September Sun

September is a tricky month. The kids go back to school (or if you are reading this in the future and are currently enjoying Covid-22, maybe they don't) but you can't appreciate it because you are still paying for that time off work you had over the summer.

The days are cold in the morning but still bright and warm in the afternoon, and for about half the month you still have some daylight in the evenings to get things done. And then autumn sneaks in, the rain comes back and you are soon huddled around a fire by 6pm, waiting for the wolves to come and eat you.

When it comes to tackling projects in my hobby closest, I normally need to wait for the perfect storm of need, desire, enthusiasm, time, materials and space in order for that project to miraculously transition from "Something I will do one day" to "Holy cow it is done!". But in September, all of those things can be substituted for desperation.

And so here are some trees, designed to match the mat I will use for Fallout and Gamma Wolves. And some billboards, also for Fallout, though now that I have painted them I've decided I will put them on bases so they aren't really complete. Now that It Is Dark Again, they may not be completed until 2022!

The trees are Woodland Scenic armatures stuck to MDF bases covered in sanded polystyrene and Sculptamold. I messed that up by making too much, so while two of the tree bases are relatively smooth, the other two ended up being clumpy and difficult to work with because it was drying by the time I applied it. I will make it in smaller batches next time so hopefully I will avoid the same mistake.

Also shown is the base for one of my Gamma Wolves frames because I wanted to make sure the colours and style of the tree bases matched. The images I used on the billboards are by Charlie Wilcher and I found them at his ArtStation page here. 

Horses! and.. more terrain.

On the back of painting five (!!) whole miniatures last month, I managed to finish two more that have been sitting on my painting desk since January.. two horses for use in Frostgrave. Can I use two at once? Nope. But you can upgrade your horse and I wanted a model for the basic horse, as well as a model to represent the horse after a few upgrades.

And of course, who will ride this horse but a captain. Might as well put all my gold coins in one basket..

..and then since 7 models is more than I painted in the last two years, I figured it was time to get back to more terrain. First up, some 3D printed craters off ebay (because those GW moonscape craters still go for more money than I'm prepared to pay..)

They will be for one of my many planned Warzone tables, but also here is a clearer picture of them. In.. the sky? 

..and finally, my TTCombat Iron Labyrinth Ultima set. I love making MDF terrain but oh boy was this a chore to get through! Half of the set has been primed brown (and then I ran out of brown spray paint) and then sprayed green from above and I'm testing out weathering techniques on a few of the pieces to see what looks the best for the least amount of effort. 

Thank goodness for paint pens! 

.. and speaking of terrain

Another project finished. Some tiles for Walking Dead, Zona Alfa and Fallout. These TTCombat harbour tiles are 1x1 so six will be enough to create a harbour section on a 3x3 water mat. But in most cases I will probably only use two or three of these on an asphalt / rubble mat. The smaller, angled sections and the stairs are from TTComat's Carnevale line. There is a piece of 0.5mm plasticard on top of each tile section to hide the original texture that was there.

Mind you, you can make a good 'base' for a 2x2 table with these. This is slightly too big for Walking Dead but eh, bigger deployment zones. 

.. and a fountain. Sadly I only had Vallejo water effects on hand, so I expect to be disappointed by the water results in 2 to 3 days..

TTCombat Apartment Progress

So things are coming together for the modern day apartment stuff that arrived recently and I have almost finished the assembly. Because I also purchased a brick stencil from the Troll Trader I have broken the apartment down into three distinct stages to make it easier to paint:

1) The base plate with steps and railings. They will be sprayed at the same time as the sidewalk set.
2) The exterior shell (minus the windows) which should be easy enough to paint because I will be able to lay the stencil flat against the walls.
3) The detail pieces  (window and door frames plus some extra bits I might add to cover the joins) which will be painted separately and glued into place.

Finally the building will be weathered to unify the three separate elements.

The only thing I haven't decided on yet is how I will handle the interior; Two apartments per floor of four, lift or stairs?

New from The Troll Trader

So after a brief hiatus while my attention was focused on Warzone, the TTCombat stuff has been piling up in my office and the most recent arrivals represent a real step up in terms of presentation.

So here we have the Apartment Building A, an extra floor for said building, a sheet of sidewalk pieces (genius!), some roof top accessories and finally a newly rescaled truck since the previous iteration was a little on the big side. Oh, and they all have instructions!

Pictures of the sheets to follow shortly.

