Accidental Terrain

I've been making a bit of terrain. This happened by accident. I went to the hardware store (Bunnings for those Australian readers) to get some cork tiles to make some Stalingrad type ruins and walked past an outdoor door mat on a shelf. It was brown and had really prominent ridges. 

So, I bought it for $8.00 and took it home. I cut it into pieces, did a bit of dry-brushing in a lighter shade of brown, dabbed on some pva glue and added some flock. within a bout 30 minutes I had a bunch of cultivated fields. They're a bit too neat but adding some fences and hedges etc, on the table with them will fix that.

I cut some small and some large. I figure they could look good as part of of one of those large Soviet farms. I need to find a nice 1940's 20mm Russian tractor to place in the middle to give them some character.

I was looking through some tubs of stuff for something that I can't recall. In one of the tubs I found some fences that I made. They were half painted and almost finished. I have no idea what I was making them for but they looked good. They're made out of balsa wood and they're pretty sturdy. Anyway, I flocked the bases and they're ready to go.

I don't no idea what scale I made these for but they seem like they'll work for either 20mm or 28mm. They would probably work for 15mm too.

I've also been rebasing lots of WWII figures. Last night I finished my Western Desert Force (or you can call them 8th Army). Hopefully, one day soon they'll go up against my Afrika Korps. I really need some Italians to do better North African games but it's hard to find good 20mm Italians.

And here's their nemesis... The DAK

All of the British are AB Figures and the DAK are a mix of AB and, I think, Simon's Soldiers (but I'm not 100% certain on that). All metal and their storage box is getting heavy!

A Fountain. A Flower. Some Tentacles

I resumed my solo campaign of Rangers of Shadow Deep and I'm keen to keep going (you can follow the campaign here or via the page in the header above). However one game into it and, I found that I needed a specific piece of terrain and somewhere along the way I also need a specific monster. So, if I wanted to continue I needed to make them. So I got busy.

The most pressing thing I need is a fountain. I made this using the lid of a yoghurt container glued onto a cardboard base and some odd bits and pieces. I've had the figure sitting around for a long, long time. I think it came from a set of 15mm ancient slaves. The problem is, is that the figure is about 23mm tall. It took a while to find a place for it but here it is:

The water is just a couple of thick layers of GW 'Ard Cote. I would have liked to a use some water effects but there's two problems with that: 1) I've never used water effects and I don't know how to apply it. 2) I don't have any water effects. So that solved that problem. 

And here it is with a couple of figures for scale. 

The plant I need is called a Darkroot (or something like that). It needs a body and a bunch of tendrils or roots or something. I got a set of large plants last year. They are Reaper Bones figures and they look suitably weird. I only painted one of them and the other has been sitting on the bench waiting for its time to come. So I painted it this week.

In the game the plant has a bunch of roots or tentacles that attack the player characters. These I made by rolling up some greenstuff and twisting them into weird shapes. I then flattened their bottom edges and glued them onto bases. Add some paint and that was it. They look suitably slimy and threatening.

This is the first plant I painted. I think it looks better than the opened up version. It has a very Lovecraftian look. I'm not sure which scenario it turns up in during the campaign, but at least I have it ready for when it makes its grand entrance.

A Fist Full of El'Cheapo Budget Vapor Snakes

I'm still looking at solo Frostgrave and I've been looking at the various scenarios and mini campaigns. I found that I'm going to need Vapor Snakes. 

Questions: What are vapor snakes? Where do I get 'em? How much will they cost? How many will I need? What else can I use?

Answers: 1) I don't know. 2) From an online store. 3) Not cheap. 4) Quite a few - which will make them expensive. 5) Hmmm... I have an idea...

Yes, I decided to make my own Vapor Snakes. I figured I could make them very cheap and very easy and very quickly.

I took some pipe cleaners (it amazes me that they still make pipe cleaners despite there being very few people who still smoke a pipe).

For the vapor snakes, I needed normal size ones and large ones. For the normal size I cut a pipe cleaner in half and folded it. I then twisted it into one piece. For the large ones I folded one pipe cleaner three times and then twisted it into a single piece.

I then glued one end onto an mdf base (25mm base for the regular and 30mm for the large).

When the glue was set I bent them into shape (this one, by the way is one of the large ones).

I then gave them a solid coating of impasto meduim. Basing texture gunk or tacky pvc/wood glue might also work.

When dry I gave them a good coat of Vallejo pale blue grey (but any pale grey should work). 

When dry again, I gave them a heavy dry brushing of white.

Here they are. I did 6 regular size and 3 large (only 2 in the pic). When I painted the bases I gave each base a dry brush of white to make them look a little bit vaporish.

They're certainly not the best looking figures that you could use but they give the effect of writhing columns of sentient vapour. For the cost of 6 pipe cleaners and a handful of bases these little guys came out all right. Most of the time spent was waiting for the impasto medium to cure. But when it was fully cured it gave them a fair bit of solidity with flexibility so that they can be re-pose if needs be.