any suggestions or recommendations welcome!

Lustria scatter foliage

Back to the steaming jungles of Lustria in the Warhammer world now - this week I made four pieces of scatter terrain for my Lizardmen collection.  I've never had any interest in playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles (& even less in having anything to do with 'Age of Sigmar'!), but I do like a bit of Warhammer Quest, & I've always wanted to have a little Lizardmen collection for the awesome combination of dinosaurs & Aztecs!  So I while back I started a slow-burn project to create a 3D dungeon set with a Lustrian theme.  Having been hooked by Osprey Publishing's 'Ronin' rules recently, I also thought I could use my Lustrian figures to have a few small skirmish games between these cold-blooded ancient ones & a band of marauding conquistadors from the Empire.

I built up small mounds of polystyrene on laser-cut ply discs from Fenris Games, & they textured them with coarse paint thickener.  I also pressed some stones into the mix.  After painting the bases, I flocked them with a mix of Gale Force Nine dirt & summer meadow, plus summer static grass & a few Gamers' Grass summer tufts.  I them carefully painted the 'rocks' in a few different shades of ochre grey & blue-grey, & then highlighted them.  At this point it almost seemed a shame to add the plastic aquarium plants...


..The mass of aquarium plants that I have collected over the years came in handy as I snipped pieces up, & glued them into holes that I poked in the polystyrene mounds.  I'm quite pleased with the end result.  I will do some scattered pots & vases & ruins for this mini-project next I think.  Looking forward to doing the highly-stylised Aztec block-work.

Ruined apartments

Here is a block of ruined apartments that I made for 15mm-scale modern Crossfire.  I used foamboard, textured with coarse paint thickener & sand; along with bits of cocktail stick, Gale Force Nine concrete chunks, & bits of plastic sprue for debris.  As this structure is mostly intact (the walls are still standing at least!) In Crossfire rules terms I will treat this as a building complex of two blocks, without roof cover, rather than 'ruins' (which don't block Line-of-Sight in Crossfire).

I have numerous other miniatures projects on the go, but given the hot sunny weather at the moment, I haven't been finishing much to post it lately.

2 IDF infantry platoons

This week I finally finished my 2nd IDF infantry platoon, for 15mm-scale Crossfire. All the figures are from Peter Pig's AK-47 Range.  These represent a force of the Golani Brigade - the 1st platoon (on the right) is intended to be a mechanised infantry platoon, armed with Galil assault rifles.  I've posted photos of them with their M113 APCs previously.  The 2nd platoon (on the left) are intended as Sayeret Golani (the brigade's elite recon), armed with a mixture of Galils, M16s, & AK-47s.  In the background is an attached squad of combat engineers (centre), 3 sniper teams (left), & a .50cal HMG team, Military Working Dog team, & Forward Observer (right).  Looking forward to getting these on the tabletop battlefield!

Palm grove

This week I put together & painted a palm grove for 15mm-scale 'Lebanon 1982' Crossfire gaming.  Same recipe as the Lebanese woodland in my last post - laser-cut MDF area & disc bases from Fenris Games, textured with sand, painted, & detailed with Gale Force Nine static grass & flock, plus some tiny stones.  These soft plastic trees are less realistic that the deciduous ones in my previous post, but I think they look alright for gaming purposes, & are nice & durable.

These palm trees could also be used with my 'Day of the Rangers' Somalia figures, once I finish rebasing them from Force on Force to Crossfire.

I had some trees left over from making these terrain areas, so I also made a few stand-alone trees.  These won't have any in-game effect, they will just be dotted about to enhance the tabletop battlefield.

Lebanese woodland

This weekend I put together these three sections of woodland for 15mm-scale Crossfire, based on photos of trees in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.  The trees are mounted on various sized laser-cut MDF discs from Fenris Games, so that they can be removed from the base (which denotes the actual extent of the terrain effect - also from Fenris Games) to allow easy fireteam placement.

I've included a stand of IDF infantry in these photos for scale.

I'm really pleased with how these turned out.  The trees are cheap Chinese imports from various manufacturers.  The bases were textured with ready-mix paint-thickener before being coated in sand using PVA.  I added some Gale Force Nine static grass & meadow flock to the bases, along with the classic lichen clumps for scrub. The rocks are just tiny stones that I've painted.  I went a bit far & actually painted some of the large sand grains & shell chips on the bases as 15mm-scale stones... :-s

Mercedes Benz cars

This weekend I painted a couple 15mm-scale retro Mercedes Benz cars for Crossfire.  These will be nice little scenery pieces to add some detail to my Middle East & African tabletops.  The black & maroon cars are 5-piece metal models (car body + wheels), & the wrecked car is a single-piece resin cast (which I painted a while back); all from the excellent Peter Pig.

I'll be buying a couple more of these, & maybe leaving the wheels off one to paint as a rusty/ burnt-out wreck.  The centre of the wheels  left off this wreck could be drilled-out to make a little stack of tyres to enhance a scenery piece.

I've just noticed that I forgot to paint the number plates of these cars. Doh!