Down on the Farm

I've painted a fair few buildings over the last couple of years for my Hyam's Landing setting. These have pretty much all in the same style as the unreleased 40k habs I was lucky enough to pick up. The general vibe is space western / frontier town. The buildings are low-level, run-down & rusty! After painting the sheds/barns from the other week, I decided I wanted to pull together an out of town set. It will eventually comprise of the sheds/barns, fences, possibly some livestock and agricultural vehicles. Most importantly though, I needed a farmhouse centrepiece.

Fine Places to Store Things - New Sheds

I love making and painting terrain. You get a lot of bang for your buck, and it's generally quick and imprecise, meaning you don't really need to concentrate too hard! I especially like when you can add cheap toys into the terrain collection.

"He's no good to me dead!"- Olley x Boba Fett

I think I said a few posts back that I had no intention of recreating the entire cast of Star Wars with Bob Olley miniatures. However, this is looking like a hollow claim, as I'm now actively working on a the bulk of the principle and supporting characters. I'm very pleased with my Boba Fett though!

Crooked Dice Junktown Scrap Walls

I've had a bunch of Crooked Dice's Junktown bits waiting paint for a long while. As I needed some new walls for this coming weekend's Stargrave game, I decided I'd paint up the scrapwalls from the set. I really enjoyed working on these. The paintjobs are superquick with sponging, drybrushing and washes. A few spot colours for variety and some graffitti with my Posca paint pens, and it was job done!

You can buy almost anything in Junktown. Whether it works or not is another matter!

Bits & Pieces - Servitor Bodyguard & Warning Sign

I have a few hobby tasks I needed to complete prior to Bring Out Your Lead 2025 between 8-10 August. Mostly these are bits I want to use in a planned game of Stargrave, which should see my Muller cultists take on some mutie scum. I'm working my way through the to-do list: first up is a figure kindly given to me by Aidan of Warfactory Miniatures at Lead & Steel earlier this year.

Idol of the Old Ones - Slann Terrain

Some of the Seraphon (lizardmen) themed terrain that Games Workshop have produced over the last few years is perfect for slann. I've had this Idol of the Old Ones from the Warcry Pyre & Flood set assembled for a little while, and it seemed the right time to get it painted up!

Paying for a Life of Crime - Captive Space Bandit

Every so often you see a fun model that you instantly think of a use for. As soon as I saw the Antediluvian Miniatures captive fugitive, I knew it would be perfect as a game objective. Not to mention all of those scenic pics that need a prisoner or two!

Urban / Industrial Scatter

 

I'm always on the lookout for new scatter elements to add to my terrain collection. I recently painted up a dozen items or so in preparation for the Five Parsecs From Home weekend. No hero pieces here, but it's all useful nice stuff!

Boring Rocks? Some New Scenery

I picked up a couple of pieces of area terrain from eBay recently. They're pretty basic - vaguely oval resin bases with a few rocks and some ground texture. The sort of thing I think I should be able to make in an afternoon with a few bits of MDF and some sand. Except I've not really been able to do it convincingly or robustly.

The two outcrop bases cost me less than £14 (eBay seller: dands-gaming) and took less than an hour to paint. I simply sprayed them with a stone colour over the undercoat, daubed some yellows and greys onto the rocks and added some washes on the ground. Everything was given a bone drybrush and then I added some tufts.

Graffiti, Posters & Rust - Urban Walls

Following on from my last post a couple of weeks ago, it was apparent that if I had some gates and entrances, I would also need some blank walls.

Once again, I roped in the talents of Graham at Grimsforge to make me some basic walls that I could put in between my other buildings. There are four walls - two long and two short. I painted one side with urban graffiti and posters, and the other side more neutrally to give me some backdrop flexibility.

The Back-Alleys of Hyams Landing

The next evolution of Hyam's landing is to make sense of the spaces with dividers and connectors. No human settlement is comprised of a selection of completely separate buildings - there are walls and hedge, roads, alleys and fences. I got Graham at Grimsforge to make me a selection of structures that I can place against or inbetween my existing buildings to try and emulate that real urban feel.

