Cicada!

Last night I did a little papercarft. I found http://www.toposolitario.com/workshop/ almost a year ago and have been thinking about trying one of their models for about as long. They have a dropship that I may try in the future but I thought I'd start with their smaller ship, the Chicharra (Cicada).

The model is 28mm scale so I reduced it to 65% and printed it on card stock.

Here she is. I think she's adorable. I just love that up-swept tail.

The Cicada will be a fun objective for small scale scenarios or just a nice bit of table dressing. 

Better Pics!

I got my good camera back and couldn't resist taking better pics of the Kra'Vak. Although now I face the daunting task of reshooting all the pics on the blog. (Probably not going to happen.)

But wait! There's more! I added flowers to the bases. So, not only are the new pics prettier, they're also prettier.

I've never used the flower flock before. I think it worked out pretty nicely. It also solved a problem for me. I was trying to think of how I was going to distinguish between squads. I thought about different colored dots on the shoulders or maybe different colors on the base edges  But because I alternated the blue and white on the squads the yellow and pink flowers take care of the issue for me.

New board and some scatter

Wow. I haven't posted since August 27th. And I haven't really done that much since then either. No minis painted at all. Only a few games thrown in. But I did finish up a river board and some scatter terrain.

Not too many WIP pics. Here's what I have:

The very beginning of the river board. I used a hot wire cutter for the river. Once it was cut out, I cut it in half horizontally, then gauge an even deeper section in the very middle for the river bed. (Disregard the Happy Napper in the background.)

Here you can see that I had the board painted before I decided that I needed to add some more levels. I had just come from my gaming on my buddy's new boards and they were way too cool not to emulate.

And here it is all textured, painted, and flocked. I think I'll eventually add some more detail to the vegetation. But it will do for now.

Next up is the scatter terrain. I wanted some smaller rock terrain. I wanted to be able to use them as stand alone pieces or have them fit together to form a rough wall. Enter the hole saw.

I used a 2" hole saw for this. Just cut one base out, then let the saw overlap the preceding hole for the remaining  bases. 

A little bit of tree bark mulch, some putty, sand, and they're ready to go.

I really like these little bases. No matter how you set them up, they fit snugly together. And it was a nice way to ease back into the hobby after my two month break.

I still have my Kra'Vak army to finish up. Just another two squads and the many mechs. If I buckled down I could have them done before December. But I've got my eye on some more Blue Moon Manufacturing minis. Deep Dark Africa this time. The missionaries look delicious.

My Own Private Hell Hole!

Well, I said I'd take some pictures and, goldarnit, I did.

Just a quick layout. Spent more time resizing the pics than I did setting up and taking them. I'm quite pleased with how the board, buildings, and terrain features have turned out.

Not sure what kind of board to do next, though.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here's something that cracks me up every time I upload more pictures for the blog. I'm just using Google+ to host my pictures. Every time I upload I get this:

What odd friends you have, e-p!

Image Dump!

Been staying up too late cutting and gluing.

And here's the first of my 2x2 boards. Since I took these pics I've flocked with some dead grass.

1x2, hardboard, pink foam

Too much glue, too much sand, and a road made from Liquid Nails.

A simple layout with my rocky outcroppings, shanties, and my comm bunker.

Later I'll take some pics of the table set up with all the Whitewash City buildings and some of the Weird West minis.

Here's what my buddy, Chris is working on.

Some British cultists. I love that woman up front. She's from the Jack the Ripper pack from Blue Moon. She's supposed to be scared but Chris thought she looked like she could be casting a spell and, voila!, a new gang is born. I'm really digging that scary worm monster behind her. It's a D&D mini and the perfect size for a scary monster in a skirmish game.

I found some of my old Cthulhu minis, but I think they're too big unless they're being used as the center piece of a scenario.

I think it's an old RAFM mini?

I think I might start painting some ghouls. I want to be ready for when my necromancer raises the dead.

As an afterthought, I just realized that some of my GZG not-Firefly figs could be used to make another gang. Perfect!

Sheriff's Shop!

Here's the first of my paper western town from Whitewash City.

They suggest reducing them to 60%, but that was way too small. My buddy tried 65% and thought that was too small too. So I did this at 70% and I think it's about right for my Blue Moon cowboys. Still a little on the small side for the Blue Moon vampires, those things are big.

I would have made at least one more but the printer ran out of ink. Serves me right for not printing these at work.

