Post Apoc Scavengers

Many of you will have these photographs before on my Painting Service site, but here they are again. These guys are additions to my Scavenger force for Post Apoc gaming.

Post Apoc Scavvies. Em4 and Copplestone Casting

Post Apoc Scavvies. Em4 and Copplestone Casting

Post Apoc Scavvies. Em4 and Copplestone Casting

Terrain Tutorial: Industrial Style Fencing

Another bit of relatively easy utility terrain. Great for blocking lines of advance (in some systems), creating storage areas, supply depots and even basketball courts.

You will need:
Superglue
Good Pair of Scissors
Sand
Milli-put
Fine Metal Mesh (I got my mine from the paper mache section of an art store. Car body mesh also works well).
Small, thin wooden sticks - toothpicks, coffee stirrers, anything like that.
Basing Materials - in my case I like to use cake trays, because they're good and thick and the foil-treated surface helps prevent the cardboard from warping.

Some of what you will need.

 Step One: Eat the cake. Yum Yum.
Cut the basing material into long thin strips about an inch wide. I've cut mine into 8 inch long strips because my mesh comes in eight inch sections, to save a bit of measuring. Once you've done that, place three blobs of milliput on the strip. One at each end and one in the middle. If you're using the cake tray, you'll need to superglue these down, otherwise the milliput won't take. Then cut you're wooden sticks to size (I like 75mm) and stick them into the milliput. Build up more milliput around the stick to help secure it in place. The sticks don't all have to be exactly the right length (or even straight) because the fence posts would subside over time.

After the first few steps you'll have something like this.

 Next, cut the wire-mesh. You want each strip to be as long as the base and as tall as the fence posts. In my case, that mean's 8inches long by 75mm high. Yes I'm mixing my measures here. I'm a child of the metric-changeover period. I work with both systems. Place more milliput lobs between the posts (remember that if you're using the cake tray you will need to glue them in place. Push the mesh down into all five blobs and use superglue to stick the mesh to the posts. You may find you need to use more miliput or blue tac to keep the wire stuck to the sticks long enough for the glue to dry.

More milli-put blobs added and mesh fence in place.

 Now you need to frame the mesh in place between the original posts and a second set of three posts. Again, secure them to the base using milli-put (and super-glue if using the cake tray). You'll often find the posts don't want to stay together and will branch out to form a V shape. Use milli-put and superglue to fix the top's of the two posts together.

Stick the two posts together with milli-put and super-glue.

 Remember to make a set of gates using two sets of four fence posts. I tend to make one gate base for every two or three bases of normal fencing.

Gates

Once you've assembled your fences, let the milli-put set over night before doing anything else.

Silo Build Part II -Painting

Part two of the silo terrain building article.

Taking a very old, stiff-bristled brush I half-stipled, half painted long streaks of Model Air Rust paint down the sides of the Silo and around the spot wields. If you don't have Model Air Rust, any dark brown/umber paint mixed with a metallic will do.

I did the same on the upper surface of the silo and around the rim, careful to make sure I applied the rust coloured paint anywhere water might collect in pools.

Taking Mig Light Rust Effects and using the same stiff brush I painted orange streaks over the rust-brown, being careful to leave the rust brown showing a the edges. If you don't have Mig Light Rust, then any bright orange paint will do the same trick. Just make sure to water it down to the consistency of ink first.

And again on the upper surface of the silo

At this point I did something stupid: I forgot to take a photo of the next stage. All I did was take some Games Workshop Armageddon Dust and, using my fingers, smudged it all the "clean", silver bits of the silo to represent years of dust storms and the like.

After adding the Armaggeddon dust, I overloaded my stiff-bristled, old brush with ink and, using painting down from the top of the silo to the bottom, applied it all over the silo, been careful to leave as many streaks and making the coverage as uneven as possible. 

With the Silo now looking like a rusty, abandoned piece of junk, I painted the base Vellejo Model Colour English Uniform and dryrbished with Vellajo Model Colour Green Ochre.

All Done. About 2 man-hours of work.

