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!

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.

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.

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.

 

Printable: Warning and Danger Signs

A great and easy way to add some quick details to your builds is with some signs. I've made a sheet of signs, stripes and the like. It's all photos from Google, that I've resized, copy/paste, mixed and match with Paint-Fu.

The PDF is A4 sized with a lot of sign ready to use in 28mm and 20mm scale gaming. It's a really easy way to add detail to your modern, post-apoc and sci fi builds - especially the larger ones.

I've printed the page on a sheet of adhesive sticker paper, stuck the entire thing on a sheet of 0,5 mm plastic card. That's a lot danger and warning signs for your terrain projects.

The file can be downloaded through this link: Warning Danger Signs.pdf

The sheet
Click the image to see it in a larger quality.

Examples
Stuck to 0,5mm plastic card and then it's easy to cut out the signs you want to use.

 

Warpath Universe: Ogre Mercenary

I really like this Ogre mercenary model for Deadzone, there's something about him that reminds me of the Super Mutants from Fallout. I painted him up in the same colours as my Marauders, but without any GCPS insignia.

Unlike many of the other models this is Mantic distinct in its feel. So this one could fit into Necromunda as well without feeling like the wrong brand - if that's something you're into.

I haven't really been using mercenaries in games of Deadzone. But for Star Saga there'll be character cards for all the Deadzone Mercenaries, so they'll properly see some action there. He's also gonna serve some gangs in Scrappers.

The model is on a homemade base. See how to make them here.