Latest Creations

Here's some pics of the results of my labors in the world of terrain building.

Greek Pantheon

I was able to complete my Greek Pantheon. I built it very quick with the intention for use in 28MM scale gaming for MEST Tactics.

This is my Greek temple. It is modeled after the Greek Pantheon and I think it will be very useful in my Mythos and VSF settings. In the back of the building you can see the new walls that I recently crafted.

Here's a photo of the original Pantheon.

Side view of the Pantheon. I painted the dome gold and the bases of the columns as well. It made the entire thing just "pop" from its old drab brown looks.

A back corner. Figures for scale. Unfortunately, I built this originally for my daughter's school project on Greek mythology and so I didn't craft it with removable walls. The interior would basically be alcoves with statues of the Greek gods upon pedestals.

A final close-up look of the Pantheon for showing the scale.

New Gladiators

I also acquired some new 1:18 scale (90MM) figures and painted them up after basing them. These go with my main MEST Tactics demo set for the Fantasy Gladiator genre.

This is "Azazel"; he's a bit bigger than my other centaur "Chiron". I'll have another blog post discussing my updated character cards for the Fantasy Gladiator builds soon. Azazel is available from Safari Ltd.

This is "Iago". He's a fairly large griffin also available from Safari Ltd. Originally the plumage on this figurine was shiny gold and so I dry-brushed it with brown and then tan to keep it more subtle and per se realistic.

I added a metal screw to the chest of Iago. This allows me to mount him upon a magnet with a stand. Here's Iago and Azazel together for scale.

Here's Iago's stand. In the latest MEST 2.x build I added Flight as a trait. It seems to work fine in solo-play but I'll find out soon when I play-test with my nephew.

This big guy is Baal; "lord" of the desert. Like Iago, I dry-brushed the figurine to make it look more realistic because the original design is as a "swamp dragon" from Safari Ltd.

I need a new camera; my macro pics are terrible. Anyhow, this is Baal and Azazel near each other.

For scale, here is a 28MM model next to Baal which is 90MM. I fully intend to use Baal in my 28MM gaming as well!

New Objective Markers

These five objective markers [OMs] I created for the 90MM Fantasy Gladiator set, but I made them generic enough for use in my 28MM gaming.

Purple rocks, gears, bronze bullions, bundle of sticks, some weird metallic boxes. I've got about three more OMs to create and then I'll have enough for a good race-and-capture gaming session.

And here's the 28MM figure at the center of it all.

Some Terrain

NOTE: I recently revisited MEST Fantasy Gladiator with my nephew. He is definitely getting better at the tactics. Just a short 4-Turn battle between myself, him, and my brother. We each received 4 characters.

Overview

The Fantasy Gladiator genre set that I have is 1:18 scale where in each figurine is 90MM tall or about 3.5-inches in height. At present this is my principal ad hoc demo set for new-comers. I've used this set at my workplaces for the past 6 years ... works marvels because the figures are large! However, I created the set with very little terrain except for 12 pillars. The idea was to keep everything simple.

Well, I've learned that with more figures there's probably going be a need for more terrain. Especially if the demo set becomes a competition game. And so, I've built more.

Process

Here's my process!

I purchases this foam board from Lowes. It is about 1-inch thick about 4 by 8 feet in dimensions and sells for about $8.00 USD. You'll need to peel that "R-Tech" plastic from the front, and a similar but gray foil from the back. Otherwise paint won't stick to it.

This was my Christmas gift to myself. About $120 USD. Cut the big foam boards into smaller squares and rectangles. The ruler you see at the top allows for precision cuts of consistent dimension.

You will need this hot-wire knife to create details in your foam, and to carve out gashes and scratches. This is a lot easier than when I used as hot wire gun.

So, I cut out a bunch of square and rectangular tiles. I stacked them together and started using the hot-wire knife to cut shapes into the tiles. You can see the crazy gray foil that still sticks to the foam board.

More creative stacking. You may notice that I have some MDF boards I use as the base. I got these cut a few years back. I think places such as Lowes and Ace Hardware (both in the USA) will cut MDF for you. Otherwise you'll need to get a circular saw because MDF is hard to cut with a blade.

I tried to create step-like layouts. I figure that maybe I can use these finished projects with both my 1:18 figures and with my 28MM figures. Why not, right?

More of the same. Some interesting gaps for the smaller figures to move about.

Once I have the shapes hot-glued into place, I need to add some interesting texture. I use sand and white glue for this. BTW, I discovered that you can purchase jugs of white-glue for very cheap. I highly recommend this.

You can see that the sand and glue chunked up a bit. Bah. Not a problem.

What I did afterwards when the glue dried is that I revisited each piece and added another layer of white-glue as a sealant. This allows the remainder of the sand to be locked into place. It also creates a smoother surface for when I paint.

These walls have a base-coat of dark brown. I did a thin black wash afterwards when the brown dried.

The foreground is essentially done. The background walls need a dry-brush of white.

When I dry brush, I use a lighter brown across the entire face with a 2-inch brush. I then use a 1-inch brush  with pure white for dry-brushing corners and edges.