Terrain is everything - 2nd man-made hill gets paint

Red Oxide primer, seriously, if you haven't got Red Oxide Primer in your life you're doing it all wrong. For whatever building you are doing, once you've done a black undercoat to seal any possible foam [I've mentioned my 'special mix' many times] adding this colour allows so much variation to what will come after. Most buildings benefit from tonal variation, with all that flat surface in play it's a great way to add more detail without much effort and as the mand said - 'more detail is more detail'. The next plasma generator post will show better how Red Oxide is such a perfect base for your painting, so look forward to that

Following, the Red Oxide next up was some more of my Early Learning Centre black poster paint. Trying to get it in all the grating crevices and the modular socket door so it looks like it's been scuffed as it slides open. Of course there's plenty more coats of paint to go on yet but as I've said before I'd be more than happy to leave this as is for your average gaming club terrain. As it is I will be drybrushing the grating with silver, painting the socket door and drybrushing more Vermillion on the edges

I may also look to paint the cable ties a different colour. it might be a nice feature to draw attention to the detail, or if the paints too thick it might fill up the detail I was so keen to add. I should know after the Vermillion has been added. Of course this looks really cool with the Plasma Generator in place. I think a second red one may well be something I'd like to explore [here's where I hear a little voice shouting "why?"] with some added detail, maybe when I've finished my To Do List perhaps, treat myself.

I really should work on the STC for the hill as well...

Terrain is everything - Dawn of War Plasma Generator part 5.

Typically I've started with a red oxide undercoat. Sure I've decided not to make another red building but it'll make a perfect base for stippling yellow on top of to get that weathered look I'm after.

Early Learning Centre poster paint was used to shade certain areas. This stuff is still soluble when dry so can be a useful technique for adding variation to colours that go on top. It also gives a nice matt, 'soot-like' finish, which is also handy for weathering. As you can see some of the card gaps are still visible but part of me like the look of separate pieces of metal, not one solid cast. I think this would be better justified with some tiny rivets, but as I don't have any I can live with it.

Here's a top view which, to be honest, isn't pretty. The masking tape on the edges isn't great, but then capping them would have been really fiddly too. Ideally a + shaped piece across the top would neaten this all up but I'm still struggling with taking it apart and rebuilding it repeatedly for painting and photographing I can't be bothered with another piece to paint and attach once the thing is complete.

You can clearly see my issue with the sloping lines of the generators profile in the following pic. The extra detail on the vents draws the eye along the same path. But I don't mind it so much now, again I can live with it's imperfections.

Terrain is everything - modular plug gets painted

How much fun was this? There's nothing like doing that Ferron Proxima red planet basing. For something that was so painful to do and a permanent issue I love doing this now. Sure I've come across a few other red-planet bases that look really cool and there's still the issue that my Vermillion art paint is in fact a closer match to the 'Battlefield Mars' as I originally titled it but it makes me smile every time I finish one of these.

Of note is my use of Iyanden Darksun for the yellow. My son bought me it, he'd originally wanted to get me a Space Marine Librarian but I bargained him down, as I don't need it and they are expensive. Also, I tried to get a standard acrylic craft paint to reduce my reliance on Bronzed Flesh to lighten the Vermillion for highlights. The best I could find was a 'pumpkin' colour, which is indeed a light orange. Still, mix in some brown and we were nearly there.

Lastly a close-up of the Stargate-esque iris hatch. Successive coats of Stonewall Grey but thinned to allow some of the Red Oxisde undercoat to show through. This gives a nice weathered effect. Some slight highlights on the chevrons with the yellow stippled on to give that mottled weathered effect, love it. Now what else can i build to go in the socket?

Forgeworld - Nearly Thunderwolves

It seems Forgeworld may have just solved the Thunderwolf Cavalry dilema so many are struggling with, perhaps. Skaven Wolf Rats for Fantasy Battle. Presumably you get the 5 for £28 and you'd still need to do some work to make them less rodent and more canine/lupine but they look like a good start and even the branding look like Space Wolf runes, what do you think?

Terrain is everything - 2nd man-made hill

Having said I can't recall if this was the Athena Plateau or the Mercury Plateau, There to accompany the Vulcan Plateau I think I resolved in my head that this is in fact the Mercury Plateau. It's a uniform square [not taking into account the staircase] which better reflected the planet Mercury, whereas the Athena Plateau is/will be a long thin hill better reflecting the bow Athena used in her hunting. Look, have you seen the misplaced symbolism in star constellations? These are as good a reasons as any! 

