Wasteland Terrain WIP: Progress Report

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Just a progress update on my 15mm post apocalypse wasteland scatter terrain.

Wasteland Outpost

Abandoned Car

Crushed Car Wall

I had originally intended to give the Wasteland Outpost and Abandoned Car much more in the way of fine detail, but I thought to myself "No Mark, this is 15mm - just finish off and get them on the table".

I'm certain that once painted and with some scrub and desert grasses added, they'll look great and I expect to have them finished by the weekend. The oil drums you can see are from The Scene. I have a couple of stand alone bases of these drums on the workbench which will provide additional scatter cover and/or 'spawning' points for zombies, bugs, bad guys etc.

One thing I'm annoyed about, is that for years I had this pack of 'signs' kicking about from Peter Pig's Wild West range - it included a signpost with a buzzard sitting on it - perfect for the Abandoned Car or generic scatter terrain - but can I find it when I need it? No! Grrrrr!

That's dried river bed, scatter terrain, trees......

Trees = cuttings from the garden

Now, all I need is a typical Route 666 gas station and diner.......

Cheers
Mark
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Post Apocalyptic Outpost - WIP

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Here is some more post apocalypse scenery I've been working on. This 'outpost' was started a week or so ago and I must give full credit to the Black Primer Paint blog which inspired me to try this in 15mm:


I've been waiting on several packs of 15mm Damaged Oil Drums from Mike at The Scene to add more interest to the base. Now they're here, I'll crack on and hopefully get it finished this week, using the remainder of the barrels to create a couple of bases of scatter terrain.

10 for £1.50 from The Scene

I intend keeping a pack or two of these damaged oil drums available in my bits box for future projects as they are incredibly handy, especially at that price!

I've also made a start on some piles of damaged/scrapped cars - see above - without which no post apocalypse wasteland is complete.

If the post apocalypse genre interests you then I seriously recommend the Post Apocalyptic Wargames Forum. The tone is friendly, helpful and supportive, plus there are some great guys on it.

Will keep you updated as the project progresses.

Cheers
Mark
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Mudd Eisley Patrol - Wasteland Dried Riverbed

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Sunday morning I finished the dried wasteland/desert riverbed I've been working on during the week and I'm really chuffed with the result!

Infiltrating Mudd Eisley from the Dunes
An Atreides patrol in captured Harkonnen uniforms

The riverbed was created utilising Amera Plastic Moulding Straight River Sections (#F216) , building up the textures with different grades of sand and talus. Foilage is Woodland Scenics #L166 'Natural' Lichen.


In all about an hour's work per river section from start to finish, but allowing loads of drying time in between each step before a final watered down coat of PVA prior to painting. Which is why it took several nights in total.

The river sections have been painted to match my OOP GW sulphur desert battlemat using Homebase 'Pecan' emulsion as a base followed by 'splodging' GW Gryphone Sepia with an old No.6 brush.

Jungle stream using these Amera river sections next!

Cheers
Mark
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Generic Terrain from The Scene

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In my prep for the 2010 gaming season, I've been building up my scenery collection. Especially given that I'll also be running games from the Asylum Books and Games store in Aberdeen.

Mike at The Scene (UK) offers a wide range of terrain products that met my criteria for good looking, hard-wearing and portable terrain.

I picked up three Hard Backed Grey/Green Hills. HG002: 8"x 4", HG006: 8" x 8" and HG009: 12 1/2"x 5 1/2". They stand about 17mm tall, have gentle sloping sides, and are finished with patches of grey stones.

The Scene UK, Hard-Backed Grey/Green Hills
HG006 bottom, HG009 top

They look good on the table, provide both cover and visible height advantage, and are practical too. When not in use I keep them in their plastic bags and store on top of each other in a shallow drawer. The colour balance in the photo is poor so don't take the colours you see as a guide.

You can also see RG011A: rocky ground from the Generic Scatter range, just £3,00 painted and flocked. Surprisingly nice and dirt (excuse the pun) cheap. Here's a closeup...

The Scene UK, RG011A Rocky Ground

The trooper is a GZG 15mm OUDF figure from my recently completed 123rd Steppenwolves. I've included him deliberately because I'm going for a Northern Steppes feel - and hence the next scatter terrain ROoo1B: Rocky Outcrops, 5 pieces painted and flocked for £9.00:

The Scene UK, ROoo1B Rocky Outcrops
only 2 pieces illustrated

Now, these are tasty! The rocks come with a Citadel Space Wolves(ish) grey finish and provide substantial cover for both infantry and vehicles. Well worth the money, which I can say with authority because Heather bought me a Woodland Scenics 'rock' mould (C1233) for around £6 as an extra little something for Xmas. So that's £6 before we count casting material, base, paints and flock, time and effort. Less than a tenner and 5 pieces of scatter terrain ready to go straight on the table.