Silo Build Part I

It's been a while since I knocked together any terrain to add to my collection. Inspired by a champagne truffle box, I decided it was time to add a storage silo my collection of 28mm Bad Landing/Post-Apocalypse scenery. I have a good number of storage silo's already, but they're better suited to 15mm scale or less. So it's time for me to fill this gaping hole in my scenery collection:

Parts: Sturdy round box, CD, Old Ink Pot Lid, Bottle Top, Old Spru's, Staples.

I first cut th sprus to length then glued them together, using the round "spacer" on the sprue as a spacer between the two "pipes".

Like this.

I super-glued the pipes to the side of the box, then glued the box to the CD.

I then super-glued the bottle top and ink pot lids in place to make a hatch. I made sure that the spru-pipes were flush with the bottle lid.

I used groups of three staples to make ladder rungs and super-flued them place. I used milli-put to make "spot weld" marks. The flock was glued to the base with PVA glue.

After spraying with a black undercoat, I lightly sprayed over the top with Army Painter Plate Mail Spray-Paint.

The 2 Year Plan 2013-2015

I don't really expect this to be of interest to anyone other me. It's just my way of organising my thoughts for what I want to accomplish from a wargaming point of view in the next 18-24 months. Hence I haven't bothered to include any nice photographs or images to break up this huge wall of text.

In no particular order:

Terrain Wise:

• Upgrade the 4ft by 4ft terrain mats to 4ft x 6ft terrain mats to match the size of the new table. 
• Make/acquire more 15mm and 28mm terrain for my Temperate, Off-world Colony and Post Apocalypse/Semi-Arid game boards.
• In particular, get myself some nice 15mm Napoleonic terrain, modern North African terrain AND some rural russian terrain to use with both other sets of 15m terrain. Also modern terrain from Fieldworks which will look great as North and East African factories and apartment buildings.

Miniatures Wise:

40K Imperial Guard:

I'm really, really missing playing Imperial Guard in 40K. Although my Chaos Space Marines have only lost one game, drawn one game, and won every other game they've played quite convincingly, nothing can replace the IG as my favourite 40K Army. At the moment, I have squidgillions of infantry, but I had to sell most of my tanks before moving down south. So, I need to purchase:

• At least one Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons Box with Lascannons.
• Buy ten stormtroopers with Hotshot Lasguns to expand my five man suicide squads into full squads
• Buy an Ogre Lead Bely boxed set and convert it to Ogryns
• Convert a unit of Rough Riders.
• About 15 pairs of Cadian arms and lasguns to convert the rest of my Dream Forge UAMC infantry into Guardsmen (well, conscripts)
• Buy one Leman Russ Punisher (for Pasque)
• Buy three Leman Russ with the twin autocannon variants
• Buy three normal Leman Russ but also purchase the Plasma Cannon and Vanquisher turret variants from Forge world.
• Buy one Basilisk (the enclosed armour one from Forgeworld)
• Buy one Medusa (from Forgeworld)
• Buy one Manticore

40k Space Marines:

I have an entire Space Marine army sitting around waiting to be painted and built. They're not my first choice of army by any means (after 25 years of playing with and against them, they bore the hell out of me). On the other hand, given how expensive it's going to be to make my IG army playable again I'm going to have to concentrate on getting these guys up to speed first so I can use them as an allied contingent with my IG infantry.

• Assemble and paint the five remaining Terminators, five character miniatures and thirty pus space marines lying around doing nothing.
• Buy, assemble and paint two Rhino's, one Land Raider Redeemer and one Land Raider Crusader.
• Play games using these guys as an IG allied contingent (and vice versa) so my IG become a playable force again.

40K Chaos Space Marines:

• Buy, assemble and paint an actual Chaos Landraider and stop using the normal Space Marine Landraider as a proxy
• Swap out the Hellbrute from my 2000 pt list and replace it with a twin-linked Lascannon Predator Tank.
• Paint up the five Thousand Sons, one Possessed and one Chaos Space Marine Champion I need to declare this army fully painted. Optionally paint up the other 6 bikes and bikers and two Chaos Lords on Juggernauts as well. Although it's not really necessary, they'll give me more options to play with list wise.

