Finishing the Sci-Fi buildings and some foam hills

I have finished making all the terrain I currently need for my Star Wars project, which included one final building and a few hills. For the hills, I decided to try using upholstery foam. It is dense enough to support the weight of the models without any sagging. I have used foam for hills before, but that was for my smaller scale 6mm WWII armies (see here).

A completed foam hill with Rebels taking up position.

The upholstery foam I purchased for $30 was much thicker than needed at 100mm (almost 4 inches). So the first step was to slice it in half, bringing the height down to a more suitable 50mm which will work well with the 35mm Star Wars Legion figures. I did this using a sharp kitchen knife. After the hills were cut out, I then shaped them with scissors. In all I made two smaller hills and one larger one.

After shaping all three hills, they were all given an initial coat of watered-down sand-coloured paint. While the paint was still wet I added a darker sand colour around the sides, followed by a purple-brown wash at the base. Doing this while the paint I still wet allows the colours to be blended. The hills were left to dry in a warm spot for around 24 hours. It takes the foam takes a very long time to dry out thoroughly. Once fully dry, I finished them off by dry-brushing them with a light sand colour.

The 100mm upholstery foam, far too high to be used as a hill for the Star Wars Legion miniatures which stand 35mm high.

The foam is cut to size, then sliced in half using a sharp kitchen knife.

Preparing for shaping the hill.

The hills are shaped with scissors.

The hills are painted a sand colour using watered down paint.

The hill sides are painted with a dark sand colour and the bottom the hill a purple-brown colour. Once dry they are dry-brushed with a light sand colour.

The large hill being defended by Empire forces.

The final building for this project is now made and painted. I generally try to finish all the buildings in one go, or at least over a few painting sessions, as this helps with giving the buildings a consistent look. I have found that coming back later to add more buildings often results in slight variations in style or colour choices as I always seem to forget one step or colour that I originally used.

All the buildings have flat roofs, allowing me to swap in different rooftop features using the scatter terrain made from old down-lights, parts off an old lamp, and leftover piping from our house renovations.

The final building is completed.

All the buildings and scatter terrain.

The flat building roofs allow the features to be swapped and provide a different look.

I found a cheap Empire TIE Fighter online. While it is 1/72 scale, smaller than the Star Wars Legion figures, which are closer to 1/48 scale, that does not really matter. I generally prefer to use slightly scaled-down aircraft, as they look better on the tabletop because they do not overwhelm the other miniatures.

A recent purchase of a Star Wars TIE fighter.

And finally, I am starting to get a few more games played. I have been using and modifying scenarios from the One-Hour Wargames book. 

All this terrain modelling and painting has meant I have not been able to write up a battle report this week as I had hoped.

A game underway.

Star Wars project - the end is in sight

I have been continuing to build a few more terrain features for my Star Wars Legion project while also painting up a few additional miniatures I managed to pick up at some recent clearance sales. These sales seemed to have come about due to a change in the game's ownership, with Atomic Mass Games (AMG) taking over from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). With the change there are rule changes and the discontinuation of some older figures and units. Since I am using Squad Hammer Core rather than the official Legion rules, the changes will not affected my games and so the sales have been a bonus. At this point, I have managed to collect and paint pretty much most of the units I was after plus one or two extra, so the painting of miniatures is beginning to wind down for now and I can focus to finishing off the terrain.

This past week saw another building and some scatter terrain completed. I am still making the buildings from any wood off-cuts I have lying around in the garage, along with old downlight globes and leftover piping from the house renovations.

I cut out some triangles from 12mm MDF board to add to the building's sides and a couple of pieces of 3mm MDF board is used for the roof. Old piping has been added to the top and is removable so it can be used as scatter terrain.

The old piping being used as scatter terrain.

Here I have switched the piping and used an old used down-light on the roof. 

I came across three old unpainted Games Workshop craters I had stashed away, and these have finally been painted up. They will be very useful, either as rough area terrain or as lava pits to represent river-like obstacles in the One-Hour Wargaming (OHW) scenarios that call for rivers.

Some of the painted up craters.

To create the lava pits, I place red-dyed stones in the crater. The stones, which are porous and from a model shop, were soaked in watered-down red paint and then left to dry. This allows me to repurpose the craters as lave pits when I need them.

Red stones are added to repurpose the craters into lava pits.

The three craters as lava pits being used in the OHW scenario - Double Delaying Action where the original scenario has a river.

It seems like it has been a while since I last wrote a battle report, so I might write up one of my Star Wars games using Squad Hammer Core rules for the next post.

A test Sci-Fi building and some speedster markers

The past week has been a busy week with non-wargaming commitments, so I have not been able to sit down and write a blog post until now. However, I did manage to make some progress on the Star Wars project and made a test building and some quick-and-easy markers for my speedster units. The test building is made using old bits of wood and dowel I had lying around, and turned out to be a fun bit of recycling.

My first test building for my Star War Legion project.

Terrain always seems to take up so much space, and due to space constraints, I store most of my terrain in large plastic tubs which I can stack. So the buildings I make need to be robust with no fragile details that could easily break off. This has meant I now mostly build everything from wood with minimal detailing. Where details like windows or doors are needed, I will usually paint them on. I also paint in shadows to highlight a building’s features and to added colour. For this particular building, I used a purple wash to emphasise the angles and add some depth to the windows.

My painting style is loose and I do not worry too much about precision. I do use dry brushing to breakup large blocks of colour and I will often suggest details with just a dash of paint. It is a quick approach that works well for the tabletop, just do not look too closely!

Doors and windows are painted on and a purple wash has been used to emphasise features and shadows.

I also painted up an old downlight, which works well as a standalone piece of machinery used as scatter terrain, or can be placed on top of the building to make it look a bit more interesting.

An old downlighting gets recycled as scatter terrain for the tabletop.

Alternatively, the downlight can be placed on top of the building to make it look more industrial.

I also made some markers for my speedster units as reminders. With the rules I am using, speedster units must make a half move each turn, whether they are activated or not during a turn. The markers are placed to show units have made their mandatory half move.

Speedster units marked to show they have made their mandatory half move.

The markers are made from soft toy filler, I picked up a bag of it from a craft store a while back. It has proven to be really useful stuff for creating smoke effects and marking musket fire. For the speedster markers, I dipped the toy filler into watered-down brown paint to add a sand looking colour. It took a few goes of dipping to achieve the right colour depth, which made the process a bit time consuming due to the drying time between dippings.

Another speedster unit move across the tabletop.

While I have been working on all the painting and modelling, I have been planning and sketching out in my head a small six-game skirmish campaign where I can make use of my recently completed Star Wars Legion figures.