Author: Brigadier Tony

Club Webmaster

Populating the Desert

At our recent Open Day I ran a 6mm sci-fi game using the Hammer’s Slammers:The Crucible rules. I created a lot of new desert terrain for the event and thought I’d write up some of the methods I used to create it. If you want to read about the game itself, there’s a report on the Hammer’s Slammers website with lots of photos of the game in action.

Sacred Sands
One major component of almost every item of terrain is the ground texture. I used a mixture of sand (bird cage sand from a pet shop), household emulsion paint and PVA glue in a ratio of roughly 3:2:1. I had a litre of paint mixed by my local B&Q to match Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone spray paint (I sprayed a small square of plastic card which they stuck in their scanner) for a very reasonable £18. I made up batches of the ground texture mix in an ice-cream tub so that it was always ready to go – and after building all of the terrain below I have about 2/3rds of the paint left.

Once dry, the ground was washed with a decent coat of Citadel sepia shade, then drybrushed with Citadel Tyrant Skull. This pretty simple method gave me a quick to apply, good looking and consistently repeatable ground texture.

I scoured eBay for suitable grass tufts in various sizes and shades of dry grass and found a good pair of sources in Boontown Metals and Serious-Play. These were used sparingly, the desert was supposed to be arid.

Happiness is the Road
The roads were made them from Busch model railway roads, which are a sort of very thin self-adhesive foam with markings printed on in white. The two-lane roads were 40mm wide, maybe a little overscale but some sci-fi tanks are pretty big so they look fine. As a base I used 3mm sheets of black Foamex – this is less likely to warp, as card or MDF is prone to. The edges were roughly bevelled with a knife and textured. I made some T junctions and crossroads by butting up sections of road surface and drawing in the road markings with a white acrylic paint pen.

2-4-6-8 Motorway

I had visions of making a big four-lane highway for a couple of reasons – firstly, it would be an impressive large terrain piece, which 6mm scenery can sometimes lack, and secondly it would cut down lines of fire and prevent heavy tanks dominating the battlefield and being able to fire from one side of the table to the other (heavy tank guns have no maximum range in Hammer’s Slammers). The motorway was mounted on 2″ thick insulation foam – I used normal white polystyrene, pink or blue foam would have been better but I already had the polystyrene to hand. This was cut into four 8″ wide, 18″ lengths with a hand saw – do this outside, it makes one heck of a mess! The edges were then bevelled at a 45° angle with a hot wire cutter resulting in a 4″ wide plateau. I ran two lengths of Busch roads down either side of this plateau, leaving a narrow central reservation. The edges and centre were textured as normal, and I put in a small piece of tiled plasticard in each section – the intention with this is so I could put in road signs at some point, although I haven’t done that yet.

One length was cut in half, and one end of each short length bevelled to match the sides. I scratchbuilt a simple bridge from plasticard and Plastruct girders, which was long enough so that one of my normal two-lane roads could pass underneath. The bridge was made so that it could be lifted out – this was for two reasons; firstly, I thought that attaching the bridge to the two end pieces would be too fragile, and secondly it gave me the option to add a destroyed version later.

I’ve learnt in the past that linear obstacles need more than one crossing point, otherwise you end up with a nasty bottleneck and the whole game ends up revolving around this one point. So I used the hot wire cutter to make two tunnels under the roadway – one larger one which is big enough to take a road, the other smaller one which is big enough for infantry on foot or small vehicles. For the larger one I used a piece of plastic cable trunking to make the concrete tunnel, the small one was made from plasticard. This left three crossing points so gives the attacking side more options. The sides of the embankment are rather steep, too much for heavy vehicles, but I allowed light vehicles (jeeps and infantry skimmers) and infantry on foot to climb them as if in bad going.

Houses in Motion

All of the buildings are from Brigade Models’ various desert-themed resin scenery ranges. I stuck them on more 3mm Foamex with Uhu glue and textured between them with the usual mixture. The buildings were sprayed with Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone, washed with Agrax Earthshade (GW) and drybrushed with Terminatus Stone (GW again). To add a splash of colour, doors and details were painted using GW Contrast Paints which give a decent effect in one coat.

