Week Off

Image blatantly stol I mean borrowed from GW! 

Howdy peeps. So the last week has been pretty rough due to coming off the pain medication that I've been on for the last three months, and I'm still a bit dizzy and tend to fall over and walk into trees a lot. So I'm taking a week off from this space marine blogging lark and will be back when I feel able to pick up a paint brush without my toes dropping off.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with the soothing sounds of the Codex Approved Battle Hymn No. 34: "Die Choking On Your Own Blood, Alien Filth". *

*You'll  have to imagine it. 

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Paper or Plastic?

There's a wide range of wargames scenery available out there, a large majority of which is unpainted plastic or resin in a "future gothic"* or "generic fantasy" style. But sometimes that just don't cut it.

I'm pretty sure I used to live in this part of London.

Sometimes you need a dirty near-future setting where people call each other "choomba" in gritty voices, and claim that they never asked to be turned into totally awesome cyborg killing machines. Sometimes you don't have the room, time or storage space for gigantic, multi-part, flock covered terrain monstrostities.

This seems legit.

Time to grab those snips and get to papercrafting.

Papercraft terrain can be quick, effective, and relatively cheap - especially if you have access to a high quality color printer. Even if you don't, the cost to print out a few color A4 sheets is still cheaper than buying a plastic kit and paints. Plus, it can also be easier to store and transport.

Hapag-Lloyd survived surprisingly far into the future.

An increasing number of companies are offering papercraft terrain and prop download, the largest (and in my opinion, best) of which is World Works Games. As well as their pre-fabricated (and expensive) "TerraClips", they offer a huge range of pay-to-download sets in a variety of styles - modern, turn-of-the-century occult, fantasy/medieval, future etc.

I own two of these sets, the future-industrial Streets of Titan, and the what-it-says-on-the-tin Mars Station. Both include modular templates for buildings, floorplans, and a number of props such as freestanding walls and computer terminals, all fully colored and textured, with detailed assembly instructions.

Someone's gonna get shot.

While the textures and buildings are good, I find I get the most use out of the props and street furniture, as well as their vehicle range. They're easy to make, perfectly in scale, and immediately add color and detail to a battlefield, as well as adding much-needed cover (games of Infinity need a LOT of terrain).

Herbie, 2185.

Daves Games has a similar range, with more of an emphasis on traditional fantasy. Their sci-fi stuff is excellent, we make use of the Watch Station and Observation Tower, which are less modular than the World Works stuff but otherwise fit perfectly.

All along the watch station~

My favourite way to do quick papercraft terrain doesn't involve the pre-fab stuff. In fact, it's more like wallpapering than papercraft, and the steps are as follows;

1. Find a small cardboard box of roughly the right size for a small 28mm building.
2. Glue it shut. If needed, add some bits of cardboard or smaller boxes for internal support.
3. Measure the dimensions of its sides/top.
4. Create photoshop files of the correct dimensions for each side and the top. You don't need one for the bottom. Make sure you set the DPI to something print worthy (300 is always good, but you can turn it down to 72 if you don't mind a little pixelation)
5. Drag appropriate wall textures into the file(s). Add posters, graffiti and the like. I used textures from Left 4 Dead, as well as from the WorldWorks packs.
6. Flatten the files and paste them into a new A4-sized file. Add tabs to edges so they can be more easily glued to the box. Try to minimize the amount of printing you have to do by fitting as many wall sections onto a page as possible (while remaining inside the printable area)
7. Print out the textures, cut them out and glue them to the box.
8. Obscure any visible box bits with a marker (or some paint but we're trying to avoid that). Once the glue is dry, it's good to go!

Wall templates......and the finished product. (Sorry I can't give you the full res templates)

The same technique can be used to make quick silos out of cans, just measure the length and circumference, print out a rectangular section and glue it on (you many need to prepare the surface of the can by roughening it with some steel wool first).

We practically ARE the military.

I left the tops plain metal because the emphasis was on speed and convienience, but you could easily make top cone sections using the same process. Of course, if you're hardcore** like me, you'll also want to spruce up the game table itself.

Board yet?

This was the first ground section I made, an 11x16" sheet of 5mm black foamcore with Streets of Titan textures. To attach it to neighbouring boards, I cut 1-inch squares into the edges, then made 1x2" connector tabs. Unfortuately, I was not able to use spray-mount to glue down the texture layer, so the foamcore on some boards were distorted as the PVA dried, even though I made sure the glue layers were as thin as possible.

When everything is put together, it makes for an impressive and fun gaming table. While papercraft terrainpieces won't last as long as plastic and resin, they're sturdy enough for regular gaming, and trivial to replace. Definitely worth a look!

* Usually described as "Perfect for games of Schmarhammer Schmortythousand OH GOD GET THOSE LAWYERS AWAY FROM ME"
** Stupid

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Blingtastic

I rollin', they hatin'

While fixing up the bases of my troops I decided that First Sergeant Kalistus needed to be blinged up a bit more, in keeping with the Ultramarine's magpie-like love of shiny things.

Unfortunately I'd managed to well and truly screw up the remaining banner by pouring a bunch of superglue all down the front, giving it a really rugged texture in places. I fixed this by hiding the damage (after smoothing it as best I could with a knife and file) with an etched brass eagle piece, after seeing a great looking model using the same banner technique on Bolter and Chainsword.

I found working with etched brass on curved surfaces to be just as easy as promised on the daytime TV informercials starring Cliff Richard. It bent into the banner shape very smoothly and sat nice and flat when glued into place.

It also took paint very well.

His iron halo was simply incorporated into the banner, nothing earth shattering there.

I also gave him an unpainted brass piece on the front, and used an aquila piece to give his base some more oomph. I think the final look is pretty good, he certainly stands out and looks more blingalicious now. You can practically hear him jingle as he walks.

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Final Post About Rocks. Probably.

Okay, I'm pretty happy with the final look for the basic bases now. I drybrushed some Calthan Brown around the bottom of the rocks to tie them in with the base and they look pretty spesh. 

This is pretty much today's achievement as I got home in a bit of pain from my dodgy toes* so I loaded up on the pain meds, quickly snapped some pics and then collapsed on the couch. Ahh, trusty, trusty couch.

More pics and some ramblings behind the cut.

The biggest take home for me out of this wasn't that the brown on the rocks tied them into the brown on the base or made them look more rock-like. It was as a graphic designer I hadn't thought of applying some basic colour theory and observation skills to my model painting to achieve this effect. Luckily Gravitas who's been painting for a lot longer than I have, especially in dog years, was able to point out the bleeding obvious. 

I blame the pain medication. 

So yeah, I consider the basic look for my bases done and dusted now. I'm pretty happy with the result and I reckon the army will look a bit more pro once they're all brought up to the same standard. I'll update the tutorial tomorrow when I'm a bit more mobile. 

It's been emotional. 

* Without boring you with the details it involves gangrene and almost losing my two big toes. It's been a fun few months let me tell you.

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Rocky Road

Gravitas pointed out that the rocks I was using for basing needed to be painted up, and after an experiment I totally agree. So I've updated the tutorial post to reflect the additional steps and put some more pics in.

This afternoon was thus spent painting rocks to look like rocks so that my rocks could be rocks.

Rock on.

I'm also going to experiment with a bit of brown dry brushing around the base of the rocks to tie them in with the ground a bit more. CAN THIS GET ANY MORE EXCITING? I think not!

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