Category Archives: Terrain

Wargaming terrain & scenery posts.

Galleries, Inspiration, Science Fiction, Terrain

Gallery: Shipyard Photos for Inspiration

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Another revival from the old Brian’s Wargame Pages version of the site, and one that I should have brought forward ages ago! You can see the Esquimalt Drydock on Google Maps for a sense of scale that wasn’t available ten years ago when I first posted the photos. — Brian, 22 Feb 2011

In the summer of 2001 I was roommates with a guy who worked in the drydock here in town. He turned into a real asshole after being laid off, but while he was still working he gave me a tour of the yard. I brought my camera, and these pics should inspire people looking for new industrial modern or SF scenery projects!

One thing that would be very difficult to reproduce on the gaming table, except maybe in 6mm, would be the sheer scale of the place. I didn’t have my wide-angle lens with me, so I didn’t even try for some real area photos. The drydock itself is 1100 feet long; the two big cranes pictured below are several hundred feet tall. There were two fair-sized ships in the drydock when I was there, and they could have accomodated a third with no difficulty. And this isn’t even that big a drydock, by maritime engineering standards. The ones that can accomodate nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are even bigger…

Wargamers interested in industrial scenery or future-tech industrial landscapes (Necromunda style) should find plenty of inspiration here! Even if you can’t reproduce the scale, the clutter, details and fixtures should provide some ideas.

Click any image below for a (slightly) larger view. Keep in mind these are refugees from the Old Web, when 600px wide was a Big Image.

Science Fiction, Stargrunt, Terrain

Sci-fi Signage

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Note: These signs are Brian’s work from the old Warbard. One day they may be recreated in Inkscape and SVG — Corey

This zip file contains two very detailed, 1200dpi images in Adobe Photoshop PSD format, with lots of varied industrial & safety signs to decorate your industrial scenery and buildings.

Each image is roughly 3×3 inches. Print onto standard paper – or the lightest paper your printer can handle – and cut out and glue onto your scenery. A few of these on a nice piece of industrial machinery or factory wall really make a piece ‘pop’ – after all, real industrial sites tend to be plastered with signs, notices and warnings. (The actual images are MUCH more detailed than the little sample image here!)

As usual, these are free to download, print or modify for personal use.

Update, 8 Aug 2020: I’ve just confirmed that these old (from sometime in 2001!) PSD files can be opened just fine in the current version of GIMP. Not bad for files nearly twenty years old!

Pulp, Terrain

Mesa we will see you again?

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Climbing up the side of the mesaLarge terrain pieces are the lifeblood of any good gaming table and in a fit of boredom late one night at my old job (after my work was done for the day, honest), I set out to create such a piece.

Enter the mesa. Like many such projects, there was absolutely no prior design, just some scribblings on a pad before I set off to construct it. I knew I wanted a stone arch with a pathway up and over for characters to fight on, and I wanted a winding road up to a plateau, but everything else came as I hacked and sawed.

Continue reading Mesa we will see you again? →

Galleries, Pulp, Terrain

Old Signs for your Pulp Gaming

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Old Signs for Pulp Gaming
Old Signs for Pulp Gaming

Inspired by my brother’s Fake Pulp Adverts post, I thought I would share one of my projects. Over the past few weeks I have been working on a series of old signs for pulp-era 28mm gaming. Designed for any era from the 1900’s to the 1940’s and in any part of the English-speaking world, these signs are fairly versatile.

You can also download the PDF version (Old Signs for Pulp Gaming) if you want a vectorized copy for scaling. As usual, these are designed in the superlative Inkscape, an Open Source vector editing program. The fonts used largely come from DaFont, which has a large set of free and Open Source fonts for use.

Where did the idea come from? The initial inspiration was this image of a locksmith shop in Winnipeg by one of my Flickr contacts:

Old locksmith shop in Winnipeg. Picture by rpaterso
Old locksmith shop in Winnipeg. Picture by rpaterso

After that I started to dive into the Shorpy image archive and came up with some gold. Images such as the one below are great for mining for re-creation:

Old Corner Bookstore: 1900 on Shorpy
Old Corner Bookstore: 1900 on Shorpy

The files are currently licensed for non-commercial, personal use, largely because not all the fonts used allow commercial publication.

Galleries, Pulp, Terrain

Random Pulp Fake Adverts.

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I’ve posted these on various forums, but never collected them into one place before. For your amusement, a batch of fake 1930s ads – grab the full size versions off Flickr to reproduce for your personal use on the sides of buildings, on billboards, or whatever!
Continue reading Random Pulp Fake Adverts. →

Terrain, Tutorials

Repainting Commercial Stone Walls

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Pegasus produce a range of prepainted plastic 28mm wargaming scenery; all the stuff I’ve seen has been well cast but mostly badly painted. The stone wall sections are good value for money, though, with six 6″ sections for $10 at my Friendly Local Gaming Store.

I picked up a pack, took them home and while repainting them, took enough photos to assemble into a quick, hopefully inspirational, how-to.

Stone Wall Painting Tutorial
(Click the image to see the full-size version at Flickr)

Pulp, Terrain

Building A 28mm Tent

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There’s been previous versions of this tutorial posted on Lead Adventure and the Speakeasy, but I figured it’s worth reposting here.

After killing a dress shirt (black ink leaking does that to white cotton) I realized it would work nicely as material for a large safari/expedition tent. I used a CD as the base, with small blobs of milliput holding long toothpicks vertically as the poles — three on the front, three on the back. After the putty holding the poles was dry (and reinforced with a bit of superglue) I wrapped thick sewing thread around the tips of the poles, with a dab of superglue holding it in place and a bit more superglue stiffening the thread after it was secured.

Model Tent
(click through to Flickr for a full-size image)

The fabric was cut twice as tall as it needed to be, and draped over the thread at the tops of each wall, with a generous layer of white glue on the inside of each piece. The walls were folded over, squeezed together and held whilst drying by clothspegs.

Two layers of shirt-weight cotton plus white glue makes for very solid walls!

Loitering Within Tent
(click through to Flickr for a full-size image)

The removable roof was made by first draping a piece of plastic wrap over the tent walls, then carefully folding and pinning the piece of glue-soaked cotton into position. I folded the eves up and trimmed them after the first coat of glue was dry, and it fits well; between the glue and the folding it’s more than rigid enough to hold it’s shape.

There’s an extra piece of cotton to form the floor, and most of the interior furniture is made of offcuts of basswood and styrene, with putty for the blanket and pillow. The maps were found on the internet, shrunk to appropriate tiny sizes, and printed out. The red coffee mug in the centre of the large map is a scrap of round styrene.

I’ve still got a good sized piece of this shirt; eventually more of it will live again as smaller tents to accompany this one. Recycling — it doesn’t just involve a blue bin, you know. Not for wargamers, anyway!