Post-Apocalyptic Terrain

I started to write this post some time ago. Now I have been playing a bit more Stargrave (well it sounds like a post-apocalyptic universe to me) and plan to This is Not a Test, I am back at my post-apocalyptic terrain.  Post-apocalyptic games are I guess what I want to do the most and I am always after usable 28mm terrain and figures. I guess it's being the child of the cold war, or maybe I just watch the news too much. My own version of Fallout is still a thing as is my own background, Underground. I guess I am also still thinking of doing this for X-Com (or ET-Com as I was thinking in terms or Extra Terrestrial COMmand).

I had some Amazon gift cards to use I went looking there. Every now and again I find some stuff and I get some stuff as gifts. So It was time for a bit of a change and I found some time. So I swapped out what I have been doing for a bit. I finished off and did some tarting up.

This whole year has felt a little apocalyptic. Everything has felt like hard work so far, In reality I should be counting my blessings. I do have a lot to be thankful for.

These didn't take that much time so I moved back to painting minis. Also good to keep painting. Despite having a lot of time this year, painting figures hasn't been up there on my list. Aside from painting up some snowtroopers for sale, I don't think I have started and finished any figures this year. There is a pile of figures that are part way through the process. They have been like that for so long that I now have to blow the dust off them before I start painting. the only other figures I have finished this year were started last year and probably almost a year ago.

So right now the only figures that I find "shameful" are the ones on my workbench. I am getting a few terrain projects done and in pretty short order.

End Of The Week - Too Tired To Stand Up (25)

I have managed to make most of my goals this week and exceeded a few of them. So all in all I am quite happy with myself. This was going to be a simple week. I was expecting to be busy. I was. Tired now and ready for bed and it is not yet 9pm.

The week began with a plan to paint ten figures. At some point I added one on the quiet because I thought it was going to be easy. Most of what I planned to paint this week was from the Star Saga game by Mantic. From the first time I saw it I liked the idea of buying it. It was the right price, there were plenty of figures and a decent amount of usable terrain. There were many sci-fi games they would work for. I had some ideas for the X-Com game that has been on the gaming burner of a low heat for about two decades. Mostly at the time I thought they would be good for what I had planned for Titansgrave: The Ashes Of Valcana, a game I really like the idea of but doubt I would get too many players.

Anyway the first set of figures I decided to paint were the security guards. I played about with the fleshtones a bit and I think they came out ok. This is despite the detail on the faces being a little soft as they are plastic figures. In the end I was okay with them. Not my best work but acceptable for tabletop standard.

Then there were a couple of hero figures. Most of the heroes don't seem to work with many of my ideas but I think I will come round to doing them eventually.These models were, to my mind at least, nice to paint although the face on the female warrior could have used a but more details.

In my head there were three more dark age figures to do and I thought I planned to paint the three. I could only find the two though. I doubt the horn playing musician will get used a lot so I didn't put a huge amount of work into it. Some work went into both but not a huge amount. They came out alright though.

Another one of the big plans at one point was to run a superhero game. Whilst there is plenty of Heroclix stuff out there but the models, to be fair, a bit kack. Really what I wanted was to go for nice metal figures at around the right price. At about £5 this model from Reaper was not the cheapest figure I have ever brought. It did work out okay though and I am very happy with it.

By Wednesday, with eleven figures painted, it was all pretty much done. There was a few bits of detailing to do but not enough to keep me busy. So I had a rummage. Having enjoyed painting the guards I thought I would have a go at some of the others. So much for an easy week.

During the process of rummaging I some military types from Star Saga to do. These were an easy enough paint job. There were some mould lines that were hard to get out and so I ended up leaving them.  A simple paint job with mainly shades of green (I think five in total) and that was most of them done. These are pretty good for hard sci-fi and I can already see a number of uses for them.

Somehow I didn't stop there. What do you call these figures? Well I have no idea. Some sort of failed (or possibly successful) experiment. These are big hulking figures (with the faces looking not entirely unlike the big green wrecking machine).