The Bank and Garbage Truck are now available

Clearly you must buy both for your Zombie or Superhero game and drive one through the front of the other!

Garbage Truck!

Bank!

More releases from TTCombat

While sorting through my Salute photos, I found a few old pictures of TTCombat terrain I haven't posted about yet and I will get those uploaded later today. Speaking of TTCombat their facebook page has some previews of upcoming releases:

 

 

Coming soon. Sweeeeeeeeeet!

Batman never had this much trouble..

No Mordheim last night since I have played everyone in the campaign now, but I did play a demo of the Batman miniatures game instead. League of Shadows vs Joker's crew and boy, do guns hurt! Keeping up my losing streak from Mordheim, I lost the Batman game too although I think I'm going to have to read up on the rules before I decide whether or not I like the game. Thus far, I enjoyed playing the game, but don't like the mechanics of it. Requiring line of sight at the start of activation in order to get into close combat is a bit harsh when a model with a ranged weapon can move to get line of shoot, shoot, and then move back out of LOS.

I also received my TTCombat vehicles and got them assembled in time to take them to the Batman demo game (although they weren't needed). Really nice kits and a bargain for the price! Two MDF frames (one half size) and two small bits of acylic if you buy the Police variant:

I totally forgot to take pictures of the Police van on the frame but the layout it exactly the same, albeit with four small pieces that you put on the roof of the cab to accommodate the acrylic lights. As usual, very easy to build but I do have a few tips:

The pieces on the frame marked R and F are the axles for the rear and front of the vehicle respectively. When assembling the wheels, note that there are 8 segments with holes in the middle (to attach to the axle) but they are in two different sizes. Make sure you separate the smaller ones from the larger ones before you start gluing, as a wheel is comprised of a smaller segment with hole in it, larger segment with hole in it, segment with hub cap, and smaller segment with the rim of the tyre on it.

I also suggest gluing the wheel segments onto the axle one piece at a time, instead of assembling the whole wheel and trying to slide it on, otherwise it might get stuck half way and if you are using superglue you are going to have to take corrective action with a knife to fix the problem.

..and just in case they DID leave you with a few pennies..

These three are already available on their eBay store:

Edit: Ooops, the items are no longer available.

TTCombat - Taking All Your Monies

So after my latest TTCombat order I was pretty sure I was done with MDF terrain simply because I've run out of space to store it all once built. And then those bar stewards at TTCombat come out with this:

Edit: The item is being revised and is currently not available.

Well, maybe I can find space for one of those. One.. or two..

Edit: ...and it's available to buy! For £35 too. Madness!

I did not survive the auction unscathed..

So another round of TTCombat auctions has been and gone. I picked up a second bridge and the church (so.. I guess if I ever run the Witchfire Trilogy again, I'm sorted!), another warehouse and two building sets.

I love the smell of MDF in the morning!

Giant Robots FTW!

Progress continues - slow as ever - on the Undead Legionnaires from project 2 although still nothing worth taking a picture of. Some Perry Miniatures European Mercenaries arrived today along with some Viking Hirdmen from Gripping Beast.. both were going to form the basis of a kitbashed Mordheim warband since I will be taking part in a campaign starting next week. I anticipate some hasty clipping and gluing over the next five days!

In other news, I've been spending the last few evenings helping Youngest Son assemble one of his birthday presents - a 1/100 MG Jesta from Bandai. He has been surprisingly adept at clipping and assembling (maybe he can make my Mordheim warband for me!) and we have made quite a lot of progress considering how many parts there are.

Finally, The Troll Trader have put up a bunch of their TTCombat terrain up for auction on eBay. This stuff is great value for money at the regular price, so the chance to get it even cheaper should not be passed up.

Experimenting with the Warehouse Extension Kit

So my TTCombat Warehouse / Extension Kit combo kit, plus another Warehouse Extension kit arrived today and I have to say that I am really happy with what you can do with it. By flipping the base board over you can have the extension span to the left or the right of the main warehouse building and you can even expand the warehouse in both directions at the same time (you saved all those bits to fill in the walkway holes, right?). You can also have warehouse + extension kit + warehouse although you would need half the parts from a second extension kit in order to do that.

In fact, if you are prepared to cut off the bottom tabs of your warehouse side walls, you can quite easily keep all your warehouse and expansion kits modular. Just sidle a few warehouse and extension kits together and cap off both ends with the warehouse side walls!

Damn. I think I'm going to need to order some more of these!

