More scenery

Sorry for the super long delay in posting! No I haven't given up the hobby, it's just that I now have a baby boy to look after =) Oscar was born on Jan 23rd and since then I haven't really had much time for anything miniature related! Hopefully I'll be playing miniatures with him one day!


I have done a few more things since the last post. Firstly I bought some foam to make some better storage for my dwarves. I got stuff that was as thick as their bases, cut out a section that would fit in one of my boxes and just cut holes with a stanley knife.

I cut the top holes big enough for my heroes, standing on rocks they're a bit taller than most. The bottom ones were big enough for some of the more spread out poses. All in all, a cheap and pretty effective way to store them.


Just before Oscar was born I had started making some more scenery. This stuff is so cheap that I really strongly recommend you try it if you want some rocky outcroppy looking scenery!


Basically I went down to Bunnings (hardware store) and got some cork tiles. They don't always have them in stock, but you could probably order some in from any hardware store.


They are nice and easy to work with. Basically I just get a pair of needle-nosed pliers and go around the edge, twisting the straight edges off to leave a rough edge. From there I just twist and rip into all sorts of shapes and sizes. Sometimes I have a plan, sometimes I just rip off a whole heap of bits and use them like building blocks.

That's them after being sprayed black. There are four large sections of "rough terrain" which is just small pebbles strewn over rough edged sections. My pebbles are from a 10kg bag I got a year or so ago, it cost about $5 and I've used about 1% of it so far =) Way cheaper option than some of the "basing kits" but no cool slate pieces, just lots of small bits. 


There's an arch, some pillars and a four piece set that will make a large arch, or just use for pillars. My favorite piece is a sort of curving wall with bits that jut out that you could climb onto.


In the last week I've managed to find some time here and there to drybrush some grey onto them. Rather than using more expensive paints for these I just got a cheap acrylic black and white and some flow enhancer to mix three shades of grey. With a massive brush I just heavily brushed the dark grey, then used less and lighter brushes of the other two greys. Here the scenery is all done up...


Some of the difficult terrain...

The mega-arch (even the cave troll fits easily underneath it). It's four pieces, two straight pillars that go to a bit over the top of the troll hammer and two pieces that form the arch. That way you can just have some nice big pillars or a smaller arch (that is still tall enough for most minis to fit under).

My personal favorite piece, curved and lots of outcropping bits to climb/stand on.

This is obviously a little more crowded than you'd normally play with!

A smaller archway. It's not actually tilted, but the camera angle was a bit odd.

And some quite tall but thin pillars.

All in all it took more than a month to do, but in actual time it was only a few hours. Seriously, just be rough as you like with the construction, ripping cork and gluing it. Then be pretty messy with the drybrushing as it's just rocky scenery. I could probably do another lighter drybrush just on the edges if I could be bothered!


All of that was from four tiles and I still have two left over. They were about a foot by a foot each. I glued them together with standard PVA, though you have to be careful to let them dry a LOT.


Why were there some space marines in there? I've always loved them, I used to have lots of them from the old space hulk game, but gave them away when I moved out of home, what, 15 or so years ago. I wish I hadn't! But anyway, these ones I bought maybe five years ago, just one of the 5 set of tactical marines. I just enjoy painting them and converted one into a Santa.


Now that I've got two decent armies for the lord of the rings game, my brother quite enjoys playing a range of games, fantasy, sci-fi, Star Wars, Dr. Who even (you can see them all on his blogs:
http://paulslotrminis.blogspot.com/
http://pauls40k.blogspot.com/
http://paulsdrwhominiatures.blogspot.com/
http://paulsstarwarsminiatures.blogspot.com/ )


For my birthday, my wife and he are buying me a starter kit of Warhammer 40k Space Wolves. They're as dwarf-like as space marines can be I guess. So in a month I'll have a venerable dreadnought, some terminators and the Space Wolves battleforce (20 troops, 5 scouts and a drop pod).


Obviously things are pretty busy here at home, so I'll be going a bit slowly through these, not batch painting, probably just working my way through one marine at a time.


Anyway, I'll blog my progress here as I'm sure that the painting layers and any terrain will be of general interest to anyone (and I'm sure there'll be battle reports for both game systems once I can get a few hours spare!)


We've never played 40k, so it'll be a complete newbie experience!