15mm Napoleonic:

After playing Napoleonic's for the first time in about fifteen years a few weeks ago I'm all fired up for more. To start with, I've picked one of the smaller nations who fought on both sides of the conflict (Bavaria) because of the many options it will provide in terms of armies to fight and also because assembling the entire national army of such a small(ish) state in 15mm is a reasonable enough goal. That's 11 regiments of Infantry (two battalions of 12 miniatures each) and a half dozen regiments of cavalry plus a few guns. Still a major undertaking, but not quite as daunting as trying to assemble the entire army of France.

Alternate History/Ultra Modern:

Despite my rant the other week about comfort zones, I really am attracted to ultra-modern game -just so long as fictional forces and nations are involved. Hence, in the spirit of Alcovia, Franonia, Raynonia and Bravo's Evil Empire, I'm inventing my own fictional nation to fight fictional campaigns against other fictional nations. I need to purchase:

• North African and rural Russian type scenery (sounds a bit of an odd combination but it'll make sense when I do a feature on my fictional nation).
• A mixed platoon of ARVN and US Vietnam era troops, plus seven M113's and a few M60 tanks to represent the armed forces of my small, third-world nation for games of Force on Force. All from Peter Pig, (except the tanks) which means £18 for the troops, £56 for the APC's and £8 per tank.
• Paint up my GZG 15mm civilians as oil workers, consultants and other civilians for games of Force on Force.
• Purchase a whole heap of Peter Pig AK47 miniatures to represent various bad guy militia's and shady foreign nations.
• Use Israeli Sand Grey for the armour. Buy it from here: https://airbrushes.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=israeli+army&search_in_description=1&categories_id=202&inc_subcat=1

Post Apoc:

Through it all, I'll continue to build up my PA terrain collection (especially as it also doubles up as my 40K terrain collection) and paint up the many existing PA miniatures I already own as time and inclination allows. I'll be using these for my PA solo games as well as my Judge Dredd solo-campaign that I plan to play every now and then.

Wasteland Terrain

One of my big projects this year is to get back to building more Post Apoc terrain for my gaming table. It's a project I had to put on hiatus late last year when most of my gaming miniatures and scenery went into storage for six months in preparation for the move down to Kent. As well as using it for games of 40k (there's a reason most of my 40K stuff is based for desert play) I'll be using the terrain for Post Apoc games such as the new Rogue Trooper game from Mongoose as well my own home-brew rules (used to game everything from RIFTS to Fallout to Terminator).

As I'm catching up on a five-day backlog at work, my limited painting time for my own projects has become even more limited recently, which is perfect for terrain building. So I've started work on a very simple piece of terrain to add to my existing collection: a camp site.

Here's the planned layout. Once I've got the tents painted I'll start work on the base itself. I use Vellajo stone effect for my wasteland bases (in conjunction with builders gravel) but getting the stuff onto a base without smearing some over a miniature or a tent is fiddly at best. So I prefer to put the white stone effect on first and paint the base separately before sticking miniatures or terrain on top.

Very much a work in progress right now....

I'm also debating with the idea of leaving the tent's loose, for ease of storage and for a greater variety of layouts. We'll see.

Post Apoc Terrain from GW?

Well, not really. But the Warhammer walls set really does paint up well as part of the post apoc landscape. Despite my best efforts, I've not really managed to do much in the way of painting miniatures or terrain for post-apocalyptic gaming these last few weeks. Having to take some time off last week when the family came to visit was part of it, but mostly it comes down to just being far too busy. I've had to cut out my usual habit of painting my own stuff on my lunch breaks and simply skip lunch altogether (dearly beloved it not happy about this).

I did manage to snatch an hour or so on Sunday to finish the Warhammer Walls set, which has been languishing in it's undercoated state since October. It took no time at all really. Simple drybrushing for the most part, with the metal and rust effects painted on when all the drybrushing was over. Still, for such a rushed effort, I think they really look the part.