 

Warehouse + Extension + Extension. You'll need to flip the main (textured) side of the warehouse's walkway face down otherwise the railings will be on the wrong side.

 

Extension + Warehouse + Extension. I would suggest not installing the warehouse's walkway at all otherwise it will restrict access to the right (or left) side extension.

All I need now is a Trinity miniature..

MDF: Good! Ronin: Awesome! Painting Progress: Some!

So I managed to make it to PAW on the weekend where I played a game of Wild West Exodus (neat system and minis but luckily for my wallet, there isn't a faction I am really drawn to) and Ronin (2 x 2 board? Handful of miniatures? Simple d6 system? Sold!). I picked up a new Bauhaus starter to supplement - or replace - the Bauhaus minis I got from the Warzone Kickstarter plus a few bits and pieces from Ainsty. Riding a brief wave of motivation, I spent a few hours on Sunday and Tuesday night working on the Undead Legionnaires from Project 2 and most of the base colours are down but I'm still finding it hard going and things are looking too messy to really bother with pictures.. hopefully I will be able to work on them tonight and tidy them up a bit.

Finally the Troll Trader peeps took my suggestion on board about the Warehouse extension kit and it is already selling on their eBay store. Despite the fact that I've just about run out of room, I'll pick up the warehouse + extension, plus another extension, in anticipation of receiving my Batman rulebook in a few weeks time.

Old Town Scenics - Warehouse

When I first saw this building on eBay, I had my doubts about how big it could really be because clearly the Troll Trader have an A4-sized cutter (although if they want to sell theirs and upgrade to an A3 one.. I am so sold on mdf terrain that I am totally in the market for a machine now!). Fortunately, this building really does feel like a (small) warehouse once complete and although it comes on 7 sheets, that is simply a reflection of the size of each component rather than the complexity so you are only looking at 35 minutes or so to cut out, sand and glue everything together. Price wise, it comes in at around £16 and when you compare it with their awesome looking Pub Bar Hotel in the Old Town Scenics range, it becomes clear that the pricing is simply an indication of the number of the number of sheets in the set rather than the complexity or usefulness of the build.. which is a pretty fair way of doing things.

As suggested above, this is a nice simple build and it's only the weird crates with the two bands around them that are at all fiddly to build. There is one 'ooops' moment when attaching the side walls to the floor piece, however.. the cuts for the holes are not flipped (because the wall is facing the other way) so the tabs don't line up. It's an easy fix though, you just need to snip off the tab.

This one issue aside, it's really hard not to see the potential of this warehouse. Sure, it isn't quite tall enough to warrant walkways and support beams up in the roof but it would be right at home on a table used for the Batman miniatures game, I reckon. I just hope the Troll Trader release an expansion kit for this set. 1 x floor panel, 1 x front and back wall and 2 (slightly shorter) roof sections and you could make this thing two, three or four buildings wide. It would look ace! One tip though - sand down the backs of the doors where they slot into the floor piece and upper rail - it's a bit of a tight fit othewise and it won't be easy to slide the doors open and closed once they are painted. In fact, I would probably leave the doors and upper rail off until after painting it complete.

The miniature used for scale is the Rail Golem from Malifaux on a 50mm base (I believe). So although the building itself is not very fancy (compared to the Townhouse A or the as-yet unbuilt Tower), the footprint is great and the potential is excellent. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to use this in a modern day game, either, and I think it will probably be the first of the TTCombat buildings I will actually paint. It may not be as swish as the two warehouse offerings from Sarissa Precision (which I have seen but sadly, don't own) but for this price it's pretty damned hard to beat.

Old Town Scenics - Waylay Yukitan Blade Store

Inevitably, after watching me put together a few of these buildings, Younger Son soon wanted to have a building of his own to make. After several weeks of reassurance that it will arrive 'soon' (it took Royal Mail 22 days to deliver my next parcel from the Troll Trader!) he was very impatient, which is why there are no photos of the three sheets - he was literally tearing the pieces off the frame before I could even fetch the sandpaper and glue, let alone dig out my phone!

 

Since we were also watching a movie at the time, the build time was about 3 hours but I think for most people, you are looking at 25 minutes or so. A few tips from this build:

1) Consider gluing some additional detail to the roof - or - sanding the four tabs that attach it to the left and right walls for a looser fit. It's hard to get any purchase on it when you want to lift the roof off to get inside and it's a tight fit, too.. so much so that even if you hook your finger inside the roof hatch, you will still have some trouble getting the roof off unless you pick the whole building up. 

