Crazy idea / Modular sewers/dungeons test piece

In my never ending quest to never paint all my miniatures I had a crazy idea the other day for a modular dungeon system that is easy to store and should hopefully be easy and cheap to make. The crazy idea was to take a normal box file and create a small section of terrain that would hopefully sit next to other future sections and would be easy to rearrange.

Here's the box file as is at purchase:

I started by removing the paper holder at the bottom and sketched in roughly where I wanted the sewer channel to go and any doors to be and the rough layout of any walls.

This was supposed to be a step by step but I completely missed out most of the steps after this one. I'll try and explain the processes in any future updates and if anyone is not sure of anything just give me a shout.

Here's the box'o'dungeons as it stands at the moment:

The paving is hand drawn onto sections of polystyrene pizza base and then PVA glued over chunks of polystyrene to build up the height. 

It still needs a some work sorting out the gaps and joins between sections and I still have a little more cobbling to finish off.

Once I've finished all the stone work I'll have a look at creating some water effects for the sewer channels and some wooden plank walkways/bridges for access to the different levels. I'm still in two minds whether or not to cut holes in the ends of the box so that they match up with future boxes or to leave them as self contained boxes?

The end of each sewer channel could end in metal bars and each section could be accessed by doors to keep each box self contained that way I don't end up losing the structural integrity of the box? Let me know what you think in the comments.

New paint jobs and a blog shout out

Hi everyone, I've managed to slap a little paint on some figures this week, and made a little progress on the Mega mini's goblins that I purchased a while back after I heard they were closing down their shop. I would link to them but it looks like Mega mini's has taken them down and sold the molds onto Midlam miniatures:
http://www.midlamminiatures.co.uk/news/news-30.html so hopefully they should appear for sale very soon.

Here they all are based up and their flesh base coated along with a Mega mini's Wretch that looks like is still available from Mega miniatures.

So far I've only finished one of the group, mainly as a tester for the rest of the group:

I've tried to go for a more 'earthy' yellowy green on the flesh hopefully to distinguish them from the orcs that I  painted many moons ago. The 'string' on the bow is a tiny piece of wire that drove me insane trying to wind around the bow. The red nose on the ears, nose, knees and elbows is just a mix of watered down pink paint and red glaze.

That's it on the painted front for now, I'll end this update with a shout out to my newest follower Don Hans and his amazing Realm of Citadel blog (http://realmofcitadel.blogspot.se/)

Check out his amazing old school mini's and his equally amazing paint jobs very 'Blanche-esque', and the bases are something I might try and steal for my chaos mini's, look at them, how amazing is the zebra Minotaur! GO now and have a look at his other awesome mini's GO and don't come back until your peepers are fat with beautiful eye-candy!

All Your Base are Belong to Us

Howdy everyone, sorry for the slow amount of updates recently but I've not really had much in the way of updates to show off. I recently sort of completed my attempt to undercoat and base everything I own ready for paint slappage but ran out of space about three quarters of the way through so there are still a fair few mini's languishing in drawers.

Hopefully now I can pick up anyone of a ton of mini's and just crack on with painting something, which is what I did:

From left to right:
Citadel C34 Fire Elemental, Dreamblade Gutsoup Golem, Dreamblade Hulking Brute, Grenadier Copplestone Barbarian, Grenadier Ghost and finally dungeons and Dragons plastic mini with a little conversion work.

I love these Citadel elemental's that were released in the early eighties and would love to own the whole set but sadly I'm not the only one and they always seem to go for a little outside my price range on the old ebay, I only managed to get hold of this one as it was included in a bulk lot and didn't even appear in the ebay picture.

Next up we have the Gutsoup Golem from Dreamblade, really simple paint job that was mostly achieved with washes, glazes and thinned down paint finished off with a healthy dose of tamiya red and clear for that wet look. If you're in need of some crazy monsters check out the Dreamblade range as they always seem to pop up on ebay for cheap and paint up really well.

