Finished: Marsh Terrain

After many setbacks, they're finally finished!

First Batch:

Second Batch:

Comparison:

The static grass on the first batch doesn't look quite as bad as I thought. I might go back over them with the 4mm "dead" grass mix which I used on the second batch.

With those done, I think I will probably switch back to painting figures. I'll probably make a start on my ancient Germans for "Infamy, Infamy!" - that should keep me busy for a week or two.

Wednesday Workbench 26 August

I'm sure that you have been expecting me to post pics of the finished marsh terrain pieces for a couple of days, but they aren't quite finished. It took until Monday evening for the gloss Mod Podge to fully dry (I should have built it up in thin layers rather than doing a deep pour) and it had shrunk somewhat and the surface wasn't flat but followed the undulations of the texture underneath. So I decided to add a second pour (with some ink mixed in) to correct that.

Yesterday morning I checked and it had dried, but the surface was still undulating. I decided to add static grass anyway, but went a bit heavy with the first pass of green stuff which meant that there wasn't much free PVA for the second pass of "patchy" grass to stick to. Once that had dried, I still wasn't happy with the water surface and was also not happy with the flocking so I decided to start on some more pieces to replace them. I cut some more 2mm blue foam to size and glued that to MDF terrain bases and left them to cure overnight.

This morning I used the hot-wire cutter to trim and bevel the foam. I then created depressions for the water effects by rubbing the rounded handles of some scissors over the patches of the foam to compress it. The foam was then scuffed up with a scrubbing brush and the MDF underside and the foam on top were base-coated with Nutmeg Spice paint. The depressions then got painted with raw umber craft paint, with a thin wash of Army Painter Dark Tone added to darken the deepest parts.

Once the wash was dry, I mixed a few drops of olive green ink into some Vallejo water effects and added it to the depressions on the new pieces. Realising that that would also sort out the water surface problem with the original pieces, I mixed up some more, tinted with AP Strong tone wash, and added it to those.

If the water effects have dried tomorrow, I will build up the "land" parts with some acrylic caulk, add texture paste and paint it. Flocking the second batch with static grass will probably need to wait until Friday.

Paint table Saturday 22 August

Yesterday I got all the woodland/forest terrain bases base-coated and dry-brushed.

I then began work on the swamp bases. I base-coated these in a darker colour and dry-brushed them. The next step was to add some dark green-brown ink into the "pools". For some unfathomable reason I decided to spread the green ink wash (thinned down somewhat) over the ground areas. Yup, big mistake. To correct that, once it was dry I had to dr-brush them again with the base and highlight colours (after airbrushing a coat of matt varnish to seal in the ink wash). Later on I added some slightly watered down gloss Mod Podge for the water effect. Almost 24 hours later, some of the deeper pools are still drying:

As I can't really do anything more with the terrain until the Mod Podge has dried (hopefully tomorrow?) I finished prepping the last of the figures for my "Infamy, Infamy!" project this morning and this afternoon I started gluing figures onto sticks ready for priming and painting:

That's the Germans done; once they have been primed I will do the same with the Romans, the animals and the civilians.

Terrain Table T(h)ursday 20 August

For the past few days I have been slowly working on the terrain bases for the woodland and marsh pieces. So far I have glued 2mm (for the marshes) and 5mm styrofoam to MDF bases, removed the excess and beveled the edges with a hot-wire cutter, created dimples and puddles by heating the foam with a barbecue gas lighter, painting the MDF on the undersides, corrected the warping caused by the gas lighter and coated the foam with Vallejo dark earth texture paste.

Tomorrow (or possibly later tonight) I will be base-coating the texture and then will focus on the marsh pieces to get them out of the way.

The woodland/forest pieces will take a bit longer as I have all of these cheap trees to "improve":

Although I could just seal them to help stop the existing clump foliage dropping off, they do look a bit plain. My plan is to "highlight" the foliage with some fine flock and to drybrush and wash the trunks. After that they will get a sealing coat of varnish.

Finished: Rock Around The Clock Tonight...

When I suggested that these might be finished yesterday I had forgotten to take into account the effect of temperature on drying times. When I produced the test pieces the ambient temperature was over 30C; it's now just over 20C resulting in longer drying times for glue and paint.

But they are done now, after much faffing around trying to replicate the colour scheme from the test pieces. I've got reasonably close I think:

Test piece in the middle

The paints used for these were all tester pots of matt emulsion paint from Wilko - Vintage Burgundy, Nutmeg Spice, Jelly Bean, Peach Blush and Soft Cream. I now have an 18l Really Useful Box full of terrain for Strontium Dog, which is more than enough to be going on with (OK, maybe a few small scatter pieces of rock could get added at some point).

While I'm still prepping the figures for my "Infamy, Infamy!" project I will be carrying on with making terrain - I need to make up several pieces of woods and marsh. And then a few small fields and habitation (I'll need to get all the resin prepped and painted for those though).