Anyway below is the black undercoated hill with the modular socket capped off with a door and the steps faced with another new buidling material

Cable ties! Sure they're 4.8mm which means they don't quite cover the 5mm foam card but the little step adds detail and 'more detail is more detail', not to mention the many little grooves from the tie grip. I'm sure there's plenty more ways they can be used, even en masse as a whole wall texture and as I got a bag of 50 for £1 they're cheap as chips.

Here's the newly undercoated Plasma generator in plugged into the socket. More on that soon.

 And a marine in place for scale.

Terrain is everything - Dawn of War Plasma Generator part 4.

I think things are going to get a little messy/confused over the next few posts, so please bare with me. With the Plasma Generator, modular plug and second man-made hill progressing there will be a bit of overlap, separation and repetition in the pics. It's all good though.

Below we've finally got a bit of undercoat on the Plasma Generator. I tried to keep it thinner than usual to see if the folder card texture would show through, we'll see in time when the first bit of real colour goes on.

As you can see the plasma tubes seem a little pale, this may be the array of new electricity sucking Halogen bulbs we have in the kitchen. Sure the pics are not as murky as on my phone but we seem to have lost the brightness of the real Ferron Proxima which I think explains the slightly insipid gel colour.

And here we have the generator mounted in the man-made hill modular socket. For those who plan to make this baby with LEDs this could be your solution. Plenty of room to hide gubbins in this little base.

Now I can't recall if this was the Athena Plateau or the Mercury Plateau, There was very specific fluff why I chose to name the two other man-made hills that will accompany the Vulcan Plateau this way. Typically I didn't write down the blog post explaining these reasons at the time and I've since forgot the reasoning but there'll be an update on the man-made hill soon.

Last up the two tier foamcard has been covered. The template will be vague here. As you can see the diagonal cuts for the upright pieces had to be widened at the ends to accommodate the reinforcement on the uprights. This was quite difficult to measure for the trapezium, and it turned out they were all different sizes. So I'll put in a max size trapezoid and you'll just have to trim it down. I'd also used the jewels from some small jewel brads in the corners, they were just too big though and I cut them off, with some PVA residue left in place but that could me some metal corrosion. I replaced them with smaller rivets from card 'chads' made with my late Grandfather's ancient hole punch, it's still so handy.

More filler, less killer in my next update me-thinks

Terrain is everything - Heads-up

The other day I brought the joys of a site called Artificial Owl to your collective consciousnesses and I hope you got some fantastic inspiration from those pictures. Maybe you also managed to guess one of my new projects, that 'To Do List' keeps getting bigger instead of smaller! I keep asking myself why I'm adding another piece of terrain to that list when I have plenty already and we're not even playing with it. Not to mention unfinished terrain quite a few people would like to see done, Cathedral Tower anyone? But I think I answered the big question in the last post:

"I could see something unique and inspired, a cool looking terrain piece, a viable gaming structure, a creative challenge and something that's core material would be relatively cheap"

and if you recall the thing I enjoy most about 'the hobby' is the terrain building so I guess it's moot point given the focus of my passion. Anyway, were my subtle clues to my project too subtle or where they hidden sneakily in plain sight?

I give you President Ferdinand Marcos:

Can you see why I got so excited? It's a ruined building, but not a building. Now, once you add in a polystyrene head [£6.98 including postage from ebay] you have the start of a really cool terrain piece. So, gues what my brother got me for Christmas [after I told him to].

Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't an easy task and there's no STC I can prepare for it [or can I?]. The head is solid Polystyrene so I'm unsure about how to go about carving it inside. I've thought about using it to attempt some paper-mache effect but then how do I take the 'cladding off' and fill in the internal structure? There's a lot to resolve but this baby is 14" tall and once embedded into a hillside will make a really cool piece of terrain with at least three storeys to it.The other big question is do I go Ferron Rockcrete [which I don't want to do], sandstone, so it looks cool jutting out of a Ferron hillside, or alternatively go Statue of Liberty on it and Copper plate the thing in wonderfully weathered panels, hmm...

Although you could always go the complete line of sight blocker and go all Prometheus on it? It seems big heads are 'on trend'.

It's another long-term project so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure I'll have a moment of intense activity only for it to cool off and be left half-finished. Meanhwhile, the wife has noticed I have more terrain than we can ever field, not that we've played a game in a good while and she's beginning to question why? She mentioned selling stuff, to which I pointed out the issues with that and my reluctance to part with anything I've actually 'created'