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.
(Click the image to see the full-size version at Flickr)
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.
(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!
(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!
I’ve created a number of simple colour gradient backgrounds that I’ve printed out for use in miniature photography, and recently decided to bundle the most useful of them up in a PDF and make it available.
Eight smooth gradient backgrounds included; on North American 8.5×11 paper by default, but they’re all vector-based so they should scale to whatever size paper you can print them on.
The list:
These backdrops MAY be used for commercial uses (photographs for a webstore or similar) but the file & printed backdrops MAY NOT be sold on any medium.
Enjoy – let me know how you’re using these, and if you have any suggestions for more colours or other expansions on this idea.
More old photos resurrected – this time a few from a Fantasy Rules! 2nd Edition game we played years ago. Human medieval knights & footmen vs orcs and goblins with necromancer help. I’m pretty sure this was the first outing of Tony’s undead; years later he’s finally got enough to field an all-undead army without help from my figure collection.
Continue reading Photos from a Fantasy Rules! Battle
15mm fantasy figures, based for Hordes of The Things (HOTT) or Fantasy Rules! (FR!). Many of the figures are long-out-of-production Ral Partha 15mm (from when they held the AD&D license, before WotC bought AD&D from TSR and started producing plastic crap); the rest are a mix of Reaper & Ral Partha 25mm monsters and Chariot 15mm (now produced by Magister Militum/Navigator.
Continue reading Fantasy Gallery #1
PIZZA BOX SCENERY: This 25mm science fiction scenery was inspired by a 25mm pirate tavern from a now-vanished webpage. That one was designed for a tavern-brawl skirmish; mine is designed for SF skirmishing on space stations or other large indoor facilities. The two pizza boxes still fold up for travel & storage, and the various walls, columns & partitions were carefully laid out so they’d mesh together when the box was closed.
The interior walls are mostly matte board, which is strong and thin – and it was on sale very cheap at a local art supply store! The hazard striping, signs & other decorative bits were printed off on my colour inkjet, and created in Photoshop. Some of them are available free on the Sci-Fi Signage post.
Continue reading Pizza Box 25mm Skirmish Scenery
Photos from September 2003 of GZG 25mm & 15mm United Nations Space Command troopers (in Martian Legion camo) and Alien-movie aliens from FreiKorp.
Continue reading SG2 Gallery #4 – UNSC & Aliens
These were the first 25mm figures I ever painted, sometime in the first half of 2002; I’ve still got them but haven’t used them in years. GZG never have published their “Full Metal Anorak” skirmish rules, either…
As always, click for full/larger view, but keep in mind that Old Web images ain’t that big! (if I ever find the original scan files, I’ll see about modern large images!)
Continue reading SG2 Gallery #3 – 25mm SF
More 15mm stuff from 1999-2000. Click for full/larger view.
Continue reading SG2 Gallery #2
More old photos, from 1999-2000. As always, click for full/larger views. Although these are from the Old Days of the web, so they’re not huge images even “Full Size”…
Continue reading SG2 Gallery #1