2) We totally built the shelves the wrong way. That doesn't really matter, of course, but to build them the way Troll Trader have done, ensure that the two small shelves have the 3 hole shelf at the top, and the slot shelf on the bottom. Obviously they are designed to accept the two different types of swords but I didn't figure that out until we had finished.
3) Be careful when punching / cutting out the front of the floor tile - unless you don't mind having a gap, there is a very small piece of mdf that you will want to keep that will fit between the base of the left hand pillar and the left side of the door frame. You can see this pretty well in the first picture.

All in all, a fun little building although I think I've been spoiled by the two floor structures I've been assembling recently because it seems pretty small, especially with that flat roof. Still, you need somewhere to snipe from, or to hide from Graboids, right?

December hobbying.. in January. Old Town Scenics - Townhouse B

There wasn't an awful lot of hobby time over the Christmas period and the OhGodOhGodOhGodIHaveSoManyEmails week upon my return to work, but there was at least some time to put together more of the excellent Troll Trader TTCombat buildings, starting with the smaller of the two townhouses, Townhouse B.

  

As with their previous house sets, there isn't much need for a step by step assembly and this time around, the stairs are actually long enough to reach the ground floor (7 steps instead of 6 with Townhouse A). Yay! Unfortunately, the stairs still 'slot on' to the upper floor. Hopefully with later sets (or even when their stock of the current sets run dry) the people at Troll Trader will fix some of the 'bugs' including the arrangement of the stairs.

 

Sorry about the varying photo quality and lighting - I don't really have a booth set up so it's usually just a case of snapping the pictures with my smartphone wherever I am at the time.

As with the other houses I have made so far, I would recommend gluing the ridge to only one half of the roof - this will make it easier to lift off the roof (albeit in two pieces) for gaming. Also, I have continued to glue the chairs together the wrong way (aka my way) as I prefer the taller, narrower look to the way they are in the official photos. So another fun 40 minute build and for the price, a great addition to the tabletop.

Old Town Scenics - Townhouse A

So, another day, another Townhouse from TTCombat. Yet again they have produced a really nice kit with a larger footprint than the previous building and a second floor, too! 5 sheets, about 50 minutes build time and only two "Huh?" moments!

A few tips for this build:

1) I would suggest building one floor at a time.
2) Be aware that there are differences between the sheets and the images on the eBay auction. Notably, the window frames are a little different and the large window and frame on the front are quite different. Also, note the side wall on the ground floor that only has one window. The window is towards the back on the eBay picture, but towards the front on the sheet.
3) Since I kept knocking off the window frames during the previous build, I cut them all out first this time and as each wall piece was cut from the MDF sheet, I glued the frames on immediately. That way they were all dry by the time everything else was cut out and the building was ready for assembly.

The first "Huh" moment occurred while I was building the upper floor - I couldn't figure out where the triangular roof pieces were supposed to go. But then I realised the front and back outer walls didn't have any tabs on them to take the roof so I figured they should be glued to the inside of the front and back walls.

The second "Huh" moment occurred while I was about to call it done - I noticed that the stairs don't actually reach the ground floor..they are about 2 steps shy. More on that later.

All things considered, this is another great building for Malifaux or WWE and - as is the theme with the TTCombat range - very reasonably priced at £12. While I would have once again liked to have seen some detail on the ground floor / upper floor, such as some wooden planks, my only real complaint here is the stairs. While this can be remedied quite easily by cutting up some of the MDF left on the frame to create a raised platform at the bottom of the stairs.. or by TTCombat extending the length of the stairs.. the real concern is the way it is attached to the upper floor. 

Because it is slotted in and not in anyway attached to the ground floor, every time you lift off the upper floor you are taking the stairs with it and thus you risking moving / knocking over models that are inside the ground floor and any models unfortunate enough to be on the stairs are probably going to fall off. Even if you remove the upper floor successfully, you will have to slide off the stairs before you can set the upper portion of the building down somewhere and they might be easier said than done depending on how many layers of paint you have applied to the MDF. Instead, I think it might be better if the stairs are glued to the ground floor and the top of the stairs simply butt up against the upper floor without slotting in. 

Tomorrow I will hopefully tackle Townhouse B, then it is on to the tower! Next week I'll probably return to eBay and pick up a bunch of the new buildings that just popped up today. Dare I say it, but they look even better than the ones I have built so far!