Crate work, everyone!

Hey, speaking of terrain:

Crates! These are a mix of Reaper Bones plastic and Rebel Miniatures resin. Painted up pretty quickly using something like the techniques described in this thread. I use mostly Delta Ceramcoat craft paints: here I did a base coat of Burnt Umber, then a heavy drybrush of Raw Sienna, lighter drybrushes of Straw and white, then another light drybrush with Raw Sienna again to balance the lighter colors. Then my standard "magic" black wash. Ecce, mirabiles!

Sven, who remember is about 1 inch tall, among the Reaper crates. These have a lot of great detail but somehow became noticeably warped. The leftmost crate is obviously askew here.

The Rebel Minis crates. These also have pretty good detail, and the resin of course isn't going to warp like the PVC plastic Bones are made of. Unfortunately, some bubbles must have formed when these were cast, leaving some rather bad pockmarks on some of these.

Despite these flaws, they look pretty good as a group.

Sven playing hide-and-seek.

I painted up a few more of the Reaper crates as cargo for my son's toy trains. Painting minis is tricky without a base to hold onto! I added an extra layer of Future Shine for added durability during play. They need a blast of Dullcoat, but it's been too hot for spraying.

And yes, my son painted those hopper cars himself!

P.S. I hope all my dear readers remember that I also have an RPG design blog, which isn't entirely moribund. I just started a series of posts on initiative checks, which will hopefully initiate more RPG blogging in the near future. Remember that the link to new posts can always be found in the sidebar.

Terrain Kickstarters

A few years ago, the hotness in fantasy minis Kickstarters was Twisting Catacombs, a series of resin terrain pieces for dungeons and such by Zealot Miniatures. They are 28mm scale, but I was curious if some of the smaller pieces would look okay in 1/72, the official CFM scale. They had all kinds of fiddly bits like food and tankards and bottles that I thought would look, if not exactly in scale, close enough to work at the table. I was a very late backer, and with the vagaries of Kickstarter fulfillment, I only just got my order a month ago, and have been meaning to take some comparison pics.

I have not done so :(. I intend to, but simply need to take the time. The reason I'm mentioning it now is because of another 28mm fantasy terrain Kickstarter that's still taking backers. TerrainCrate is a project by Mantic Games, whom I didn't realize, in addition to aggressively competing with GamesWorkshop for great justice, was also quietly building a line of plastic terrain pieces. Obviously they're intending to blow up the line, marrying plastic and terrain for value, much like what Reaper Miniatures did for plastic and mini figures years ago with their Bones line. Anyway, the "crates" of terrain look like a fantastic value, and there are still a couple of days left to back the project. It's fairly certain that not everything will work with 1/72 pieces, but I'm hoping many of these plastic pieces might readily be modded or adapted.

PS: Speaking of Reaper and Kickstarters: Bones IV is coming! Reaper won't start it until they've finished fulfilling the last Bones Kickstarter, but you can check out this gallery from a ReaperCon attendee to get a preview. It took me longer than it should have to realize the hut had legs (as described in legends).

Fountain and Bridge

Here are some terrain pieces I finally finished painting last weekend. The first is a resin fountain by Airfix, first mentioned here.

Sven and Reaper fountain added for comparison.

Painting is done, though I'd like to add some water effects to the basin and fount. Painting was a simple gray basecoat and a few stones painted brown for contrast, with a couple layers of drybrushing and a blackwash to bring out details. Some of my drybrushing was a little coarse, but I'm very pleased with this overall.

Next is a nice bridge kit by Italeri. I think I first read about this kit on Sean's blog, though I can't find the post.

Even though it's marketed as 1/72, it's a pretty big bridge, probably designed for scale vehicles to drive over. It could definitely be used for larger-scale gaming.

The One Inch Guild square off against some pesky goblins for control of a key strategic landmark.

Sven hides from the obligatory bridge troll.

Painting was basically the same as with the fountain, though the drybrushing is even rougher here. The resin fountain had a nice stone texture that was completely absent from the Italeri plastic, so my drybrushing was really a sort of sloppy highlighting. The kit went together pretty well, though I had some issues getting the curved bed to fit in the sides, and the seems on the support bits at the base are pretty obvious. Still, this is an attractive, solid piece of terrain. I've already let my son play with it (while supervised!), and it handles toy cars going over it without a problem. Speaking of, here he is, helping daddy with the basecoat.

Little helper.

P.S. Thanks to those of you who posted comments this month. Sorry they are only going up just now. I only caught them in the "Awaiting Moderation" cue today. I love hearing from my readers, and I'll be more diligent about posting comments in the future.