One of my main sources of inspiration for the look of the buildings was the various Star Wars stories set on Tatooine. One standout feature of these is the fabric awnings across the entrances and frontages of many of them. I tried to replicate this using pieces of textured paper hand towels (some nasty thick industrial ones that don’t so much dry your hands as redistribute the water…) which I soaked in watered down PVA and strung across paperclip wire supports. Once dry I used Contrast Paints and drybrushing, often matching the awning colour to the other spot colours on the buildings.

I put some buildings on sections of road which allowed me to do some more interesting things such as a footbridge that passed over the road, or parking bays/side roads. The obelisk outside the tower below comes from Brigade’s 2mm range.

The objective of the game was to capture a series of radar stations that controlled the approach to the nearby starport. These all came from the Brigade range including several with ‘golf ball’ style radar enclosures and another tall tower with a radar on top. I added extra small buildings to the bases of some.

The Temple of Doom
I had a ruined ancient temple that had been cluttering up my office for ages – it was an aquarium ornament picked up from a pet shop. This was stuck on a small polystyrene hill with ramps and steps up to the summit. I repainted it in the same way as the other buildings. I discovered that the resin was rather fragile – it had an accident that lowered the heights of all the columns at one end…

Hanging on the Telephone
I scratchbuilt some simple telegraph poles using lengths of cocktail stick and short pieces of plastic strip for the crossbars superglued together, based on 20mm wooden discs from The Works. Ground texture, a single coat of brown contrast paint and a quick drybrush and they were done.

We Got the Power
In a box in my shed o’ stuff I unearthed three 3D printed power pylons, bought back in the days when they were still a sensible price on Shapeways. These were duly stuck on Foamex bases, sprayed with gray primer and drybrushed – again, job done and some welcome height added to the board.

Blood on the Track
A monorail ran across the town, made from Brigade Model’s elevated track and a selection of freight wagons. The pylons were based on 30mm wooden discs and the track was painted in the same way as the buildings. I initially painted the track silver and washed it but that made it too dull, so I went over the rail again with a silver paint pen to make it brighter.

And finally, a few shots of the game on the day. The Slammer’s Regiment (silver hovertanks) were mostly painted by Jon Roche, the Zaporoskiye Regiment in their superb green/white/brown urban camo’ were painted by Mark Johnson. The blue tracked vehicles are Guardforce O’Higgins, painted by me.

Return to Tatooine

The good weather appears to have slowed down member’s painting and modelling activities, so instead of a WIP Wednesday post, here’s Tony’s account of the Society’s game at Broadside.

At the recent Broadside show in Gillingham, the club resurrected an old game from many years ago – its first outing was way back in 1997. Originally named with the simple but descriptive title of ‘Tatooine Droid Hunt’, it was rebadged as ‘Utini!’ for this outing, which is a Jawa exclamation of shock or surprise.

The game centres around a Jawa sandcrawler during the opening scenes of Star Wars:A New Hope. Imperial stormtroopers are hunting for C3P0 and R2D2 amongst the droid waifs and strays which have been collected by the sandcrawler crew. Back in the day we didn’t take any photos of the game in action (it was before the days of camera phones) so this was a good chance to fill a gap in the club’s historical record.

The sandcrawler was scratchbuilt by Phil, the stormtroopers and Jawas are long-OOP figures from West End Games painted by Tony F and the droids are from the Galoob micro-machines range. Phil is going to write-up the sandcrawler build in more detail for the website, but for now here’s a gallery of photos from Broadside taken by Andy.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Jeremey has briefly been sidelined, so Tony F takes over the WIP Wednesday reins this week.

The club’s gone relatively quiet lately – obviously everyone’s efforts went into the jubilee ! However, there has still been some progress – Mark J has employed his magnifying glass for his 6mm Saxons (above), then broke out the electron microscope for some 2mm Antonine for Strength and Honour, which are based on perspex.

Warbases’ 2mm Roman Legion (Mark J)

Marcus meanwhile has been working on some 28mm Spy-fi and 15mm Sci-fi miniatures.

The initial stages of some 28mm Spy-fi from Marcus (who, like Bond, seems to have an eye for the ladies !).
15mm Sci-fi from Marcus – mostly Brigade Models but with the odd interloper.