Rocky Outcroppings! (And a forest)

Back in April I made some shanties mounted on CDs. I decided to recycle the CDs once more for some rocky outcroppings. Just some rocks from the backyard, putty, sand, and a bunch of flock.

I painted these to match the hills I made last month. The rocks came out a little more red than the originals. I keep telling myself I'll write down the recipes for painting (terrain and minis) and I never do. Stupid. Oh well.

Next up, a simple base to use for a small forest.

Now featuring Trees!

Now I just need to get to work on the boards themselves. I have two 2'x2' boards ready to get some work done on. MDF screwed to 1x2 boards. I have the pink foam insulation in my trunk. Had the guy at Home Depot cut the 4x8 sheet down to 2x2s for me (never would have gotten them home any other way). Didn't even cost extra. I also want to get some of those Whitewash City paper buildings printed and put together. Won't be long before we can trot the whole setup out for our less miniature-oriented nerd friends and have a beer and pretzel night.

Trees!

Over Christmas I took my girls to the local zoo. We made our compulsory visit to the gift shop to buy the cheapest toy they have (miniature animals as it turns out [horrid rubbery things, useless for gaming]) and lo and behold, they had a tube of miniature trees on sale, 80% off. I bought one tube, not sure about scale. Took it home, tried it out, liked what I saw, drove back and cleaned them out.

These are made under the Toobs label. I've found their stuff at Michael's and Hobby Lobby too, but never for such a good deal. I ended up with 44 trees for about $12. Some sport autumn colors. I have those to my girls. I may take them back at some point if I feel like painting them. Thee others came in shades of green with brown trunks. They would have been fine to base out of the box but I had just finished my Space Nazis and thought, "I should dip these, they'd look so much better!" They do look a little better, but the extra work probably wasn't worth it, IMO. They're based on fender washers, puttied, sand-ed, and flocked. Blah blah blah preamble.

To make this product "educational," they include this prehistoric tree.

Now that I've taken nice photos of them, I can see that I need to get a little more matte varnish on them. We'll see. That probably isn't going to happen. They're serviceable as is. Maybe that should have been the title of this blog, "Serviceable As Is."

Comm Bunker and New Minis

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I haven't gotten a lot done since my last post but I did get a three Ground Zero Games Free Trader Crew minis painted. I really love these sculpts. The faces in particular are outstanding.

The building in the background is my other hobby achievement in the past few weeks, a comm bunker.

I rocked it old school with this one. The bunker is made from an Axe pomade container. I felt a little bit of a douche buying an Axe product but just look at it. A perfect gaming shape. The radar dish is the protective seal from a stick of deodorant. And lastly, that large aerial is my favorite: the stick from a prescription opiate sucker. I've had those sitting in my bitz drawer for six years. The window is cereal box card and the little aerials are brass rod.

I'm not really sold on the white dish, but the whole project took way too long as it is so it'll probably just stay white.

Feels good to get some stuff done, that's for sure.

Space Nazis!

I haven't come up with a back story for these guys yet, because, well--they're space Nazis. That kind of sums them up, doesn't it. Eureka's Sci Fi Germans. Decent sculpts. Wish they're were some mortars only because my buddy's Khurasan Federals have them ans they kick my butt.

The paint scheme is super simple. In retrospect, too simple. But that's okay. What I really wanted to do with my first 15mm sci fi army was complete it. Which made me a little overzealous. I wish I would have painted some of the armor plates a different color. I wish I wouldn't have dipped them. But you know what? They're done and they look great on the table.

Enough preamble.

This army is designed for speed so all four squads and the commander arrive in Grav transports (or if google translate is to be believed "Antischwerkraft Träger" which sounds pretty cool). These started life as Plastic Soldier Company's SdKfz 251 Ausf D Halftrack. What a great deal! 5 models for around $30. It really has spoiled me when I go to look at other 15mm vehicle offerings. Anyway, WIP:

Just a little plastic tube for the anti-grav pontoons, some plasticard to cover the open top, and a lasgun from the GW Chimera kit along with other bits of course.

Again, not thrilled with the paint job, but good enough.

The scariest model in the army flanked by his little walker brethren:

A pic for scale:

Last but not least, the whole shebang:

After playing wargames off and on for about twenty years, this is my first "finished" army. This is why I love 15mm so much. The army cost me around $70. Even if I never played a game with them I've already gotten $70 worth of entertainment out of them. But I've already played a few games with them. It's almost like I'm making money at this point. At least that's what I tell my wife.