 
So in the end there wa a total of twenty five figures done and dusted. This sounds like a lot but there majority are plastic figures with limited details so relatively easy to complete. Along the way I worked on some more terrain. For a while I have been wanting some standing stones. These are not yet finished. On top of that I have done a little bit of work on five of the fifteen figures I have planned for next week.

Modernish Barricades

The post apocalypse is never far from my mind, at least in a gaming sense. Despite Bethesda recently ruining my gaming experience, I do not feel that the world is about to end. I think my interest goes back to reading The Postman by David Brin after reading a review in White Dwarf of all places. A quick reading and rereading of Day of the Triffids and I am kind of a fan of the genre. Zombies and nuclear war seem to be my preferred way to end the world. The Walking Dead and Fallout out gave been my most recent influences in tabletop gaming but I have a lot of love for ideas from the old RPG Aftermath and almost anything done George Romero and a number of other books and computer games.

Finding players has been hard in the past so I haven't pushed it. In there here and now things are not so bad on that score.  So I am looking at this as a possibility again so I figured it might be time to do something about it. I don't have many figures left to paint and those that I do have I can't find. What I can find is some terrain.

In the end (so to speak) it's close enough to the modern era that the terrain at least should be able to do double duty. What is available is a bit of a mixed bag. I wanted them to all tie together and look relatively uniform and with a lot of the longer I wanted a bit more stability and I wanted it to match what I had done in the past. If I do get X-Com off the ground this year I will need some terrain for that. I have medium terms plans for a zombie and one based in post nuclear war London. Part of me wants to get into 28mm modern but I have a few reservations about that.

I wanted a range of sizes some of which, if not all could be used as barricades and general scatter. Large quantities of tire piles seem to figure highly in a lot of games so I purchased some from Crooked Dice. These first four are produced by them although there is a crate found in my bit's box (I have no idea who by) added to make up the length. Then is is also an oil drum which I think is Tamiya.

The crowd barriers are from Ainsty Casting. I love these guys for terrain. Hopefully these will hold up to the punishment but will need to be carefully look after.

Most of what I have to hand is from Mantic's The Walking Dead : All Out War. Nice details on the terrain as I am starting to expect from Mantic. Some have been added to with stuff that I have handing around to make up the length. Some of the barrels are from a Tamiya kit I got back in the 1980's and other bits have been around for well over a decade. It's nice to get some of things used rather than just hanging around.

In total there is just short of three feet/ninety centimetres of stuff. It's never enough but it's a distinct improvement. I have some Mantic supply tokens to be done. These are a lot smaller but have a bit more detail. Think these will be a project for next week as I expect the Stormtroopers are going to take a lot of work.

The Work (In Pogress) Continues

When I got up this morning I decided that I was going to paint ten of the old Grenadier (now Mirliton) trooper figures. Nice simple figures with an almost standard uniform that even if I do give certain aspects of it a camouflage pattern, should be done by the end of the week.

 Then I picked up the two D&D mimic figures I picked up last week. Then I thought what the hell, I'll do these first. So I did. When you have a small number of essentially similar figures, they are quick and easy to do so I just got on with them. I guess each of them took about an hour to an hour and a half to finish. In the round, and certainly on the tabletop, the look pretty good.

When they were done I went back to the troopers. They have progressed a little bit. All the boots, equipment and uniform are finished. To be honest I haven't made up my mind what I am going to do with the armour and helmet yet although I have an idea (does anyone remember Aliens). Given that a lot of what I am doing is vaguely desert, I think I will go for something like MTP/Multicam. I do like the Copplestone vibe.

These figures have all sorts of potential uses for me. Aside from the standard sci-fi, 2300, Stargrunt, Titansgrave Tomorrow's War ad Traveller, I can see a use for them in other genres. The armour would look pretty good for combat armour for Fallout. They have planned uses in some post apocalypse stuff as well. Maybe even as soldiers in a super hero game.

This is more for my benefit so I can go back and remember what colours I used if I decide to do any more

Accidents

Not the major kind. More the fortunate (ish) coincidence kind. I made a determined effort to get the cultists done today. They are still not quite done and there is a little bit of detailing to be done on them. They would have been finished but I got a little sidetracked. This happened when the spot of paint I was trying to squirt out to touch up spots on a couple of arms became a rather large blob.