Jeremey has been converting a Copplestone figure to act as his Stargrave crew’s first mate.

Jeremey has named this image ‘Avon’ – a nod to the Blake’s 7 character perhaps ?

And finally, something from me – these were missed from the last WIP Wednesday post (about which I’m not bitter at all…) but since I’m in charge this week, I’m putting them in. First, it’s more additions to my Middle Earth armies – half-a-dozen elf spearmen to accompany the cavalry I painted a few weeks ago.

Six Rivendell elf spearmen

Next is my take on Radagast the Brown – it’s not either of the official GW figures which are rather expensive, but a Conquest Miniatures hedge witch. I added a bird from an OOP Celtos figure which is positioned as if the wizard is talking to it, painted up as a falcon.

Talking to the birds…

And to round things off, another small piece of 6mm desert terrain, an oasis made from 3mm Foamex, a sand/paint/PVA texture, cheap palm trees from eBay and clear PVA for the water.

Water, water everywhere.

Bingo Master’s Breakout #2

As expected, progress has accelerated in the hobby bingo challenge in the past two months. At the end of February, five club members had claimed a total of 14 squares on their respective boards; we’re now up to 40 squares in total with two new participants.

Stephen has held onto top spot, having now claimed 12 of the 20 squares on the board already, including being the first to complete a line (in fact he has two), giving him 160 points. Jeremy has stalled, claiming just one square in the past few weeks, although it did help him become the only other person with a full line. Tony F has slipped past him into second place, although a scattergun approach means that while he claimed five squares, he has yet to finish a line. Andy and Mark K both got onto the table with their first points, and Eric and Marcus both added at least one square to their existing totals (Eric’s Chaos horsemen shown above gained him square B3).

Square A1 (play at least four different games) is the most popular and was claimed by almost everyone as we got through more club meetings. Next most common are D4, B3 and C3 which have all been claimed four times. There are still two completely unclaimed squares – D4 (write a book report) and C5 (paint any unit).

Hobby Bingo Leaderboard 2022

NameSquares (10 pts)Lines (20 pts)Total
Stephen197330
Tony F151170
Eric121140
Jeremey7190
Mark H5-50
Andy4-40
Tim4-40
Marcus3-30

You can see the full grid plus everyone’s individual progress in the Bingo Hall page at any time – this gets updated weekly, usually after WIP Wednesday.

April 9th, 1940

Alan K reports on his anniversary refight of the ‘battle’ of Hokkerup, Denmark, on April 9th, 1940.

Some time in March I suddenly realised that our first club meeting would be on the 9th of April, the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Denmark in 1940. Having “invested” in a platoon of 28mm Danes from Great Escape Games I really didn’t want to miss the opportunity and so I put on a game based around a skirmish that took place near Hokkerup on the Jutland peninsula.

The encounter we were commemorating, the ambush of a leading German reconnaissance unit, was captured in a 1946 painting by Anna Maria Mehrn which was, in part, the inspiration for choosing this particular scenario along with a scene (likely inspired by this engagement) from the Danish movie 9. april. We’re not sure about the copyright of the painting so we’re not including it, but here’s a link to it.

The Danish army went on full alert at 13:30 on the 8th of April and were held back ready to take up positions in the event of a German invasion. A thorough reconnaissance had been made regarding defensive positions but the Danish government had given strict instructions that units were not to be deployed near the border nor was digging or other fortification to be undertaken in order to avoid provoking the Germans. Despite this the Germans crossed the border at around twenty past four on the morning of the 9th.

Our intrepid 3rd bicycle platoon of the 2nd Company, 4th Cyclist Battalion supported by the autocannon and light machine gun sections of the 2nd platoon Afværgekompagniet (Anti-tank Company) , 2nd Battalion, Fodfolkspionerkommandoet set off from their barracks at just after four thirty and took up positions just after 5am. They hastily erected a roadblock before sighting the armoured cars leading the German column at half past five.

Lieutenant H.J. Højerslev had overall command with Second Lieutenant A. Olsen commanding the anti-tank sections. The team manning the 20mm auto cannon was led by F Jensen, accompanied by Gunner Nørholt and Loader Eliasen as immortalised in the painting.

