Wasteland Town - Shack 3

I've shown this shanty previously - it's a refuelling station for the most common sort of vehicles and machinery in my post-apocalyptic world.

The last pictures didn't show the sign, or the various little bits of graffiti covering the building.

Water tanks at the side, as well as some fuel drums.

Ladders round the back, leading upto the roof of the shack...

The "chill-out area" hidden behind the shanty sign. Beers, socialist propaganda and a pack of smokes!

The building has been patched together with all sorts of junk - I love these roadsigns I got in a kids playset!

Wasteland Town - Shack 2

Another of the recently finished shanty buildings - this one is based around an abandoned/damaged armoured personnel carrier that has been converted into an extension for the dwelling...

I'd been given a busted up Rhino from a forum friend a while back - he'd done quite a bit on the Rhino, rebuilding the sides with cardboard (he'd bought it very cheap second hand, minus the sides and tracks...) and I finished it off by adding various bits. I'd decided straight away that I wanted to use it for terrain rather than in my Space Marine army.

I combined the Rhino with some packing cardboard, adding some props from foamboard, various other gubbins and a door from corrugated card and coffee stirrers...

The chimney stacks on the roof are plastic tubing and rectangles of scrap plasticard and the window is another side sponson hatch from a Predator kit.

Pretty happy with this one! Lets hope the Marines don't come and ask for it back...

Wasteland Town - Shack 1

 

I finished the last few shanty buildings the other night - this was the first that I built and remains my favourite.

It's a foamboard shell covered in various textures of card (mainly corrugated) with some fairly solid packing card for the roof. The front door is from the GW Cities of Death kit (cut down yet still massive!) and the dilapidated couch out front is from Black Cat Bases. I-beam has been used in various points around the building as supports.

The rear shows a ladder to the roof (a Hexplatformer piece) and a roadsign (from a kids construction set I picked up for the vehicle). 

Odds and ends from various sources have been used - the window on the side is from a Rhino kit, there is a random toy robotic claw and a claw from a "Kryptonite Capture" (or something along those lines) Superman toy covered in chained down tarps. The theme behind the shack was that it was home to a robotics engineer.

There's another roadsign on the other side, plus a component from a Leman Russ kit.


I've also taken some better pictures of the two shanties I completed earlier - I'll post about them in the near future.

Painting In Progress

I'm on the third day of my 3-days-off - I managed to get a little bit of basecoating done (as well as watching The Avengers with amazing nachos yesterday!) - these are 6 Ar-Men and an Aruk (from the Cobalt-5 from Black Hat Miniatures), a pair of cowboys (more an in-game objective for the post-apoc stuff) and the mummy. I touched up the sprayed basecoat (the not-Khemri Brown from Humbrol) and blocked out the weapons/armour plates/kit. I love the Cobalt-5 figures - sculpted a few years ago by Bob Naismith, they have a massively Rogue Trader/early 40k feel. I'll be using them as hired mercenaries in the post-apoc sci-fi setting.

I also assembled this Thrullg from Hordes - I'll be using it as a random event or beast hunt in the post-apoc. It could also be handy as a beast for post-apoc or fantasy gladiators to take on, or as a Clawed Fiend in my Dark Eldar. Loved the figure - the bony spine in particular! I've been considering purchasing Red Sand, Black Moon from THW - this would make for a vicious challenge!

The Boneyard Grows

The Boneyard has grown - the Triceratops in the middle is certainly my favourite of the bunch - Triceratops was always one of my favourite dinosaurs as a child (I had a young Triceratops toy from Jurassic Park as a child - brilliant!) and I feel rather sorry for this one!

They'll all be getting undercoated this evening for painting later in the week - I predict lots of drybrushing with these! I may add some aquarium plants to blend them  into my jungle terrain, but I'll have to see - I will be carving out some new bases for the next lot of jungle foliage shortly. Another 6 bases should give me a densely covered board!

Crate Pile Three: Complete

The third and final crate pile, with one of my new guardsmen for scale.

All three crates complete. Well worth the £21.99 including shipping - I would highly recommend these!

Crate Piles Undercoated...

A while back I managed to get a bunch of different cans of Plasti-kote spraypaint at a DIY store for something like 20p each - I've reaped these rewards and used a mid-orange as the basis for these crate piles. I began with the orange, coating almost everything (they come undercoated in a light grey). After that I added some black undercoat in most of the places where sand can be found, finally finishing up with another hit of the orange in places that had been a bit too covered up.


Hopefully this will be a very decent start to my actual painting!

Crate Piles

I received these in the post during the week - I'm extremely impressed with them! They're crate/barrel piles from Microart Studios - released alongside their Infinity terrain line, I thought they would be perfect for my Spaceport board. My painting-in-progress Guard have cameo-d for scale purposes...