I hate waste. So I decided to use the blob for something else. There was probably enough paint to put a flesh base coat down on just about all the faces and hands of the figures I currently have primed. What I did see were a bunch of Macrocosm Immature Ticks. The way they are painted in the webshop gives them a distinctly alien vibe that is very reminiscent of old GW Genestealers. Whilst this is not a bad look I did want something different.

Having a big blob of skin tone paint gave me an idea. Genestealers were part of a life cycle so why not make these creatures part of the lifecycle of something else. So using regular caucasian skin tone was a good place to start with a couple of different colours for a bit of variety. My plan for a while has been to get some more of these. It would be an easy job  to give them some slight variations on the skin tone as well.

Whilst these were brought as an Opfor for the Titansgrave game, I can see a number of uses for them. Using them as a kind of genestealer esque creature has some and that this would probably work for X-Com and just about any post-apocalypse game. I don't really have a firm plan but I can see a number of ways of making this work.

On the plus side these should be a quick and easy paint job. There are a dozen of them so if I finished them by the end of the week I should be ahead of the curve for the first time this year.

End Of The Week (That Was) - Good News/Bad News

This has not been a bad week all round on the painting front. Along the way I have managed to get  ten sci-fi dwarf figures painted to a reasonably good tabletop standard. To my amazement this only took about three days.

The plan after that had been to finish off the chaos cultists I have for Titansgrave and any number of post-apocalyptic projects which might become a Scrappers game. The figures had already been put together but the bases needed flocking and the figures themselves needed priming. So with this done they were ready to paint. Then the real world got in the way in the form of my other half developing a bad back and the cat being ill. This has delayed me for a bit. Although I have managed to get some painting done today the cat has again taken my seat.

So with the week that comes I have the chaos cultists to finish. I have made a good start on these already so I am confident that this will be done by mid week (assuming the cat does not get in the way). If things go my way there are another half dozen space dwarves to finish off. Next weekend I am away at funeral so I doubt much will get finished if I have to leave it until then so I won't aim to over achieve.

After that I have the miniatures for Star Saga to do. These arrived the other day and I guess I will get round to posting some pictures of them in due time. All the Star Saga stuff will form part of the X-Com and Titansgrave projects so are probably going to get pushed to the top of the list. There are also some old Grenadier (now Mirliton) troopers which I have been tinkering with, Basically another background project to be painted any time I have some paint I don't want to go to waste.

Next week I am going to start do some RPGing again on Monday night. It's Rogue Trader, not my prefered game (well I have never played it so I am open minded about it). At least it will get me back into the swing of things. I am hoping to get back to FabLab at least on Thursday.

So the New Cruelty is satisfied. I have hit my painting target. I have hit all my exercise goals every day and a bit more besides. I have even managed a game this week. Well done me.

Dwarves In Spaccccceeee

So it's the dwarves again. I keep wandering off. There are now about half a dozen background projects that are floating around the desk which are soaking up any paint that would otherwise get wasted. A bit og priming here and a bit of tidying up there and that has just about been my day. Not including the tax return and having to do just about everything other than cooking lunch as my other half has done her back in despite having done a deal about jobs today.

Even so I have managed to get some painting done. The first coat on the dwarves is almost done and even a little bit of inking and basing is complete. With a bit of luck I will be able to finish them off and ink them tomorrow and may get them close to being finished. This would leave me just behind the curve on what I wanted to do as part of The New Cruelty, 23 figures instead of 25. If I do get them finished then I'll move onto the remaining Cultists/Raiders which would leave me slightly ahead.

In terms of the background projects and what I have planned there are a few ways I can go. Overall I would like to get a couple of projects pretty close to finished this year. These dwarf figures are part of the Titansgrave: Ashes Of Valkana project and they is a way to goes with the project yet. There are still some gaps in terms of figures I just don't have (and may have a problem sourcing) and some stuff yet to be painted. This is probably going to take up a bit of time in the next few months. X-Com is another project I want to do this year. Although I have some stuff for the project already, most of what I want isn't going to be available until September. There is also a fair amount of sci-fi/post-apocalypse crossover with the figures for all of the stuff I have planned so I guess this is what will happen in the near future.