Another Dreamblade figure this time a Hulking Brute, I'm not to sure on this guy I think he needs some kind of tattoos or scarification to break up all the flesh.

Grenadier Copplestone Barbarian, really simple paint job and a ton of Tamiya clear red. You can still get this guy from EM4:
http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Infantry.html

I think this guy is a dungeon and dragons pre pained mini, He originally had a small hook like weapon that due to the bendy nature of the plastic that these figures are made of was completely ruined. I removed the hook and drilled through the hand and added the cocktail stick and wire club.

Grenadier Ghost, insanely quick paint job I just fired some watered down blue over the grey base coat added some fluorescent yellow to the face and left it at that.

I'm still here!

Sorry about the lack of updates for the best part of a month, real life and all that.

Recently I had the pleasure of hosting my fellow blogger and actual real life friend Phil of Monsters and Machines blog fame (http://monstersandmachines.blogspot.co.uk/) for a game of SOBAH - Fear and Faith (Battle report up on his blog). The weeks leading up to Phil's visit were spent franticly trying to put together some kind of tabletop and pulling together all the random bits of terrain I have secreted in various boxes.

Here's what I managed to put together:

It wasn't quite finished in time for the game in that the two buildings in the top right of the pic along with the two white buildings aren't fully painted and weathered.
I won't post up the full battle report as you can pop over to Phil's blog for the full report, I'll just post up some pics he took during the game and try and breakdown the separate elements that made up the board. To start with the gaming table is made from two large framed canvases bought from Hobbycraft when they had a buy one get one free offer going. Both canvases were undecoated in black craft paint and then 'highlighted' using a sponge with various shades of grey and brown paint. The roads and warehouse carpark were a quick fix made from self adhesive floor-tiles chopped up into road sections, in future I'd like to make something a little more 3D but in a pinch they work pretty well.

Shot of the small waste ground behind the warehouse. The fences are home made from cocktails sticks and wire mesh. The caravan came from Wilkinsons as part of this set: 

http://www.wilko.com/wilko-play-boys-toys/wilko-play-road-tripper/invt/0305666

The junk is a mix of Black Cat bases and Pardulon resin items:

http://pardulon-models.com/

http://blackcatbases.com/

Interior of the Warehouse (http://www.sarissa-precision.co.uk/store/cityblock28/)

I'll put together a proper review of the warehouse a t a latter date with a list of the modifications I made/

The pallets came from ebay:

 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SIKU-PACK-OF-50-MODEL-RESIN-PALLETS-1-32-7015-NEW-/230977148608?pt=UK_ToysGames_DiecastVehicles_DiecastVehicles_JN&hash=item35c74f96c0

The cardboard boxes on the left of the shot are small wooden cubes (again from ebay) that I added to with a black pen and a little brown wash.

Ainsty Skip:

http://ainstycastings.co.uk/product_info.php/products_id/464/osCsid/5508c79429d73cdce47f1e763c595dec

Showing off my photoshop skills :-)

I'm really happy how this all turned out all the small elements really came together and much fun was had. 

If there's anything that catches your eye in the pics above drop me a message and I'll let you know where you can get it or how you can make it. After madly rushing to get all this sorted out in the build up to the game I've kind of burned out on the post apoc / zombie side of things so have dove back into the pile of fantasy mini's. With making progress and actually painting some mini's in mind I've decided to bulk base and undercoat everything that is currently in my draws that way I can dip into the draws and anything I pull out should technically be ready to go. I'm also aiming to go cold turkey on the ebay and purchase front so I can actually catch up. So far this is where I've got to, I've ran out of 30mm bases and 50mm bases but hopefully 200 30mm bases should be waiting at home for the next round.

