Middle Earth SBG (Ruins of Osgiliath - part 2)

Hey, hey, hey, sports fans.

Here is the second batch of buildings I have painted towards my little Osgiliath project.

I'm aiming for something that is flexible, changeable and easy so I'm sticking to using off-the-shelf GW models. I've swapped a few bits around here and there just to keep things interesting.

Building#5

Building#5 - Alternate view

Building#6

Building#6 - Alternate view

Building#7

Building#7 - Alternate view

Building#8

Building#8 - Alternate view

More Middle Earth SBG stuff:
More Osgiliath stuff:

Middle Earth SBG (Ruins of Osgiliath - part 1)

As you may well have noticed I've been on a bit of a "Middle Earth Mission" recently.

Well, I'm still on it. Five separate armies on the go (The Fellowship, Moria, Isengard, Mordor (and friends!) and The Dead of Dunharrow).

I needed a break from painting "people" so I've decided to do some scenery pieces too.

The easiest way to start was to pick up some of the GW ruins which can be bought quite cheaply off eBay so that's exactly what I did. I decided to have a go at building something that could be used as either "random ruins" or - deployed in quantity - Osgiliath (I'm still searching for something that could represent the infamous bridge - stay tuned).

Anyway, here are the first few items:

Building 1: view#1

Building 2: view#2

Building 2: view#1

Building 2: view#2

Building 3: view#1

Building 3: view#2

Building 4: view#1 

Building 4: view#2

More Middle-Earth stuff:
More Osgiliath stuff:

Necromunda: Scenery

As a distraction from all the Middle Earth stuff I'm working on I have taken on a mini-project as an occasional breath of fresh air.

Well, I suppose it would in actuality be foetid, rank, recycled air.

I've travelled into the Hive World of Necromunda for the first time.

I was recently given the boxed set and a box of Van Saar to I'm doing occasional bits of work on them. I've been going at it off and on for a few weeks whenever I need a break from Middle Earth stuff. I've only just got around to taking any photos though.

So I present to you here the stuff I've done so far, in the order that I did it.

First up, I decided that as well as the Zone Mortalis stuff that comes in the box I was going to pick up some MDF walkways/gantries etc. I'm not presenting any of that here ('cos I haven't built it yet!) but it stood to reason that I was going to need a playing surface.

I happened to have a 4' x 4' hardboard sheet lying around, so I got to work with a few rattlecans and some masking tape and produced this:

I have also painted up some of the scenery items from the boxed set:

First group, rear

First group, front

Second group, rear

Second group, front

Third group, back

Third group, front

Fourth group, back

Fourth group, front

And that's it for this post!

I have also painted up the Escher models from the boxed set and will present them in the next post.

More Necromunda stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 17 - Scenics: Large Hills)

Following on from my previous post about small hills, I thought it might be good to make some big ones!

So I did!

A couple of 3-tier hills

And an experimental cliff as well:

The cliff is basically a 2-tier hill, but the "cliffy-bit" has been made from tree bark, PVA'd on, filled with decorator's caulk and painted up. It's an experimental item - I'm not sure if I like it. The bark works well as rock, I think, and it's certainly sturdy enough. I think if I build more, I'll pay more attention to the view of the extreme ends as seen from the cliff-side. At present it's just a random-looking oblong of rock that seems to be there for no particular reason.

More scenery stuff:
More wargames table stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 15 - Scenics: Small hills)

More work has been done on the ever-growing gaming table project!

Also, as a matter of interest, this is my 400th published blog post!

This time, I've turned my attention to producing some hills.

Love 'em or loathe 'em, I've gone for the "tiered-hill" approach.

Sure - they don't look very realistic, but at least the models will stand on them without toppling. I find that infuriating, personally. My gaming surface is fairly hard and a lot of my models are lead (and Gravity is a long-standing nemesis of mine and takes every opportunity to stitch me up): I didn't want my models rolling off and getting dinged and damaged.

So, tiered hills it is.

I've split my hill-building efforts over two blog posts - this one showing "smaller" hills and the other showing "larger" hills.

Single-tier hills

Two-tier hills

These are just made from polystyrene sheets (bought from a local DIY store and intended for use as insulation). They some as 8' x 4' sheets and cut readily with a knife and hot-wire cutter. Textured, painted and flocked using my usual recipe and they blend in to the table surface pretty well, I think.

More scenery stuff:
More wargames table stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 14 - Scenics: Difficult Ground)

The scenery train keeps on rolling.

We've built some "difficult ground" bases to represent broken, rocky terrain.

Hardboard bases were dressed with chunks of foam to represent larger rocks, gravel and sand. Painted with a mix of PVA/Black Emulsion/sharp-sand to add texture. Another coat of black paint, grey paint to pick up the larger rocks and then heavily drybrushed with white paint.

Add modelling snow (a.k.a. sodium bicarbonate), static grass and "Bob's your uncle!" as the saying goes.