Making Progress Again

This feels like a day I have made some progress, not just miniature painting but in the real world as well. A few little bits and pieces of conversation has made the day better.

With today's painting I am almost at the stage where I can start doing the ink washes. I doubt much is going to get done tomorrow as I will be out in the evening enjoying myself but hopefully Saturday and Sunday will see me getting these figures all done.

Next week is now looking like more recent bad news is about to catch up with me. Whilst I suspect that I will be posting as much as usual, it is looking like I won't be at home. For some reason life has sought to give me two funerals to go to, one half way across the country and the other half way across the continent. This getting old and being an adult thing really sucks some days.

Chaos Cultists Looking Less Chaotic

Still on the subject of Games Workshop Chaos Cultists, they are a little closer to completion today and there are a few more in the way. A sense of of an overall colour scheme is starting to come together and, although there is still work to do, they are beginning to look like what I was hoping for.

More GW Chaos Cultists

I have been thinking about making them look a little more like something that will fit into the X-Com game. Some of the figures have military style uniforms. Although I wanted basically a desert look for them, all brown is going to look somewhat dull. So a bit of green and blue will be thrown into the mix.

I have another eight of them in various stages of completion and these are what I would like to finish next week. One of them has a missing weapon and the hands to hold it. This will be a bit of a cobble but at least it will be different. Given the weather, I am not sure when I am going to get them primed.

Gearing Up For A New X-Com

I have been talking about running an X-Com game (which has become ET-Com for Extra-Terrestrial Command) for a couple of decades now. That's a fairly long run in time. So having gone over my plans for the year, X-Com is coming to be a big part of it. Now that I have a coherent idea about bad guys, thanks to Chronicle-X things can progress a bit. Obviously with it being a Kickstarter, the figures are going to take some time to arrive. However if I can work it so that everything other than the figures is ready, a few months of painting should leave me in a position where I can start a game this time next year.

The Chronicle-X package has a whole load of different aliens. The first step for this game is going to be a bestiary. There looks to me to be at least fifteen different aliens in the game and maybe a few more. As I have already acquired some figures for this game, the intention is to use what I have already. I also want some zombies. So even without any significant variations, that's about 20 different stat blocks and descriptions.

One of the things this game does not seem to handle is ship to ship combat. There is enough in the Savage Worlds rules to do most of the things I want to do in my game. There will no doubt be a few changes and some more stat blocks for the vehicles and weapons.

I have already worked on weapons for the system here, but need to work on the weapons for the aliens. I might be able to get some casts of the alien weapons. I want to do this because I want the human soldiers to be able to use alien weapons. It would be good if the company was going to do some weapon sprues but I doubt it so copies will have to do.

Whilst I love the original game, it is the updated version of X-Com that I think I am going to use as my main guide. As I am using the Savage Worlds rules, this should not be to difficult. What I want is a series of new edges that reflect the computer games. This should not be a big issue.

All of this should be fairly easy to come up with. The bulk of what I need to do is going to be background. I have to come up with details of the organisation, the alien's plan and research. This is probably going to take as much time as the rest of the paperwork put together.

The Random GM

Whilst I am currently favouring the phrase Maitre d'ungeon after inadvisably watching Robin Hood, men in tights (for the second time this year) I am at heart a Games Master. I have already mentioned that I am playing Conan: Exiles on the PC at the moment. Not that long ago I was talking about turning this into a tabletop RPG. The computer game is currently locked in a desert environment which has a decidedly Scorpion King vibe.

Aside from needing to buy (and paint up) a load of figures, the biggest problem has been coming up with a scenario. Over the years I have been more about substance than style. Players then tend to complain that they are getting railroaded as you try to keep them on the track of my well crafted piece of theatre.

You cannot get more random that just rolling a dice (well technically you can but...). Have an idea and see what happens. This was the heart of Patron Encounters in Traveller. There was a website a good long time ago called Tales of Terror which was the same sort of the for Call Of Cthulhu. This has a simple, usually one paragraph, scenario with a number of options. This was usually accomplish with a dice roll but it was always possible to use several of the options to give a layered scenario with a few false ends.