The opposition is less well documented so I had them facing two SdKfz 222 armoured cars, a motorcycle section and two more sections mounted in SdKfz 251 half-tracks supported by a Panzer II.

I used the Nuts! second edition rules from Two Hour Wargames for the game.

The encounter saw the Danish auto cannon taking out both of the armoured cars and the advancing German infantry taking heavy fire. In the end the Danes were forced to withdraw but they had delayed the Germans significantly.

In the end the game lasted almost as long as the entire Danish resistance as, despite the valiant defence put up by the Danish armed forces against overwhelming odds, the Government surrendered at just after half past eight in the morning.

Are These The Droids You’re Looking For?

Over the last 12 months or so Phil and I have been assembling a variety of figures and vehicles – mostly repurposed toys – aimed at playing Star Wars games in 15mm (many of them have turned up in WIP Wednesday posts).

The Christmas meeting seemed like the ideal time to give them their debut, so I put together a simple scenario. I’d been unsure about what rules to use – I had a copy of the classic West End Games Star Wars miniatures rules as one option and another idea was to modify Games Workshop’s Middle Earth rules since they deal with heroes very effectively (using the magic rules to represent The Force). But I had an idea when I lined up some figures during painting – all of the figures were in squads of ten, which happens to be the same size as a crew in Stargrave. We’ve played a number of games since those were released, including during lockdowns when the club was unable to meet, so everyone was familiar with them which made them the ideal choice.

Figures
All of the figures in this game were from Highlander Studios in the US. For the five players we had two squads of Rebel troopers, two of Imperial stormtroopers and one of Jawas. There were also a few figures from the hero packs, including the droids and a couple of smugglers. The Jawas’ Ronto beast was a Galoob action fleet toy.

Buildings and Scenery
All of the buildings were put together by Phil from the Brigade Models 15mm Desert and Advanced Buildings ranges. The various walls and clutter around the buildings were also by Brigade. Some of the scatter terrain came from Debris of War. The desert mat came from Tiny Wargames.

Vehicles
The vehicles are sourced from a variety of toys and model kits. The Imperial stormtroopers flew in on a Galoob shuttle while the Rebels used a Revell U-Wing. The droids’ escape pod was also from Galoob, along with the skiff. The Falcon was another toy, it’s actually the wrong version (it’s from Solo and has the square radar) but I wasn’t too fussed about that, after all it looks like what it’s supposed to be, besides being much cheaper than any alternative I could find ! Luke’s landspeeder was a diecast model sourced from eBay, unfortunately I can’t remember the brand name. All of them came pre-painted, so were just given a wash of thinned black-brown acrylic mixed with Johnson’s floor polish, followed by a coat of Army Painter spray varnish – it’s amazing how this simple technique turns a toy into a scale model.

Scenario

Click for a larger version

The game is set at the start of the original Star Wars:A New Hope movie. R2-D2 and C-3PO have been ejected in an escape pod over Tatooine to keep them out of Imperial clutches, but here the story changes slightly. The Tantive IV has somehow evaded capture and has now despatched a shuttle full of Rebel troopers in a desperate bid to recover them. The Imperial Star Destroyer also spotted the pod, and sent down their own landing party to investigate. Both craft came down a short distance apart on the outskirts of Mos Eisley.

The game was intended for five players – two Rebels, two Imperials and myself playing the Jawas while also acting as a vaguely impartial umpire.

The players needed to search the buildings to find the droids – but there were other things in the buildings besides Artoo and Threepio. Each building had a random set of inhabitants, including Rebel sympathisers, Imperial loyalists and a pair of smugglers – plus the droids of course. Although I randomly rolled each time one of the buildings was searched, things were ‘fixed’ so that the droids would be in the last building to be searched.

The Rebels came out of the traps much more quickly than the stormtroopers – their lightly armoured figures moved slightly faster – and began searching the first buildings straightaway. They uncovered a pair of Imperial loyalists in the first building but made short work of them. However, nearby firing upset the Ronto which stampeded, and one Rebel squad ended up in a firefight with some Jawas (which inevitably ended badly for the locals).