More scenery stuff:
More wargames table stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 13 - Scenics: Craters)

I've built a few more scenery pieces to add to my growing collection. This time it's craters.

Construction was as simple as can be: A hardboard base, to which I added a thick ring of PVA glue and laid on top of that a ring of gravel. When dried, I added another layer of PVA and another ring of gravel.

When that was dry, I smothered the gravel in PVA and scattered on some sand, massaging it into the cracks with my fingertips.

When that was dry, I painted the whole thing with a mix of black emulsion, PVA and sand to add texture to the whole base area.

A bit of drybrushing and some paint/snow/static grass and the result is as shown below:

More scenery stuff:
More wargames table stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 12 - Scenics: Rocks)

Now that I have a gaming surface I'd better add some dimension to it, right? To that end, I've made a few rocky outcroppings for my growing scenery collection.

Unfortunately, my hurriedly-taken photos were a bit pants, so I can't show them all to you on this pass. I'll retake some newer pics and show you the others on another occasion.

The same method was used throughout:

• Cut a hardboard base, 
• PVA some randomly snapped chunks of polystyrene to it,
• Hot-wire cut the polystyrene into a "rocky" sort of shape,
• Add some gravel to the base for texture,
• Paint the whole model in a couple of coats of black emulsion mixed with PVA & sharp-sand,
• Paint the rocks grey,
• Drybrush the hell out of it,
• Add snow/static grass & clump foliage to taste.

Sorry about the blurry photo

More scenery stuff:
More wargames table stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 11 - Starting on some scenics)

As usual I'm jumping about from topic to topic. So, notwithstanding the fact that I've not yet completed work on my modular tiles, I've started working on some scenery pieces to add some height.

This is a WIP post so there are no finished products to be seen yet.

Hills:

I've built a few different types of hills. All are made from polystyrene sheets. The polystyrene used is the dense kid - fairly robust and not easily dented/damaged. All will be painted firstly with a mixture of black emulsion/PVA/sand to give some texture and strength to the surface. A second coat of black emulsion will then be applied before drybrushing etc. In the images that follow, some have had that first coat, some haven't.

Single-tier hills

More single-tier hills

two-tier hills

3-tier hills

And a two-tier cliff - the cliff face is difficult to make out but it's a few chunks of tree-bark.
It'll be easier to see when painted.

Rocks:

The rocks are chunks of polystyrene hacked into shape, based on hardboard and will be textured with some gravel and the same paint/PVA/sand mixture as was used on the hills (and everything else!).

Rocky outcrop

Rocky outcrop

Difficult Ground:

Randomly scattered chunks of foam and gravel, textured with sand/PVA/paint etc.

Difficult ground

Craters:

There's no foam in the craters. These have been built by gluing a ring of gravel onto a hardboard base with PVA. A second ring of gravel was added once the first had dried. Once that was dry, I applied a final layer of PVA and then "smooshed it around" with my fingertips, working it into the cracks and crevices between the gravel I'd previously applied. I then covered the gravel with a layer of sharp-sand and allowed that to dry. Once dry, I removed all the loose sand with a 2'' paintbrush and then painted with the same mix as used on all the other pieces above.

Crater

There's clearly more work to do here - the pieces all need another (and in some cases - a first) coat of black paint and need then to be highlighted and dressed.

The pictures above also show only a fraction of the pieces I've built so far - there are a couple of dozen items in total.

More news as it comes in...

More scenery stuff:
More wargames table stuff:

Scenery: Crashed Ork Gunship

I came across an interesting supplier a few weeks ago - Amera Plastic Mouldings.

These guys manufacture scenic items for wargames and other scale-modelling based hobbies.

They have pros and cons.

• Pros: Dirt cheap. Really, really cheap.
• Cons: They use a vacuum-moulding process so the level of detail in the models isn't at all high.

I like the pro, and I don't really mind the con. I'm painting it anyway and will also be adding basing and some texturing which will tart it up no end.

So anyway, I picked up a few bits:

• A Sci-Fi redoubt,
• A crashed gunship,
• A ruined gothic cathedral

And the whole bundle, including shipping, cost me less than £20.

I'll be working my way through prepping them all, one-by-one, in-and-around doing other projects as time goes by.

First up, the crashed gunship. It's not a W40K specific model, but is clearly 28mm scale and looks a bit sci-fi so I've gone with the notion of painting it to match my Orks:

More Ork stuff:

Scenery: Ruined Buildings (part 4 - other two finished)

To finish off this mini-project (which has, unfortunately, caused me to get the "scenery bug" - so more scenery projects will be forthcoming), I present the other two buildings from this four building set.

Four buildings is not bad for about £3 of foamcore, a £1 emulsion matchpot, some cereal-box card, a drinking straw and some sand. I'm very pleased with these and itching to do more, but I've made promises to myself and have other commitments. I've got some games coming up that I need to prepare for and made a New Year's resolution to complete some models I started a decade ago.

Trying hard to stick to my guns (mind you I've done that before - superglue can be a pain).

More Ruined Buildings stuff: