30 June 2017

The Walking Dead - Survivors and Walkers

King Ezekiel and Shiva
Released as 'retail exclusives' in wave 1. Being a fan of the comics I love these two, Ezekiel has one of the best character developments in the story. Shiva was a hard model to paint, no sculpted fur - all flat surface. I think the end result is pretty nice.

I base coated the model brown, paint the belly white and back orange. Gave it a couple of layers and then painted it with watered down orange and white - for a better transition.





Lee Everett and Clementine
The 'show exclusives' for 2017. I'm not really a fan of the exclusive tag on anything, it tends to only drive prices up on bad guy ebay auctions. The Telltale Games are brilliant, so I had to have these pair. Great models. For some reason the anti-shine wouldn't take the shine of the varnish. Have to get a paint on matt varnish and try a layer of that.



Walkers from Negan and Ezekiel boosters
The walkers from the boosters. Nice shamblers.


Lurkers
Christian over at Pimp My Boardgame have made a nice Lurker Card. A type of walker, that starts the game inactive and might wake up if a survivor gets too close. I decided to use a couple of dublicate models to make myself some.

I simply hot water bend the models and stuck them to a base. Unfortunately they have over time straightende out a bit. But they still look good. Painted them as the standing counter parts - even tried to copy the blood spatter.

I'll be using the Lee and Clemtine walkers as a lurker as well.




Backpack / loot token walkers
The Walking Dead Fanatics Facebook Group is a really good community.  Lots of friendly people and inspiration. The inspiration for these walkers come from that group. Made with some resin bergen rucksacks from Anvil Industries and greenstuff straps.

In game these will work as regular walkers, but when getting killed they'll then drop a loot token on the ground.


The Herd!
The ever growing Herd. At this time it's up to 43 walkers and I still have Farm, Prison and Woodbury expansions to do. Very nice, haven't even been near to putting them all on the table.

13 June 2017

Devil's Run: Skinners

The skinners is the Mad Max War Boys style faction of Devil's Run by Word Forge Games. Murderes, cannibals, maniacs. I've gone for a rusty and weathered look, many spikes and some blood splatter. So I've painted it all with a brown base coat and then different types of brown on the models.

Carcuss and buggy
The little buggy is from the Skinners faction starter. I haven't done anything to this model. It's a really nice model, super detailed.
The car is a hot wheels conversion. The armorplates on the back are from Ramshackle Games. The spikes are toothpicks, drilled holes in the roof and put them through. The small 20mm scale skulls are from Black Dog Model Company (find their stuff on ebay, it's cheapest).

Bikes and trike
Bikes and trikes from the Skinners faction skinners. Very nice models. Skulls, bones, spikes - these have a really good 80's style post apocalyptic movie look. I love them.
Trukk
A mash up ramshackle vehicle. Fluffwise it's a build made from multiple different vehicles, bolted and welded together. The resin model from Word Forge Games is a very nice kit. I've added a few extra details myself.

The top gunner is from Ramshackle Games, the gunnest is made from chocolate box plastic and chain. Black Dog skulls and more chains added. The guy on the back is a modern zombie by Caesar Miniatures (find them cheap on Ebay). I've painted him in the same colours as my Law Company (internal link).

Complete faction 
The complete faction at June 2017. V8V8V8!

4 June 2017

Elven Ranger

This is a lovely model from Admiralty Miniatures (nice Swedish scultpor Mathias Rizell). The models is a bit on the large size (more like a 32mm than 28mm), but I don't mind a bit of scale difference in my games. When stuff is all painted up, it'll still look good.

I'll be using this model as a Ranger in Frostgrave, perhaps have him explore some dungeons in Dungeon Saga.

I added the bowstring and arrow myself, otherwise is the sculpt as Admiral made it.

With this model I went for a wood elf look. Some different greens, browns and some autumn orange. 





Terrain: Toxic Waste Depot

I was at Ikea with my wife and when passing the ball pit, I imidiately thought 'they'll fit right into battlezone 3'' system'. So I asked and was allowed to take some home. Thought they would make a cool fuel / ooze / toxic sludge depot.

I used my printed danger / warning signs to add some easy detail to the build.

The build
I mixed both the 'industrial' and 'ruined' set for this one. To make the ruin complete, I had to cut up a tile. That plastic is hard and thick, it broke my small hobby clippers. 


There was a lot (!) of these currogated plates with the Deadzone: Infestation kickstarter. Chopped them up to fit the ruined pieces beneath it. This was tricky to cut, because the tiles would break along the currogated lines.


Finished terrain piece
The Ikea balls fit perfectly into the 3'' cube system. Added some 25mm bases with a few homemade rivets to them. The scaffolding is as always made with plastic sprue (see examples here). The corners of the scaffolding is the ugliest part, so I always cover those up with palstic card.  

The ooze is a basecoat of green and Nurgles Rot added after the piece has been varnished. 


The long pibe from the fuel spheres to the building is an old toy. Some dinosaur cage, easily cut into a lot of seperat pipes. Excellent detail that I'll add to a lot of industrial builds.

The pictures are too light to capture it right, but the entire edge of the ruined section is really black / charcoal.

When finished I gave the entire model three layers of cheap hair spray. It works well as a matt varnish for terrain pieces, cost nothing and protect the paintjob. Wouldn't use it on finer detailed models though.



21 May 2017

Terrain: Landing Pad and Elevator Tower

Finished up a landing pad with an elevator tower for my sci-fi gaming. This build has been made with a few battlezone tiles to mix it well with my other sci-fi terrain. But the bulk of it is as always from scrap materials and homemade stuff:

Lots of plastic sprue, insulation foam, wire mesh, necklace chain, destroyed toys and miliput.

This one has been made to look and feel like my Industrial Crane (link).

The top of the elevator tower is made with a 50:50 miliput:play doh mix and the Greenstuff World Factory Floor rolling pin (external link).  Same technique as my sci-fi bases. The barbed wire is made with a 1$ wire saw from China. That one will give you around 4 metres of barbed wire.

The underside of the elevator floor is made from a broken fladbed toy truck. The chain for the elevator is a recycle shop necklace that cost next to nothing.


The elevator itself is made from sprue, plastic card and wire mesh from the hardware store.


The landing pad is a serprate buiolding. The buttom of it is made from battlezone tules. The triangular pieces are made from floorboard insulation foam. Really cheap stuff, that's currogated on one side. You'll get crazy large amounts of this stuff for nothing.

Handrails are sprue, barrels are superglue lids.


9 battlezone tiles and 6 half tiles. The rest is scrap materials, used to extend it all and keep down cost.

I went with a yellow and grey paint scheme like my other industrial buildings. The stripes on the triangular bits is easy to make, as the plates are currogated when you buy them. I've build this with superglue, and some places it has melted the foam - but it's an easy cover up painted it as battle damage.


The easy extra 'cube' extension from sprue is visible here.The cheapest way to get a lot more from your battlezone tiles.


The signs add a lot of detail to a terrain build. I compiled a bunch of photos from google and printed them on to adhessive sticker. You can find the sheet of danger and warning signs here.



The trap door in this tile was a tough one to make. Lots of cutting in the very hard, very thick plastic. But it's a nice little detail and adds an extra entry to the landing pad.



3 May 2017

Tutorial: Wooden Palettes

Wooden palettes are great little pieces of scatter terrain. I love doing multi purpose terrain and these will work for all my modern, post-apoc and sci-fi games.

One of the issues with a lot of scatter terrain, is that it'll fall over and get pushed around during games. Often just becoming an annoyance or getting ignored. And like most gamers I have lots of small scatter pieces. Gluing some barrels, crates and cannisters to a palette will prevent that and give the whole thing a bit more mass

Materials:
  • Popsickle sticks / coffee stirrers
  • Match sticks
  • Super glue (or wood glue)
  • Clippers (or hobby knife)

Step 1:
For each palette you'll ned 4 popsickle sticks and three matches.


Step 2:
Cut of the round ends with your clippers.

Step 3:
Cut the four popsickle sticks in half, for a total of eight pieces.

Step 4:
I use super glue (but if you're patient you can of cause use wood glue). Line up the three matches on three popsickle sticks. Went it's lined up, I dap superglue on all three popsickle sticks and drop the matches into it.



Step 5:
Turn it over and add the last two popsickle sticks. Doing it like this will make sure you don't run out of space before using all 5 sticks.


Step 6: 
Turn over the palette and add three sticks to the other side.


Done palettes: 
Using super glue makes it fast to build these. If using wood glue, I suggest you get a very large wor space going. So you can start multible palettes at the same time. I build 12 palettes in an hours worth of hobby time.
Scatter terrain:
Anything goes for scatter terrain. But keep you eye out in second hand stores and at flea markets. The oil drums below I got for 10 Danske Kroner, that's well below 2 EUR, 2 USD or 2 GBP. The bunch of metal pipes are from an old dinosaur toy set and the wheels are from a broken toy car. The remaing cannisters and boxes are Mantic Games battlezone stuff. I've cut it up and rearranged most of it. 






 Showcase:
 All painted up and weathered. I've added danger stripes and warning signs to some of it using these 'Warning Danger Signs'. I've glued the scatter pieces to the palettes, in such a manner that there's room for 25mm round bases on all of them.