The Imperials slow-but-steady approach saw them unearthing some Rebel sympathisers, whose appearance was brief as they disappeared under a hail of fire. The two forces were by now engaging each other, and the slightly better armour and longer-ranged weapons of the Stormtroopers began to be significant. They unearthed a pair of Sabacc-playing smugglers – Han and Chewie made a dash for the Falcon (obviously wishing to avoid any ‘Imperial entanglements’) but Han was immediately gunned down as they tried to cross the square. Chewie’s bowcaster dealt out some measure of revenge, but eventually the Wookie went down too.

By now the Rebels were searching the last building, and found the two droids. All they had to do was return them to their U-Wing and get off planet. However, they had taken more losses than the Imperials in getting to this point and numbers began to tell. One by one the Rebels were picked off by the steadily advancing line of Stormtroopers, until there was one Rebel trooper left. He got the droids virtually to the U-Wing’s ramp but fell at the final hurdle, allowing the Empire to snatch victory at the last.

“Upping The Ante” – A Hammers Slammers Battle Report

Peter dives into the si-fi universe of David Drake.

“…And so, Major Kovacs, PRA Intelligence has confirmed that the rebel fanatics have used their mineral wealth to hire what looks like the whole Ariete Division (some 15,000 men) to back their ludicrous independence claims and rescue their faltering defence. It seems likely that they will try to strike at some of the outlying abandoned mine-workings before heading to the coastal plains, in part to get some more income but also to give our troops a ‘bloody nose’ in the hope that it’ll make the govt sue for peace. It is your mission, therefore, to buy some time whilst we organise a major push – and to show those ‘Arietes’ that Paley is not such an easy proposition!”

Saturday 12th March saw another game set in the SF universe of ‘Hammers Slammers’. The scenario this time was taken from the ‘Paley Campaign’, with rebel forces aided later on by the Mercenary ‘Ariete’ Division to try and turn the civil war in their favour.

The game represented a reinforced probe as ‘Ariete’ began their drive in a pincer aimed at the mining settlement of Smiricky VII, defended by elements of the PRA 7th Armoured Regt. Only short-range recce was available, as the PRA had not inconsiderable AA assets… The forces used were as follows:

Ariete Division, ‘Trieste’ Armoured Regt

2x ‘veteran’ armoured detachments, each of 10x TUs (Tactical Units)

  • Tank platoon = 2x ‘Cougar’ heavy MBTs, +1x ‘King Cougar’ super-heavy MBT
  • Mech infantry platoon = 3x ‘Lynx’ heavy APCs (one with large-calibre ‘close-support’ HE cannon), carrying 1x TU of heavy infantry
  • 1x medium ‘Puma’ tank (with upgraded main weapon and light ATGM)

Commanders

  • Captain Christopher Sime
  • Lt ‘Juan Cornetto’ Treadaway

PRA 7th Cavalry Regiment – ‘The Iron Fist in the Iron Glove’

2x ‘trained’ detachments, each of 15x TUs

  • Tank platoon = 4x F6 ‘Hellcat’ medium MBTs
  • Mechanised infantry platoon = 4x light F20 ‘Tigercat’ APCs, each with 1x TU of assault infantry
  • Support platoon with 2x F4 ‘Wildcat’ (AAA version), and 1x new F35 ‘Sabrecat’ mounting a large ex-naval cone-bore weapon as enhanced anti-tank
  • All vehicles, whilst lighter than their opponents, had decent frontal armour and plenty of anti-tank light ATGMs….

1‘Company HQ’ F100 ‘Top-cat’ which allowed for the redistribution of ‘action points’ between the two sub-commands (the other ‘guard’ vehicles and bridgelayer were just for show – this time).

Neither side had any off-table artillery assets (the PRA has an abundance of multiple-launch semi-guided rocket artillery, like WW2 ‘Katyushas’ or MLRS)

The ‘company HQ’, whilst certainly handy, was also an excuse to put some more nice models out. All of the vehicles were (sort-of) scratch built from other ranges – more of which anon. Meanwhile, what happened….?