Aftermath: Post Apocalypse Project Revived

For centuries, there had been talk of the end-times. Fears of the Rapture, Nuclear War, Ancient Prophecies, Alien Invasion, Meteor Strikes, Fuel Crisis, Super-flu, Zombie-Plagues, Super Volcanoes, Zombie Plagues, Demonic Incursions, Robot Rebellions, Economic Collapse, Melting Ice Caps, Greenhouse Gasses released by for. 

No one expected all of it to happen at once.

When the smoke and dust cleared, earth was left a wasteland. The few nations and major cities to survive walled themselves off from the world, becoming the PZ's, or Policed Zones. Bastions of civilisation, education, science - and oppression. Only the Wastelanders, those cursed to live and roam in the Wastes, are truly free.

Free to hunt. Free to scavenge. Free to kill.

Mission Statement:

 Aftermath is my PA skirmish war-game setting ( and the title for my inevitable pet home-brew rules). It's a kitchen sink setting with room for just about everything and anything PA. Until my home made rules are ready, I'll be using the 40K: Rogue Trader rules to play PA games.

Why 40K Rogue Trader?:

Because the original 40K Rogue Trader game was designed from the ground up as a "kitchen sink" set of narrative skirmish sci-fi rules. Unlike the modern 40K game, where the conflicting groups are more of less organized armies, Rogue Trader allows you to create just about any type of force you can imagine, from a group of Wasteland Scavengers and mutants to a crew of road-warriors. And, if points value driven games are your thing, you can even assign a points value to your mooks based not only on their equipment, but on their stat line too.

What About These Rules You're Developing:

Frankly, they're a work in progress, designed to incorporate the very best elements of a number of game systems. Essentially, I'll be taking the following elements from each of the named game systems below and weaving them into a (hopefully) coherent whole.
[] From 40K Rogue Trader I'll be taking the ability to create creatures and vehicles from scratch and still being able to assign a rough points value for each trait.
[] From Necromunda I'll be modifying the rules for acquiring and running territories.
[] From Gorka Morka I'll be looking at vehicle combat and maintenance.
[] From In The Emperor's Name I'll be modifying the Solo-Campaign and Combat rules.
[] From the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game I'll be taking the Skill Tree and Hero/Minion experience scheme.

Articles so Far:

This isn't really a new project so much as kick-starting an older project I had to abandon in October last year, when most of my Post Apocalypse terrain and miniatures went into storage prior to moving down to Kent. Well, now that I've been here for a grand total of three weeks, it's time I got started again. In the meantime, here's some previous blog posts you might want to take a look at:

Battle Reports:

Attack on Hadley's Post: Scenario
Attack on Hadley's Post pt I
Attack on Hadley's Post pt II

Miniatures and Terrain:

Aftermath Update
Great Ebay Find
Terrain WIP
Vault Dwellers (I use them as Vanners these days)

Aftermath Rules Articles:

Aftermath Theory
Gangs and Crews

Traitor Guard Update.

It's been a busy few days for my Traitor Guard army, not only is the Sentinel Squadron finished, but I've completed two chimera as well. Now I have just five infantry squads to paint up for the tournament at the beginning of July. Or to put it another way, a squad every four days. I should be able to manage that, especially given that dearly beloved is away down south with her mum and brother for a week.

In other gaming news, my new desert terrain mat arrived today. So I'll be taking advantage of having the place temporarily to myself by setting up the table and having a few scenario driven games of 40k Rogue Trader. Well, probably only one really as I'll gaming on my lunch break. Set on the Post-Apocalyptic 40K world of Bad Landing, of course. First up will be a raid by a tribe of Ash Nomads (think Fremen but with guns) on a trading post defended by the staff and a few, small bands of mutually antagonistic Raiders, Vaulters and Scavvies. Sounds like a good excuse to break out the old animosity rules for such fun and havoc.

Post Apocalypse: Aftermath Update

I've been busy with work, but I've still managed to keep this project going by snatching a few moments here and there while waiting for customer's orders to dry and by getting up a little earlier than normal.