Ages ago I had a copy of an old DMG. This had a fair section at the back dedicated to random dungeon generation. This had a lot of appeal to me at the time. To be fair it is great to take the mental strain out of generating dungeons. Wandering monster tables were a staple of Tunnels + Trolls as well as D+D. The downside is that they take a bit away from the flow of the game as you sit there with a chart and some dice.

Once I had been told about this (a few times at least) I decided to do something about it. At the time I was playing Conspiracy X. Here I used tarot cards to allow the players to divine the future. I had a pen outline for each card using traditional interpretations of the cards. To keep it to the theme of the game I attached characters and events to certain cards.

To be honest I had a number of possible scenarios outlined and I took a look at the cards and tried to work in the ideas on the table  in with the overall campaign. I was surprised how well it worked. To back me up I made sure that the readings were all photographed so I had evidence that it was all in the hand of cards. Having different characters attached to different cards and a dash of "genuine" tarot babble it gave some credence to a game that was pretty heavily locked into the supernatural.

More recently I have been using Rory's Story Cubes. There are three main sets and a number of smaller tag on sets. Generally I pick one of the larger sets, typical this is the original set, and then one or more of the smaller sets. The smaller sets are more specific so I pick the sets that are most relevant to the setting and my plans for the scenario.

Normally I stick with about eight or nine dice out of the one available. If things don't seem to make too much sense I will swap the facings of a few of the dice over. Someone accused me of cheating by doing this but I think they had a borderline psychiatric condition.  This isn't cheating, you are creating a story. It can be helpful to put them in order. Then I would get out a pen and a piece of paper and make some very rough notes. If I need a trap or a monster I will wait until the players are talking amongst themselves and quietly pick something out.

Savage Worlds has a tag on system called the Adventure Deck. Most GMs don't seem to use this. Many of the cards give bonuses in combat. Generally I think that combat is easy enough so I ditch these before doing anything else. I favour the ones that add to the roleplaying side of things. Although there is a standard deck, there are plenty of fan created cards out there and there is also a way to create you own cards. This hands some of the random over to the players. It helps them to buy into the game and giving the cards that help further the plot is always good. They can be crated for specific games for even more flavour and I have done this for the Viking Game and Fallout.

Spider Swarms And Making Progress

I have come very close to missing the post tonight. Having posted at least daily for three months now I really didn't want to miss the deadline. My other half tells me the clocks are going forward as well which really would have cut into me time to post. So I just made the deadline which still counts.

Time is never on my side and I haven't had much time today. My other half has been hit by another illness which has meant she has been out of commission most of the day. Worse still she has needed a huge amount of attention along with family commitments. I did manage to find the time to sleep through two films. No great shakes as I have seen both of them already. This is after another night of sleep broken by outside forces. My current plan is to put the dog on tranquilisers and lock the cat in the kitchen.

Despite all that I have done a bit of work. The spider swarm base and it's two sub bases is just about finished. The texture I have used on the base is now curing and when that is done, I will get it painted. I am still not feeling the love for this model but it has been sat around, in kit form at least, for a while now.

Once I have finished that I have done a bit of policing up of stuff on the desk. I have done some trimming on another one of the X-Com Cyberdiscs and played around with a couple of the cars. Small steps but definitely progress. The blog is helping me focus.

I Must Be Psychic - And Military Zombies

I predicted yesterday that I wouldn't get much done today. I was right. The total sum of my hobby output has been a momentary look at what I did yesterday and watching a few YouTube videos whilst I dozed off. Setting aside the need for sleep being down to me not feeling so well I have spent about six hours taking my mum to hospital. No bad news just lots of tests and scans.

Whilst I was sitting in the waiting room I was thinking about zombies. I want to run a zombie game set in the UK. I know Cold War Miniatures  do a few British themed zombies but no one seems to do any significant number of British zombies. Then I saw these from Puppets of war and for a minute I thought I had found what I was looking for. Close but no cigar. Nice minis though.