I bought these on eBay at the price of £21.99 including delivery - they're almost the 40k equivalent of the classic stepped-hills commonly seen in Warhammer Fantasy. They're made out of a light, dense expandable foam, which can be chopped and sanded rather easily. They seem quite sturdy - the way they're produced means that there is some filling of air bubbles. I've done this with polyfilla (spackle for US viewers!), green stuff and gone back over most of the sand with PVA and more sand (if that makes sense). I'm going to be painting these up shortly and I also have a few other bits and pieces on the way for this terrain collection - stay tuned!

Draxii Kill-Group

Introducing the Draxii Kill-Group Tarbosaur - a squad of vicious mercenaries renowned for their ruthlessness and endurance in combat scenarios. Hunting in packs, the Draxii are available to the highest bidder and are often employed in the Eastern Fringe by those seeking to strengthen their offensive capabilities. 

Armed with pulse repeaters of xenos origin as well as a flamethower, the pictured Kill-Group are equipped for anti-infantry assaults, using the flame weapon to flush their enemies out of cover and the pulse repeaters to put them down.

Draxii armed with pulse repeater - note combat harness and warknife, standard equipment for every warrior.

Draxii armed with flamethrower with fuel reserve.

Draxii armed with pulse repeater - note fragmentation grenades of Draxii manufacture, as well as additional ammo for backup pistol.

These miniatures are from Khurasan Miniatures, who recently announced a temporary suspension. Very much a shame, as they have some fantastic miniatures, particularly the 15mm ranges - here's hoping they're back open properly come Fall '11 as mentioned on the site.

Xenos Fauna

I recently rebased these Horrorclix Centipedes recently, for use in some skirmish games as some alien beasties!

I managed to get three of the blighters for 50p each from a guy over on the Post Apoc Wargames forum.

Rebased them on 40mm GW bases befitting their size, they'll be getting a nice repaint in the near future!

On The Workbench

Just a quick post to show what I'm upto at the moment...

Shipping barrels - these are for the Starport and Necromunda games as scatter cover - I may end up making some kind of pallets to hold four or six of these, rather than having them all over the place. These blue ones have actually been done for a good while now and were probably the first thing completed for the Starport after seeing Ironworker do similar over on his blog. I've been saving bottle tops for the next batch for a while now...

The next batch of the shipping barrels - I picked up some spraypaint at a DIY centre on sale in a few interesting shades - these have now been washed with a mucky watery wash, then drybrushed with Charadon  Granite from the GW Foundation paints range. All that is left is transfers and perhaps some graffiti! I also want to build or buy some shipping containers. Added to the loaded pallets, some fuel drums and some other bits and pieces, that should be enough scatter terrain for my board!

Starport - Local Garrison

Just a quick post before I head off to bed - I've been working on a few bits and pieces over the past couple of days. These are the local garrison for my spaceport - a planetary defence force recruited from the planet itself as well as neighbouring worlds. 

From left to right we have: sniper in half ghillie suit,  NCO with pistol and reconditioned non-human power glove, officer wielding powerful pistol and bags of attitude, trooper with servo-arm assisted smartgun/heavy stubber.

L to R again: trooper with lasrifle with attached torch, NCO with machine pistol, comms trooper with hardround rifle, trooper with lasrifle and attached torch.

All of the above are sculpted by Mark Copplestone and are available from em4 miniatures. Some lovely sculpts - the pictures suck. But it's late, there's zero natural light and it's the best I'm going to get for now! When I expand them (I want another smartgunner and a bunch more standard troopers) I'll be sure to get better pictures. These are basically my not-NCR (New California Republic, from Fallout: New Vegas), to be used as Colonial Marine-types in my Predator Versus setting.

On the subject of expanding these guys, I did buy these a couple of years ago in a 50p eBay auction, recently rediscovered them whilst looking for parts for the security AA truck. I've decided to attach them to these guys, reminiscent of the troopers wearing power armour in New Vegas. I also have a Halo Warthog buggy that I'm going to paint up and attach to the force.

My thinking with these troopers is that they're basically not very well liked by the inhabitants of the starport - just as likely to tax them as to protect them from local bandits. The AA truck for example, is actually owned and maintained by the people that live directly in the starport, where you can find various militias who claim to be the one true force protecting the town. Think stormtroopers in Star Wars, or the Colonial troopers in Firefly.

Any suggestions for other additions I could make to these guys? I have a sci-fi tank that I could refit for these, just a plastic toy but could turn out quite nicely. Another note - I didn't lose any posts with the recent issues with blogger, but I did manage to lose a bunch of comments - so feel free to post again on the earlier blogposts!