Whilst not distinctly Sci Fi as such, this terrain will be used in many of our Hyborian Sci Fi games in addition to WW2 Götterdämmerung, historicals and fantasy, over and above alien invasions and Merc tickets on settled worlds.

Time spent checking out The Scene will be well spent. Mike's ranges are constantly evolving and he has some great stuff at affordable prices.

Cheers
Mark
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Scatter Terrain: Wasteland Crater

This dramatic Wasteland Crater is one of my favourite terrain pieces.

I bought several sets of craters from Amera Plastic Mouldings 'Future Zone' for my lunar landscape and couldn't resist adding a couple to my wasteland terrain. Nominally 28mm, these craters are excellent for 15mm and great value for money. I thoroughly recommend them.

The crater you see is made from the Z201 Crater Set on a 3mm MDF base (approx 9"x6"). MDF is both a joy and a curse to work with. I found that you can cut through 3mm MDF using a sharp Stanley knife with a bit of force behind it. For straight lines it's even simpler, run your Stanley along a steel ruler and then move the 'cut' to your workbench edge and simply 'snap' along the join for a clean cut (mostly). Edges can quickly and easily be tidied up with a sanding block.


The 'rocks' are chips of 'Scottish Red' gravel from the garden. The trees are twigs taken from a dead Lavendar plant which Heather over pruned last year. This Lavendar plant lives on as a series of wasteland trees in 15mm and a 28mm Sci Fi/Fantasy Forest of Doom! Recommend you plant a couple in your garden as a renewable source of wargames terrain!

The trees were stuck in place using the granite/marble epoxy cement I've mentioned in the past. The rest of the groundwork is once again, sharp sand available from any builders merchants.

I used matt terracotta household emulsion to coat everything bar the rocks and the trees. The terracotta picks out the accent colour in my desert playing surface but also has that reddish Martain landscape feel to it.


A very weak wash of Citadel Devlan Mud was applied to the base and rocks with darker coats built up on the crater itself, especially the interior. I lightly dry-sponged terracotta back over the lip and exterior of the crater, followed by the lightest of touches with a drybrush of 'stone'. Don't worry about mistakes, additional applications of Devlan Mud can hide or mute down the most cack-handed attempts at drybrushing. I speak from experience!

Finally, the sand and rocks had an equally light drybrush of a lighter sandy 'pebble' colour.

Originally, I had intended to create a yellow or brown pool inside the crater but liked the way it looked as it was, so decided to stop there. I can always go back at a later stage and do this with tinted varnish if the fancy takes me.

This terrain piece was done as a batch along with two similar craters, the whole project being completed in about an hour. Helped along by placing the craters in direct sunlight on a demi-pallet in the garden to speed up drying the PVA and again once I applied the terracotta paint.

Hope this encourages you to have a go!

Cheers
Mark

15mm sci fi, 15mm sci fi, 15mm science fiction, 15mm science fiction, sci fi terrain, sci fi terrain, scatter terrain, terrain building, terrain building

Scatter Terrain: Mini Escarpments

Thought you might like to see some quick and simple scatter pieces I created for my desert/wasteland terrain.

These two mini escarpments came about as 'test' pieces just to try out the idea and I don't think the result is too shabby.

I mostly use bog standard expanded polystyrene for terrain features- the sort that comes as common and garden packaging - the small holes in the polystyrene working for me as nooks and crannies within the rock face. I sculptured the flat 'top' of the rock formations then used a household wall filler to provide texture and fill in any big gaps where the two pieces of polystyrene meet.

I used a sharp sand from a builders merchants to cover the base, old free Broadband or magazine CDs. I find that finer sand, such as that used for childrens playpits is far too fine and lacks the definition I want once painted. Slightly larger stones were used at the back of the escarpment to represent eroded scree. To ensure the sand sticks good and fast to provide a robust terrain piece for wargaming, I liberally coated the CD with a cheap but immensely strong PVA glue (Bartoline PVA Adhesive & Sealer; 1Ltr for £3.50), then shook the sand on. Once this is dry, well mostly dry that is, I mix water and PVA until it has the consistency of skimmed milk, then brush liberally over the top of the entire piece. You think it will be too thin to have any effect but have faith young paduan, this is amazingly effective at sealing the model and providing a sound base for the paint to adhere to.

Painting was simple. We had some left over household paints from the last round of decorating and a mixed bag of brown, terracotta, taupe and sand 'matchpots'. Using cheap decorating brushes from Poundland (a 5 brush set for £1), I applied a basecoat of a terracotta matt emulsion, which when dried, recieved a thin watered down wash of Citadel's Devlan Mud. I used a lighter 'stone' or 'pebble' colour to drybrush over the top with a smaller brush as weathering & highlights. Job done. Excluding drying time, less than an hours work.

I'm going to get round to adding a small amount of GF9 autumn foilage to add further character but forgot to include it to my last order! The perils of Inetrnet shopping & Baileys Irish Cream.....

Cheers
Mark