SALUTE, LOOT, ABOOT THIS HOOSE

Hello everybody sorry for the lack of posts, I've not really had much to show off recently and I was away in the lake district for a week so haven't been near my desk to slap paint or glue on anything. Hopefully this week I should be back on schedule so I thought I'd start with showing off the loot I'd nabbed from Salute:
http://slwarlords.blogspot.co.uk/

This was my first Salute and happened to fall just after my Birthday so meant that I had a large chunk of 'free' cash to blow on new toys. I went in with the proviso that I would attempt to keep the number of mini's that I purchased down to a minimum as I've got far to many as it is and with the Reaper Kickstarter arriving sometime soon I'll soon have more than a lifetimes worth of painting. All that being said I still somehow managed to come away with some mini's, here's the haul in all it's glory, I'll try and list it all below:

From top left working across and down:

1. Bag of mixed leaves for basing from http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/

I used to make my own out of chopped up leaves but I always make too little or forget completely then can't be bothered when I need it so this is the lazy option.

2. Rust effect paint/medium from http://www.modelmates.co.uk/:

This stuff looks amazing from the demonstrations that the guys running the stand were showing off, I'll post pics when I ever get round to using it.

3. Prepainted starwars and D&D figures from http://www.tritex-games.co.uk/:

You can never have to many random monsters.

4. Ainsty Castings small skips http://ainstycastings.co.uk/product_info.php/products_id/256/osCsid/350c9c146379cecf253fefcd2d69cb1f

5. Ainsty Castings Swat Van

http://ainstycastings.co.uk/product_info.php/products_id/478/osCsid/350c9c146379cecf253fefcd2d69cb1f

6. More Ainsty Castings stuff, Skips, Salt Bins, Fax, Safe Desk etc

7. New pin vice form the Troll Trader

8. 4 Grounds Barbed Wire X2 http://www.4ground.co.uk/Default.aspx?page=268&pid=314

9. Copplestone mini's http://www.copplestonecastings.co.uk/range.php?range=FW

I bought the Scavanger Tank Busters and the two packs of not Predators that they do as I seem to have most of the rest of the Future Wars ranges.

10. Hurn Headtaker form Heresy http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=54&products_id=128

He's slightly larger than the Copplestone predators so should make a perfect leader.

11. Some random Dark Sun D&D monster that cost me £1

12. Some Stowage from http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/ 

14. An Ox cart from 4grounds http://www.4ground.co.uk/Default.aspx?page=268&pid=327

15. Not pictured above, A nodding Donkey from Fenris games:

http://www.fenrisgames.com/shop.html#!/~/product/category=2202359&id=21794531

Last but by no means least:

Three awesome Laser Cut buildings from Sarissa Precision http://www.sarissa-precision.co.uk/
I've been eyeing these up online for a long time but wanted to actually have a look at them in person before making a purchase and as they had a large stand with everything on display I finally bit the bullet and dropped a large part of my cash on three buildings:

I intend to jazz them up with a little extra detail inside and out, I've already removed the middle banister on the bottom building as my 30mm bases didn't quite fit with it still on there. Now all I really need are some more sets of 28mm furniture...

That's all for this week, should have some more progress at the weekend and a few more pics of the buildings.

Mini tank and payday loot

More post apocalyptic bits and pieces for you this week. As it was payday recently I decided to have a mooch around town and see what the retail gods would offer up for my painting table. First up I popped into TK Maxx and grabbed this from the toy section for £4.99:

It looked roughly the right scale for 28mm figures so I gave it a shot, once painted up should work really well as a terrain piece. Here are a few shots of the pieces and the with some mini's so you can see for yourself:

I also popped into Model Zone for quick look around and came out with a couple of airfix kits that were on sale, £1.99 for this little WWI tank

and £15.00 for this beast of a kit:

I think the Russian BMP should be easily apocalytic-iffied, it is a little on the large size (1:35 scale) but looking at the seating on the sprues they look about right for a 28mm arse.

As I've not put together any airfix kits for about 15 years I started with the WWI male tank and with a little tweaking ended up with a mini one man post apocalyptic flame tank. Most of the additions are Ramshackle games resin parts and a little extra plasticard.