Unfortunately, the main PRA player (your erstwhile webmaster, as it happens…) had caught COVID just before the game, and so yours truly had to sub. As the task was a fairly static one, however, with a purely reactive defence, it was not too bad. So, after initial briefings and extremely useful reminders of the key rules by JT, the PRA were deployed in hasty defensive positions across a wide general arc covering the four main roads in to the site. The undoubted qualitative advantage of the Mercenary Arietes – command/control as well as equipment – was offset to an extent by the close terrain and the PRA being in defence.

Captain Sime got off to a good start with his tank platoon crashing through the woods astride the NE track, whilst the armoured infantry skirted to come in from the north. Certainly his three tanks had a good view of the defenders – it’s just that it also worked the other way, as he found to his cost when one of the new self-propelled AT guns sent a (very lucky) round crashing through the side of the lead giant ‘King Cougar’, which promptly exploded!

Whilst this unfortunate set-back had more effect on the player’s morale than overall result, it did lead to a more cautious probing and longer-range ‘softening-up’ of defending infantry bunkers, other PRA vehicles etc (especially the SP/AT!), which in the end was more to the Ariete’s advantage. The PRA main weapons only had a decent chance if they could get some side-armour shots, and so were hoping to ‘mix-it’ when the enemy got closer.

As the Ariete gradually eroded the PRA armour, a late probe by the Heavy APCs almost came to grief when they were caught in a close-range cross-fire from one of the multi-barrelled SP/AAA and hidden PRA tank-hunter infantry in the mine buildings. Sadly by this time the PRA was running short of command points due to earlier losses, so could not afford the luxury of using said CP to enhance shooting, aiming etc, and the ambush came to naught. Well, other than generating lots of – fortunately small calibre – return fire from Chris into the buildings, until ‘Ariete HQ’ tactfully reminded him that they were supposed to not blow the bloody doors off the valuable mine workings……

On the NE flank, again the Ariete got off to a less than sparkling start when Lt Treadaway used a fistful of his command points in an attempt to execute a massed ‘Follow me!’ option, which would have seen half his force roll together as one in an unstoppable steel tide….. However, seems the tide was out that day as John failed the key roll and no-one else followed his lead! Not only that, but a probe down the road by a scout vehicle with an APC as backup came to grief when, having blown up some armoured trucks near the mine workings, they were ‘set-upon’ by another crossfire from the PRA tanks and SPs, from which only the infantry inside the APC survived.

As with the other flank, however, gradually the Ariete worked their way forward through the wooded terrain, taking out first the truly terrifying F35 SP/AT, then each of the PRA heavy armour in turn. There were some close shaves during return fire, and the sky was full of – fortunately – light ATGMs, for a while. In the end, the Ariete was simply too powerful and commanders good for the PRA engaged, and as they loss level tipped over the key 50% level, the PRA decided that their delaying mission had been achieved. It must also be said that the Ariete had gained a new respect as well as insight into the mettle of their PRA opponents, and much thought would need to go in to the next encounters.

Part 2 of this article will outline more about the terrain and especially vehicle models, together with all the scratch-building mania which went into this project. Until then, it’s a case of a geeky ‘spot the bits’ competition. Oh, and very big plus points for anyone who IDs the dark brown roads…

My thanks to my fellow MWS members for hosting the game, and both Chris and John for playing.

LINKS:
Hammers Slammers official website: http://www.hammers-slammers.com/

Bingo Master’s Breakout #1

Welcome to the first bi-monthly roundup of the club’s Hobby Bingo challenge for 2022.

Club members have taken a while to get up and running – the challenge only rewards completed tasks so I’d imagine that there are a number of partially completed projects out there which will be claiming various squares soon. So far five members have claimed one or more squares.

Jeremey took an early lead, getting to 40 points very quickly with a number of Vikings that he rapidly painted for the first meeting of the year (claiming squares B1 and C1). However, Stephen has since overhauled him, reaching 50 with his Capt Selwyn Froggit character figure that claimed square B3. Tony F is mid-table, getting to 30 points with two squares in the last week – D3 for his A Billion Suns Krakens (above), and D1 for a recent blog post on his 6mm SF village. Marcus and Eric have also claimed their first squares.