Good Weather Means That I Can Do Something - Spray Painting For X-Com

28mm Cars in Progress

This really is going to be a quick post. I am tired and I need some sleep. As the weather was a little better for much of the day. Well there was no rain at least, for a while anyway. Got to love the British weather. I managed to get some spray painting done on the cars I started in the time that I had. It really did not go as well as I was hoping so I guess that more spray will be needed yet. Still another step closer. The cars are going to need at least another coat of paint.

Add caption

I also got round to playing about with the Cyber disc for X-Com. This is a different one which I got gold off the other day. The last one in the shop and was a different colour. I have chopped the lip off and glued the movable shield in place. It has also had a spray undercoat. I know you can't tell but apparently the stuff I got was clear.

Another busy day tomorrow so, given that I feel lousy now, I am not sure what I am going to get done.

Short Term Plans - 28mm Miniatures, RPG, X-Com and Vikings

I have spent a lot of time not doing anything productive. In fairness I have had a lot on. Family and work have taken over for a few days. That said, there is a bit of a mojo problem going on. I do keep doing stuff a bit at a time. I am lacking a bit of focus. I had a plan and I had focus but I kind of lost it. The focus was on the cars but the weather got in the way then there were problems getting the time. I am hoping for a better day tomorrow and I have some masking tape so the cars, as part of X-Com and other projects, might actually get some traction.

There is more than a glimmer of personal interest in the Viking game but I doubt that I will keep this going for long. There are a number of other games I have in mind. The truth is there are a number of games that there would be little problem getting going. I think it's more a question of confidence at the moment.

Generally, I do this blog for my own amusement. I am not a good social networker as well. There is no grand plan for the blog. Sometimes, like today, a bit of feedback would be nice.

Building Site Scatter Terrain

I seem to remember in the X-Com game, one of the best missions took place around the site of some foundations giving a nice multi level feel to it. There was also a few other building sites like missions including one on top of a skyscraper. So I am hoping for a two (or three or four) for one out of this.

I already have barrels, pallet stacks, foam board, wooden planks, large concrete pipes and some piles of plywood in the works. Brick stacks, smaller pipe stacks, covered packages, a portacabin, cement mixer truck, some regular crates, skips, portaloo and maybe some earth moving machinery would be nice. Throw in a few walls, some cars and the odd tree and I should have plenty of scatter terrain for this site.

I have also been working on some trees. These are very simple and meant to evoke trees and still make a playing surface easy to use.

Keep It Brief - X-Com And The Cybderdisk

I suppose today is all about little steps. I have felt lousy today. I think (hope) the pain from the lactic acid build up and unexpected exercise from Sunday has reached it's peak. The last time my legs were this painful was when I broke my leg and didn't realise it.

 One thing of note has happened today. I think I have found the model for a cyberdisk for the X-Com Game. What I want is the look of the cyberdisk from the original game but the new game's cyber disk, before it transforms wasn't too bad either. This model will be neither but then none of the other stuff is perfect either. No point being a perfectionist and it is close enough to what I want.

It is actually a £1 eraser from Wilkos in a snazzy plastic cover. So Not quite a Pound Shop find but close enough. I might make a couple of trims to see if I can smooth it out the front end. It might even look better than the original. I also thought of using it as a template for the UFO but I think I will stick with paper templates for them.

Another Busy Day

Although I feel that I haven't had that much time today, it seems that I have done a fair amount of work. Having had a terrible nights sleep it was really late when I got up. I woke up in the middle of the night and had a dizzy spell and almost fell out of bed. Then my uncle brought some books back and I took my mum out. On the plus side I got some cheap gloss spray paint which I used to spray some more of the cars. Now I have stripped all the labels off the cars I now have. I still think I need some more of those plastic cars. This may become a habit. I can see another three or four boxes of the cars arriving before the week is out.

Then I got round to filling some holes in the roof of the cars. Then I found out I had some left over greenstuff so I ended up using that on some Lizardmen for Titansgrave and an Reaper bones frost giant. I really thought I was going off target so I got back to the scatter terrain which, for the most part, is now finished. I found some more pipe sections when I was cleaning up the bench so I had better get them done soon.