The new structures are four walls with access points in them (solid walls to come at some future point. Like the rest of my Grimsforge terrain, I drew up what I hoped would look cool, and then Graham built them for me mainly from card.

Welcome to Hyam's Landing

At first glance it might seem odd that the settlement of Hyam's Landing was ever founded. It occupies a dusty patch of plain that is remote from any major starport or what passes for a city on backwater fringe worlds. Water is hard to come by and the gases in the local atmosphere begin to corrode any structure almost as soon as it is constructed. But Hyam's Landing is ideally placed as a staging post for the long trading caravans that wend their way deeper into the interior. Prospectors and miners from the adjacent lowhills come to town with their finds and to spend their cash. And in spite of the presence of a foreboding Imperial Blockhouse and its garrison, the facilities offered by the discrete starport are attractive to off-world traders looking to keep a low profile.

The Iron Fist - Block House #5

Illustrations of Imperial architecture are pretty rare in the Rogue Trader rulebook. Yes, there's the fantastic spread of Helsreach illustrations as well as the Emporer's Palace, but for the rest of the book we only see glimpes of background shapes, walls, ruins or ductwork.

I was delighted to see Tony Ackland's brilliant unpublished* Rogue Trader townscape when he put it up on Facebook a little while ago. The image shows a backwater frontier town complete with rickety shacks, landing pad and an imposing block house festooned with gibbet, observation cameras and spikes.

*correct me if I'm wrong.

Illustration by Tony Ackland.

You Can Buy Anything IF You Can Find It - The Bazaar

If the first part of a project involved some vendors and goods to sell, then the second part of the project needed to be a location for them to do some selling. It's not the fantastic Necromunda market (although I will get round to doing that at some point). It's another creation build for me by Graham at Grimsforge - a bazaar with some little commercial units for my vendors to occupy.

Vendors and Their Wares

If you've read this blog for a while, you're probably aware that I like a nice sci-fi civilian model. It's been a little while since I last painted any, but over the last couple of weeks I've been working on a project to paint up some nice new bits of scenery and set dressing. The first part of this project is a trio of vendors and their goods. I settled on a carpet seller, a tech merchant and a general food seller based on the models I had to hand.

L-R: Astropolis, Crooked Dice (Colony 87), Crooked Dice (Colony 87)

Sheds, Outhouses and Shacks

Before Christmas I asked Graham at Grimsforge to work on another couple of projects for me to round out the variety of buildings in my fringe-world setting. Along with some bigger pieces (more on those at a future date), I wanted a selection of smaller sheds and shacks that I could use as scatter or butt up against a larger structure to change its footprint.

Grouped together the sheds make a nice little homestead.

The Botched Deal (at Bring Out Your Lead 2021)

Like most gamers, I haven't had many opportunities to play miniatures games in the last 18 months, so it was brilliant when after being cancelled in 2020 and delayed from August 2021, Bring Out Your Lead was finally able to be held.

"Follow the beacon to landing pad Y-18"

I have been planning a landing pad as part of my terrain collection for years, but for various reasons painting one up never quite floated to the top of the to-do pile. I'm pleased to say I've rectified that glaring omission and I have a new shuttle to put on it too! Which all means I can do some nice hangar-bay scenic shots like this:

For those of you who enjoy knowing these things, the background is made from three Micro Art Studio barracks on their ends plus one of my habs with my newly painted hotel also upended and balanced on top!

Cheap Beds For Hire - the Only Hotel in Town!

In my last post, I showed off three of the fantastic buildings scratchbuilt for me by Grimsforge. This time round it's one of the larger buildings that Graham built for me, which I'd described as a 'two-storey house' in my concept sketch. As it turns out, there's been a change of use and it's now the town hotel!

A weary traveller attempts to negotiate room rates.

Getting the Contractors in - Scratchbuilt Buildings

Generally I prefer to make my own models and terrain, but every so often there are projects where a specialist is required! In this instance, I wanted some more buildings in the same vein as my prototype hardfoam GW habs. Whilst it might be within my capability to construct something in the same aesthetic, some of the construction techniques looked beyond me, especially when it came to some of the more interesting shapes.

The settlement just keeps on growing!