Finished a couple more lengths of rickety fence for Ronin & Chain of Command games. These are laser-cut ply pieces from Fenris Games, glued to large hobby lolly sticks. The basing uses various Gale Force Nine flocks & Gamers Grass tufts. Pictured with a pair of my Japanese peasants for scale. I have plenty of these rural fences now. Time to work on my more substantial Japanese walls & Sarissa Precision buildings next.
A couple more pieces of scatter terrain for Ronin & Chain of Command games - some moss-covered rocks. Same recipe as my other recent pieces: small patches of rocks, & overgrown rocks.
Nothing too exciting today, just some trees which I've based up for use in Ronin & Chain of Command games. First I glued four 1p coins & one 2p coin on top the laser-cut ply disc bases, to make them nice & weighty on the tabletop, & then I stuck the trees on top, & textured over the coins & between the roots with coarse paint thickener. Then finished-off with my usual mix of flock & grass tufts, as mentioned in previous posts. 
Some more scatter terrain for Chain of Command & Ronin - a couple small patches of overgrown rocks. These will be difficult ground which hampers movement, but they won't provide cover like my previous larger overgrown rocks.
Here are a few photos of the finished fences, with some 28mm chanbara & RCW figures for scale. I think they will suit either tabletop battlefield at a pinch. Which saves time & money!
There are enough strips of rickety fences in the pack to make the same quantity of these again, although I'm considering using them on a field base rather than as individually-placed items.
I finally got round to painting this village church for Russian Civil War games. It's a laser-cut MDF kit from Sarissa Precision. It was one of their more challenging kits to build because oft he multiple roofs & the crucifix orb, but nothing ridiculous. I left the roof unglued for access, & painted the interior before gluing the walls to the base. The building is tall but not that wide, so it's actually a little tricky to place models inside. But the only viewpoint for those inside is out the doors anyway, so it might not happen that often.
I find these MDF buildings require a couple of spray-coats of undercoat before they're ready to paint, as the material really absorbs the initial coat. After that they take the paint well. I used a simple colour scheme based on a few reference photos, & I'm pretty happy with the outcome, although I may add more severe weathering the the wood cladding to 'age' the building a bit more.
I finished some more scatter terrain for use in Samurai or Russian Civil War games - a couple piles of overgrown rocks. These are simple stones glued onto some laser-cut ply discs from Fenris Games, with gaps & earth added using coarse paint thickener, then drybrushed & weathered, before painting the areas that were to be dirt & plants in dark brown & khaki green respectively. I then used PVA to affix various flock mixtures & GamersGrass tufts, moss, & wildflowers. I think the latter really bring the pieces to life. Makes miniature basing so much easier! 
I have very nearly finished painting my first buntai (band/group) for 'Ronin' now - some villainous Edo-period Yakuza. I'm just trying to find the best way to model a few sheathed katanas to a handful of models that should be equipped with them - it's surprisingly difficult to source non-sci-fi 28mm scale katanas :-s I'd appreciate any tips of where I might be able to order some, cheers!
Last week I painted some 28mm scatter terrain - 3 sets of wooden barrels & boxes. These will be suitable both for my 'Ronin' (chanbara skirmish games) & my 'Chain of Command' Russian Civil War collection. The pieces are a mix of resin barrels & boxes from Fenris Games, & 2-piece plastic barrels in 2 sizes manufactured by Renedra (I purchased through Perry Miniatures as part of a Samurai figures order). Both were easy to prepare (the resin pieces merely needed a quick scrub with soapy water to remove casting residue; whilst the 2-piece plastic barrels required clipping from their sprues & gluing together.
A nice touch to the Renedra plastic barrels is that they are cast in brown plastic, so could be table ready in a basic manner very quickly. They also look a lot like traditional Japanese barrels. However, not all of their joins fitted perfectly during assembly. I used basic drying brushing to paint mine in a variety of wooden hues. I'd been trying to decide what to do for the basing for a while, reasoning that my usual 'wilderness' look of grass & moss tufts would seem a bit out of place for barrels - they would be in a street or yard, not laying in a field or wood. Then I stumbled on a very old bag of fawny-coloured flock (from the first few years of my miniatures hobbying, nearly 2 decades ago!), & found that mixing it 3-to-2 with my dark earth flock of choice made for a pleasant 'compacted/dusty earthen street' look, as seen in many chanbara films (e.g. the Zatoichi & Sleepy Eyes of Death series). I added a sprinkle of small dark green flock plants for variety, & the look was complete.
I'd hoped to have more than this to post by today, but I prefer to present finished things. I have a load of 28mm-scale Russian Civil War stuff in progress, including a platoon of White Guards, & a laser-cut ply village - but all of that is still in progress on my work desk... So for now, here's the first of the laser-cut buildings: a small barn. This is made by Sarissa Precision. Their buildings come in unpainted flat sheets, but the parts are simple to press-out, & they fit together perfectly. They have removable roofs too. The assembly instructions are clear & straightforward. I'll add some fake straw to the floor of this barn once I get some.
December has been busy with preparation & festivities, but I finally managed to get some hobby time in during my week off, after Christmas was over - here's my last post of 2016! I was in the mood for something suitably wintry, so I've been blitzing through a rebase of my rarely-used 28mm Russian Civil War figures (you guessed it - for Crossfire, my new favourite rule set!). Anyway, the figure rebasing is still in progress, but today I finished this wood.
The model coniferous trees are mounted on laser-cut ply bases from Fenris Games, which each have four 1p coins under all that texturing & flock, for nice hefty balance. I 'winterised' the trees using coarse modelling paste & flock. For ease of figure placement, I've made the trees separate from the base, which is what defines the extent of the wood for rules purposes. This also means that I can swap other features (such as rocks) between bases for more variety of table layouts. The dirt & snow flock is from Gale Force Nine. I dry-brushed a little white paint over the dirt for a more aesthetically frosty look. Fairly happy with how my snow is turning out, though I'm still experimenting. I also have some 4Ground Snow, which looks fluffier & less granular than the GF9 flock - but it's very fine & floats everywhere (makes me concerned for potential lung problems from inhaling :-s).
I've been painting a mob of Russian Civil War partisans this weekend, but unfortunately I've temporarily run out of bases - so only these are finished. Here is Olga (with a Mauser C96 pistol), leading 3 other partisans with carbines (most likely Mosin–Nagant variants). Olga is an Artizan Designs figure, whilst the others are from Copplestone Castings.
These partisans can be used for 'Reds' or 'Whites' or any other faction. I may paint-up a banner bearer with a Bolshevik flag at some point to help capture the 'Red Guard' theme though. 
This week I painted & based some tall brick walls for 28mm-scale Russian Civil War. These are resin castings from Fenris Games, & they have incredible detail/texture. If I was being really picky I'd say the individual bricks are
fractionally too small for 28mm scale, but you wouldn't notice unless
you compared a figure to the walls closely. The cap tiles are an optional second piece. The 'snow' is ready-mix filler & Gale Force Nine Snow flock, & I mounted the walls on large lolly sticks (bought from a craft store). I snapped one section of wall to create a piece that has been blasted through by a field gun. The paint scheme was inspired by the strong red bricks & colourful tiles that I have seen in photos of impressive Russian buildings.
I'm very pleased with how the tones came out on Semyon, especially his quilted jacket, but I'm not entirely happy with my painting of Katya - I think her coat needs some darker grey shading in the recesses, & I'm not entirely convinced that her 'imperial purple' hair ribbon fits the overall scheme. Maybe it will work once her coat has some darker shading, or perhaps the ribbon should simply be black.