Now I am working on some more scatter terrain. I am doing some tree trunks, probably better that I show them when they are done. It will look better when you see the final concept. I did a bt of painting of some of the scatter terrain that is already in the queue. Then I thought about some model brick piles I saw so I thought I'd have a go at them. These are still to wet to handle so I will take a picture of them when they are closer to being finished. It's just a foamcore topper scores to look like bricks with some more layers of foamcore to give it the look of having layers. then I got on to the idea of having some packaged items that are covered with tarpaulin. For both I used kitchen roll. I am hoping that the texture of the paper will be noticeable when they paint dries. These will do for a variety of game environments and even genres.

So all in all, not a bad day. I am driven to do the blog at the moment which is driving me to do the work. I have posted every day for almost two months now. If I keep that up, I will have posted as many times this year already as I did in the whole of last year. I would like to make this the big year for the blog so I want to post as many times as I can and hopefully beat my posting record. That would take at least another two months of posting at this frequency. I am about to hit five hundred posts which seems like a good milestone to be hitting and my hits seem to be healthy too.

Life Mocks Me

Having had such a great day yesterday has meant that there had to be some payback. The low point being treading in a dog t%*d that fell off the dog as it walked in. Although I did get a shed load of stuff done this morning, my output has dwindled a lot this afternoon and evening. There was a lot of spray painting. The smell has stuck with me all day.

So when I got up it was raining. So I the first thing was to starting putting some more laser cut stuff together. My plan is still to work some more of the X-Com plan. Terrain is obviously featuring highly as I want to have a number of terrain environments for the players to run around in. these are going to be roughly based around the X-Com game. The first one is looking like the building site. An urban site, maybe a high street is probably next. After that will be a UFO. So the next bit I am working on is a few bits for that.

The power cores I have talked about before. The control panels are new. The plan is to give me a range of options. Smaller ships will probably only have one with larger ships having multiples. There are plenty of more options.

After that I have sprayed some of the car bodies. I have a few more to do but I really need some more colours. I got hold of a green and yellow really cheaply when one of the local B&Qs closed down. So a red, shiny white, blue, silver and a shiny black would be nice but that might be a bit costly. I might also get even more of the cheap plastic cars.

Then it started raining again so it was back to the laser cut scatter terrain. I glued together some space age cargo pods. I striped a few more cars of their sticky labels. This really does take an age. Another plan is to cut up some branches to use as trees. Some will do for tree stumps, some as fallen trees but I am hoping most will end up as trees. I was playing a game on Monday where the guy placed some trees. I was looking at the scale of them an is was all wrong. Tree trunks should be a lot wider, especially if you want to hide behind them. Real trees, in the main, have enough space to walk under. So I figured if I got a branch into two inch sections and glued it to a base, this would look good enough for what i wanted. Then a bit of work on the building site terrain. this is nearly finished so I hope they will be finished by close of play tomorrow.

Now it's time for bed. If I want to get anything done tomorrow, I'd better get to bed.

Early Post

After not feeling too well, I started having a go at stuff on the workbench again. I am still really just messing around. I did some more pallets out of matches and coffee stirrers. I now have a good pile of the things which supply my immediate needs. I thought I wasn't going to need so many, then I saw a pile of pallets whilst playing X-Com 2 on Thursday.

After

So I got on to do a few more bits. then I had the idea to play around with some of the trucks I got. I showed one of these the other day and I now have three of them. So I decided to do a stretch body with one of them. This required what was on the back of two of them to be chopped up and stuck together to form a longer bed and chopped up the body of one of them so that I could put the wheels in the right place. I am wondering of it should have another set of wheels but too late now.

Then I strengthened the body with coffee stirrers (not my first choice but it was what I could find). Looks a bit odd now but will be unnoticeable when it's painted. The bed was left a little uneven so I thought I should put a bed on them. The plan is to use it as a terrain feature so an even surface for figures to climb on was important. More coffee stirrers and a bit of green stuff and here we are. All it will need is a bit of a finish on the greenstuff when it dries to smooth it off. If there are anymore gaps, the primer will hopefully sort them out.

Befrore

Most immediately this is for the X-Com game. That said, this vehicle should do fine in anything modern or near future, especially zombie related.