First up, we have some painted denizens of Post-Crash earth.

This gorgeous young lass was named Lucine by (I think) Lucky Joe when I first posted her pics on the Lead Legion blog. She represents a member of the Wastelander faction - a mixture of PA settlers looking for a quiet life and the adventurous types that look out for them. Specifically, she's an Adventurer, the second most experienced (and expensive) type of Fighter in a Wastelander gang after the Hero.

This fella here doesn't have a name on the roster yet, but I plan on having two uses for him. You can't see it in the photo, but his left arm is synthetic. So hell see use as both a Wastelander hero and as a Bot Infiltrator in Aftermath play tests.











Young Spike here belongs to the Raider play test gang, and was it's first member to be painted. I haven't quite settled on a name for the type of fighter that fills the "Juve" spot on Raider gang rosters, but when I do I'll let you know. 











This here is his buddy, a typical Raider Thug. He has a passing resemblance to a certain actor whose name I don't recall (he was the hero in Battlefield Earth and the journalist in We Were Soldiers). Once I do, this miniature will have his official play-test name.

 This guys a Desperado, the leader of a Scavvie gang. Scavvie gangs don't tend to have much in the way of sophisticated gear as they have a hard time keeping energy weapons serviceable (the dust gets everywhere in the deep wastes). They make up for this with ferocity and cunning however. And (seemingly) really big axes too.




























The Scavvie gang as it stands today. Scavvies are very cheap in terms of points, so I'll need a LOT more of these guys before I have a play-test worthy force.

TERRAIN

I haven't just been painting minis, I've been building terrain as well. A while back I posted about making modular building walls by using basing foam card on C.D's. I got about eight of them assembled before I remembered I had all this card terrain I bought on PDF years ago. Doh! I haven't abandoned the old CD idea altogether. The building bits I made will be painted up eventually, but for the time being I'm gonna concentrate on easier to make card buildings. Here's a work in progress. The round thing out front is a plant pot that some Scavvie has been using as a brazier.

Bloody scavvies.

Next up we have a Perry Miniatures North American Farm House I painted for Lead Legion Painting Service. As someone (Lucky Joe again?) pointed out, this building could be used in just about any genre from the 17th century onwards. It looks like it would be perfect for Post Apocalypse games. The chimney was left off so that the roof (which is supposed to be glued on) can be detached. This handy little set also came with white picket fencing. Also very useful for PA.

 Finally, we have my pride and joy. I call it the Battle Bus. I reckon this is an incredibly versatile piece of terrain. In one battle it's a roadblock, in another, a pill-box. In other, it's the gate to a Wasteland Fortress. Hell, it could even be used as a functioning vehicle. Looking at the graffiti, I hope you can see that I've tried to form a narrative about the life of this bus. It's gone from being the home of stranded survivors, to a Raider gang territory marker and now (finally) a danger sign warning about the mutant creatures that presumably wiped the gang out. It's my absolute favourite terrain piece. Even the huge and ugly mould line along the roof (made of such bad quality plastic that it actually shattered when I tried to file it off) can't marr my pride in this little number.

In a few days, I'll be doing a similar update for my 15mm Bad Landing campaign setting. I've some scenery and some miniatures to show off -as well as a revised "Encyclopedia Galaxia" entry for the Colony.

The Hanger Bay & Wasteland Scenery

My good friend Mecha-Ace has just started a fine new wargaming blog, The Hanger Bay. Only one article so far as he's only just started blogging today. But if I know Mecha, and I do, it will be a great gaming blog.

Secondly, last night I spent a fifteen minutes or so putting together a section of ruined modular 28mm building for Aftermath and other Post Apocalyptic wargaming. The plan is to do one of these a night until I use up an A3 sheet of foamcard or run out of CD's. After that I'll base, texture and paint them altogether. I'll probably do a batch of 15mm buildings in a similar fashion while I'm at it. Though I intend to make the 15mm buildings intact structures for Bad Landing scenarios.