Three members have claimed square D1 (write a blog post) – this is the most of any single square, and unsurprising since the three in question are regular blog contributors anyway. Squares A4 and B3 have been claimed twice each.

Hobby Bingo Leaderboard 2022

NameSquares (10 pts)Lines (20 pts)Total
Stephen197330
Tony F151170
Eric121140
Jeremey7190
Mark H5-50
Andy4-40
Tim4-40
Marcus3-30

You can see the full grid plus everyone’s individual progress in the Bingo Hall page at any time – this gets updated weekly, usually after WIP Wednesday.

A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

Tony F moves into real estate development.

Last year, as a bit of a lock-down#2 project, I decided to make a small desert village for 6mm sci-fi games. All of the components come from Brigade Models (quick disclaimer here – I’m one of the owners of said company) but the techniques would work with any other manufacturer’s buildings. The wall pieces were taken from the Town Walls range, while the buildings are mostly from the Desert Outlands set. The photos in this post are all thumbnails – click on them for larger versions.

The first decision to make was how large it was going to be; I decided that it would have to fit in a 4l Really Useful Box, which gave me a maximum of a 348x220mm footprint and a height limit of 68mm. I based it on a sheet of Foamex, which is great for terrain projects as it doesn’t warp like MDF or hardboard when you apply paint. This came in 300x200mm sheets, so one of those did the job nicely.

I spent a while laying out wall pieces until I had a configuration that I liked – I wanted to avoid a simple rectangular wall. I positioned a gateway and sanded down the base at that point so it sloped away, and added a pair of watchtower pieces to the walls. Once I was happy with this I glued them down with a clear glue (Uhu). I smeared some wall filler around the joins to fill in the odd gap, this has a similar texture to the wall pieces so blends in better. I then laid out the buildings – I wanted enough space around them to be able to position figures and vehicles, so didn’t cram them in too tightly. In the end there were nine altogether. Again I fixed them in place with clear glue.

Now that the main components were in place, I was able to texture the ground. Inside the walls I simply glued a layer of sand using PVA, with the odd small stone around the edges. Outside the walls I mixed up a batch of emulsion paint, sand and PVA and applied this with an old paintbrush. I mixed in some larger grades of sand and small stones (sold in homeware shops for basing candles) so that I achieved a much rougher texture than the inner area.

The next stage was to add lots of small details to the buildings. I used a few parts from the Brigade 2mm scenery range, there are bits of girder bridges, barns, support frames from an airship hangar, a Roman lighthouse (makes a good chimney) and an obelisk in the main square. There’s the odd roof-mounted water tank and aerial from the 15mm range. There’s also a radio antenna which is the broken off top of a much larger 3D (mis)printed mast. This part proved to be a nightmare as I kept knocking it off – in hindsight it would have been better to paint it separately and attached when everything else was finished, but I kept supergluing it back on.

I also fitted some supports for fabric canopies made from paperclips and wire staples – I drilled into the buildings, walls and base with a 1mm bit and superglued them in. I didn’t add the canopies themselves yet to make it easier to paint around them.

Everything was then sprayed in Halfords white primer, followed by a coat of Army Painter Skeleton Bone. The walls and buildings were them washed with GW Agrax Earthshade, while the ground was washed with Seraphim Sepia. This gave the buildings a distinctly different shade from the ground, even though they were painted with the same base colour. Walls, buildings are ground were all heavily drybrushed with bone or stone paints from the Citadel Dry range.

Other details were painted in – doors and windows, various roof accessories and so on, mostly using Citadel contrast paints which worked well over the pale bone base colour. With this done I was now able to make the canopies from small pieces of paper towel – the type of nasty, non-absorbent cheap towels that we used to get in school toilets! I soaked the pieces in dilute PVA and draped them across the supports, making sure that they drooped as naturally as possible in between. Once the glue dried they were pretty solid. I painted them in either dark red or dark brown using GW contrast paints.

The finished conurbation was christened Mos Arun; ‘Mos’ from the Star Wars Tatooine naming convention, and ‘Arun’ taken from the road name where I live. I’m planning a series of other small building bases to accompany it in the near future, which will also appear on this blog in due course. All being well, they should appear at the club’s Open Day later in the year.