Paint Table Saturday 15 August

A small confession - I haven't done any painting since the hills and rocks. I have been doing some figure prep (the ancient Germans are now done and I have started on the civvies and animals). I've also cut and carved some more foam for rock formations, which have been glued together and onto MDF today:

Tomorrow I will be adding some grit and sand to them and hopefully starting the painting. They should be finished on Monday if all goes well.

Finished: Hills

I should really have posted this yesterday, but forgot. Oh, well, only a day late.

As you can see, I now have a bunch of hills of various sizes to use for various games. Some of the smaller ones might be a little steep, but that's OK with me.

I also made a few small rock formations for my Strontium Dog terrain collection. These were test pieces to see how the colour scheme and carving would work. I reckon they've come out quite nicely.

All in all, not bad for a couple of days' work in this heat. Now that the rock formation tests are done, I'll be making up a few larger pieces over the next few days. I just need to get a couple more tester pots of the base colour.

Lockdown Podcast #20

And so it ends. With episode #20, the Lockdown Specials will no longer be a weekly production. But no weeping, wailing, tearing of clothes and gnashing of teeth - there will be monthly podcasts and possibly some "specials" in between.

Anyhoos, episode #20 was published on Friday and saw us reach the climax of "Teaching Timmy About Napoleonics" and the last of Andy's quizzes. We also look back at what everyone has painted since "lockdown" started.

Paint Table Sunday 09 August

I've been taking things easy for the past few days, but have continued with prepping my 15mm ancient Germans and Romans for "Infamy, Infamy!". All the Romans are done, I just have a few more Germans and then all the civvies, animals and terrain to do.

Speaking of terrain, as I'm going to need a few hills I decided to get some made. While I was doing that, I also decided to do some rocky outcrops to add to my Strontium Dog terrain collection.

All the gluing onto MDF bases got done yesterday, as did the carving for the rocky outcrops. Early this afternoon I carved the normal hills with my hotwire cutter. I thought it was taking a bit too long and then realised that the batteries might be low - quick change of batteries and it was cutting through the foam like a knife through butter. Annoyingly, that was when I only had a couple left to do.

I then scuffed up the surfaces of the hills using a scrubbing brush to give a little bit of texture as well as a better surface for paint and glue to adhere to. The MDF was then given a protective coat of paint and when that was dry, I flipped them and painted to foam. Later today I will probably add some patches of grit and sand to them.


On Thursday afternoon I manged to get in my first game of ADLG for months. Clive had wanted an opponent for his Parthians so I morphed my Sarmatians into an Armenian army. When I turned up with eight cataphracts and two heavy cavalry against his four cataphracts and a mass of medium cavalry, he was certain that I was going to beat him easily. I did point out that my dice rolling luck is probably just as bad as his. As it turns out, my dice luck was much worse than his and combats which I should have won with ease saw my battle lines evaporate.

Finished: Subway Entrance for Judge Dredd

I said yesterday that I might have something else finished today, and I was right. I managed to get all the painting done last night then did the washes, gloss coat, decals and final gloss and matte coats done today just in time to include it in the recording of episode 20 of the Madaxeman Lockdown Specials podcast (which will be published in a few days time).

The MDF kit is from TT Combat. One of the "M" signs snapped off during assembly but I managed to glue it back in place. Unfortunately it broke off again while I was painting it so I decided to just leave it as an example of the mindless juve vandalism endemic to Mega City One.

As a little extra touch for Herkybird, I made sure to add some graffiti decals on top of others. Even though it added quite a bit of time to the whole process.

Finished: Assorted Scatter Terrain for Judge Dredd

It appears that I am on a bit of a roll at the moment. Following rapidly on from the concrete scatter terrain, I've now finished some other bits of scatter terrain.


Mini-Guns:

...because every self-respecting mega-block's Citi Def troop needs some heavy firepower to defend their residents against various threats like the Sovs, zombies, other blocks. Kept under lock and key, there is no danger of them falling into the hands of the block's criminal gangs...

Prisoner Posts:

With street Judges making multiple arrests every hour (Dredd once arrested several thousand people in one go. OK, it was the entire crew of a Sov warship, but...) and with such a high level of crime, they don't have time to take prisoners into the Sector house for transfer to the Iso Cubes. Instead they simply cuff the perps to prisoner posts for pick-up by the Pat-wagons and H-wagons.


Gas Cylinders:

Garbage Grinders:

Waste needs to be disposed of and it's much easier to process if it's already been ground down into small bits. Most homes will have one of these, or there will be one on their floor of the block, and there will also be public ones in the great outdoors.

Criminals have been known to use them to dispose of bodies and, in one case, to use one (marked as out of order) as a hiding place for an assassination attempt.

Janitorial Droid:

All of the above items were from Wargames Terrain Workshop.


Food Vending Machines:

Who needs a kitchen (or even has space for one in their slum apartment?) when you can simply get a nutritious*, hot (or self-heating) meal from the vending machine on your floor. Take your pick of Sump Industries "Grot Pots" or Munce Inc Ready Meals.

These machines are from Antenociti's Workshop.

* As certified by the Justice Department.



If all goes well, I might have another terrain piece finished tomorrow.