Very Moist

It’s been terrible weather for miniatures the last week or so. Cold and damp weather makes spray primer a disaster and Dullcote spray even worse. Painting in the humidity is probably not terrible per se, but my painting is sometime iffy enough that I haven’t really wanted to push it. It’s okay weather for model construction though, so I’ve been building and doing a little tiny bit of conversion on some Imperial Guard soldiers. I’m going to be making a generic squad of ten guys for Flying Lead and I’ll probably just be painting them military green or something. Nothing fancy. However, I do plan on building the rest of the ten guys in the box as more fodder for my yet-as-unnamed mercenary force, so they’ll have the same blue and bone color scheme as the other mercs I’ve done so far and I’ll be replacing their heads with something cool from the folks at Pig Iron Productions. I used heads from their line for my merc Space Marine Scouts, and they’re really a lot of fun to work with and make figures look great. And, PIP makes some pretty cool minis themselves, so if you like sci-fi soldiers, you should really check them out.

However, I won’t be starting on those guys for awhile, as my new big project should be arriving by the end of the week, and then I’ll have a lot of work to get done. A lot.

Sunday’s Results

This is just a quick note about the results of my productive Sunday afternoon. I set up the trusty card table and newspapers and uncorked a new can of Testor’s Dullcote for the first sealant day of the summer. I end up doing a lot of priming during the summer and fall (when the weather is good for it) and then do a lot of painting of those primed figures during the winter. Then, when spring rolls around, it’s time to seal the winter’s miniatures.

A Random Grouping

I took a quick shot of these guys after the Dullcote had dried. In the back, you can see the finished Steam Golem figure from my oxidized metal test. To the left is a grouping of Space Marine scouts (with alternate heads from Pig Iron Productions) and to the right is a squad of Space Marines. These “blue & bone” figures are all part of my yet-as-unnamed mercenary unit that I’m building for skirmish games like Flying Lead. And in the foreground are two Tau Fire Warriors that I’ll be talking about soon.

I’ll be breaking out my fancier photo equipment for miniatures photography soon so I can talk more about these different sets in depth, but I thought this would be a good teaser for now.

My Modular Urban Terrain Project

I got an idea last year about making some modular urban terrain to play with. I thought about it for a long time and made a bunch of sketches and notes. Eventually, these turned into some computer drawings and a list of components. One of the first things I needed was a four foot square mat to represent the streets. I looked around online and settled on a mat from The Terrain Guy made of canvas, textured and covered in rubber. This is a great handmade mat for a good value, in my opinion. This will be the streets of my urban board.

I decided that MDF would make up the ‘blocks’ of my urban landscape. Once I decided on all of the sizes and shapes in my configuration, I had to get some MDF and a friend with a table saw.

A simple grid map

After a lot of sawing, I had a stack of squares and rectangles and whatnot, and then it was time for the sanding and the dremeling, which is probably not a real word. The general idea was to round the edges of the pieces and use them as curbs and sidewalks.

A simple example layout with a few buildings for scale

This will allow for a board with many different configurations. Between the different ‘blocks’ and the ability to put different buildings and other terrain pieces on those blocks, I should have hundreds of variations for my gaming table.

However, I now need to texture and paint all of the ‘block’ pieces. I’ll be using sand and kitty litter with wood glue to do the texturing, and then I’ll be painting the pieces with black latex paint. After that dries, I’ll be spraying them grey and doing a little drybrushing.

We seem to be under attack

So the plan is to document the further work on the modular urban project. I doubt I’ll be able to get much done this weekend, as it is currently very humid around here. Hopefully that’ll be cleared up by the end of the weekend so I can do a little painting outside on Sunday morning. I’ll keep you informed here.