My Reaper Bones Kickstarter Box Arrived!

When I got home this afternoon, there was a big box waiting on my doorstep, and sure enough, it was my Reaper Bones Kickstarer figures! I thought I'd take some photo of the opening 'ceremony', so those that haven't received their box yet, can anticipate a little better what will be arriving soon at their homes as well.

   In the box, on top, are an invoice and a color flyer advertising Reaper paint and giving a brief 4 step painting guide to Bones, then are some shipping protection air pillows and all the extra figures I ordered as separate add-ons.  Then beneath this is the Vampire box itself.

In the actual Vampire box are 6 large plastic bags, each containing dozens of the figures.  My painting queue is all set for the next decade. :-)

The Ubiquitous Bits-Box Junk-Pile Terrain Piece

It seems that sooner or later all scratch-builders and terrain-makers get around to making the fun and easy "Junk Pile" terrain piece. I recently undertook such a project myself, for the first time, this past week.

For the base of the junk pile I used an old CD, and for the "junk" I used some odd bits I had lying around, including the top of an old Star Wars AT-ST, and a tanker trailer from a dollar store farm set.

After I glued all the bits to the CD, and let the glue dry, I sprayed it with flat black primer. I then drybrushed the bits in the pile with various shades of metal, tans, and red-browns, to give it that rusty look.

Shown with 25mm Void 1.1 Junker (how appropriate!) figures.

Afterwards, I flocked the base with a sand mixture and added some clumps of dried grass.

I'm pleased with how it turned out, and as I said, it was quick and fun to do.    It makes a nice hour project that adds a nice bit of character to any Sci-Fi table set up.

25th Hussars Join North Polenburg Imagi-Nation Army

 This week I completed the latest (in a long time!) addition to my North Polenburg imagi-nation army: the first squadron of the 25th Hussars, also known as "The Tannenbaum Regment" for their distinctive fir tree emblazoned standard. The figures are 40mm homecasts, cast from a Meisterzinn semi-round mold.

The troops will be part of my North Polenburg army for the HAWKs "Not Quite the Seven Years War" (NQSYW) imagi-nation project. Hopefully they will see their first action later this month during a battle scheduled on the 29th of June.

Fallen Alien Trees Cholla Wood Jungle Terrain

   In cleaning part of the warroom a couple weeks ago I came across a bag of five cholla wood pieces that I had bought at a local discount store a while back.  I finally decided it was time to do something with them, and set about constructing some fallen alien tree terrain pieces.  Cholla wood is normally sold in either pet shops or craft/decorating shops. There is also a ton of reasonably priced lots of it on ebay.
(Shown with 25mm Void 1.1 Viridian figures.)

The construction of these pieces was relatively straight forward.   First I took some pliers and tried to rough up the ends of the segments a little, by snapping bits off, as they all looked too clean cut. Then I glued the segments onto left over CD's

  When the glue was dry, I build up some spackle along the length of the"logs" to make it look like they were resting on the ground. I also pushed into the spackle as it was drying some small rocks and some of the small pieces of cholla I had snapped off in roughing up the edges.

When the spackle had dried, I took the pieces and sprayed them with a dark brown spray paint. I did this when I was rushed, and if I was to do it again, I would take more care to hit the insides of the "logs" with the spray paint. As it was i ended up having to paint a lot of the wood's interiors by hand

After the spray coat dried, it was then just a matter of drybrushing successively lighter coats of browns and tans onto the surface.  And when the paint was dry I then glued on assorted plastic vegetation and then flocked the bases.   I'm very pleased with how these turned out. They will make a great addition to my Sci-Fi and VSF jungle terrain. I'm also considering getting some more cholla wood to make the same kind of terrain pieces, but in a more sandy and rocky desert setting. Like ancient fallen trees in an alien desert.