Don’t Look Back

I went out and bought some S scale train tracks and an S scale box car.  The problem with model rail road stuff is there is not a scale for 28mm miniatures.  S-Scale is 29mm, so it is close, but our 28mm miniatures have become “heroic” and are usually closer to 32mm miniatures.  This makes S scale a little small.  O scale is 39mm so it is big even for “heroic” scale miniatures.

I would choose S scale for terrain pieces that are to do things like block line of site etc.  If you want to play in and around the train pieces I would go up to O scale.  O scale is also much more common, the train store I went to had a little S scale, but they said no one made the scale anymore.

I have the above pieces and a long straight piece to weather.  The goal is to make this track look both unused and unmaintained.  I bought “Quick Track” since these make better terrain pieces, regular track would look more realistic if I mounted it and ballasted it myself.  I was looking for something I could put on the table and take it off quickly without having to worry so much about damaging it.

To make the track looked unused and unmaintained I am going to do 5ish steps.

1. Darken the ballast.
2. Put a texture paint over most of the ballast and ties.
3. Highlight the mud and remaining visible ballast.
4. Rust the tracks
5. Lay static grass on top of the mud.

I do not care if the track remains usable for model railroading, or even if the box car roles smoothly down the finished track, since this is for terrain and not to run a train on.

The darkening down was a simple step, just ran a black wash through an airbrush.  I also wanted to darken down the rails since when I put the rust power on it the brass rails will look weird under the rust.

I used Minitaire Discarded Oil wash, but Nuln Oil or Dark Wash would have worked just fine.

Finally, for tonight mudding the rails.

I started with Vallejo Thick Mud, it was good, I used it in the two shorter pieces and then I ran out…not the stuff for this size project.

So I went back to my old standby texture paint mixed with burnt umber.

I would definitely say the Thick Mud paint was better, but it would have taken me at least 3 bottles of the stuff to complete the project, where my texture paint mixture, I still had plenty left over.  I could have done something about 4 times the size of this project before I would have ran out.  In the end it doesn’t matter, I am going to wash down the whole thing with a brown wash and then do a lighter brown drybrush for a highlight.

That’s all for tonight, since the texture paint & burnt umber mixture will take 1-2 days to dry.

The lighter mud on the tracks is the Thick Mud paint.

I am going for 80 – 90% coverage, as I want it to look mostly rails travelling through grass when this is done.

As promised earlier in the week, here is the completed Terror on the High Seas board and expansion components.

This is the most comprehensive expansion yet for Don’t Look Back.  It has an additional hero and a monster.  In addition it has a mini-rulebook that contains a series of additional rules for the ship environment.  Finally, the rulebook has 5 new scenarios.

The monster was my first attempt at using wet blending with contrast paints, the Bacilicanum Grey pooled in the recesses really well, while the Creed Camo covered the grey on the higher areas of the miniature.  I almost didn’t put any highlights on the miniature and left it as is.  In the end I decided a couple layers of highlights would look even better.

This was a fun build, the boat comes in 4 packages for the 5 sections of the boat. The crew at Black Site Studios thought so nicely to add in 1/4″ holes for magnets on each section, so while playing on the boat the sections do not move.

The full length of the boat is about 48″ long, approx. 1.25m for my friends who use a measurement system that makes sense.

Finally, I got the ruined sections expansion for the MV Australis kit, so I can do the broken up ship.

What’s next for this expansion?  First, I think I want to find some furniture to put inside the cabin, it looks pretty barren in there.  Second I need to find a playmat to put the ship on that speaks to me, the ship sitting directly on my table bothers me.

Here is a preview of what is next for my Don’t Look Back adventure.

First off thanks for the Golden Button.  With my con schedule (4 cons in 6 weeks), I know it sucks living within 2 hours of GenCon and Origins, I haven’t had much time for hobby.  So here is an update sort of, I should have the Terror on the High Seas expansion done this weekend.

Some answers to statements or questions presented on the show.

1. Username, it is my old style unix username in 6-2 format six letters of your last name and the first and last letter of my first name, unfortunately unix could only store 8 letters of my first name.  So Christopher Johnson turns into johnsocp, when I have to say it I usually say it johnso-c-p.
2. The paint on the aliens is Greenstuff World’s Colorshift Chameleon Red Goblin, with some highlights.
3. The paint on the flying saucer is Greenstuff World’s Colorshift Martian Green, with no highlights at all.
4. While I would love to take credit for the pattern on the top of the Merry-Go-Round, it came from Black Site Studio that way.

Now on to a short update, a more comprehensive one this weekend.

So I am working on the Terror on the High Seas expansion.  That boat is sitting next to a 48″ ruler.  So it is a bigger boat.

It has a couple of details to add to it, and I have a destroyed section to build also.

The minis for the expansion are sitting on my painting table primed and ready to be painted.

New expansion, for me, arrived.  So now I need a boxcar.  Looking at scales of train, it looks like S scale is best for 28mm miniatures.  Unfortunately that is a rather rare scale for trains.  Going to go to the local train store to see if I can find some track and a boxcar.

The Curse of Oak Hill, has been purchased.  It comes with 1 hero character and one killer, along with rules for both.  The scenario for this set on a suburban  street.  I have 2 of the 4 MDF kits I want for this board.  Waiting for Black Site Studio to cut some more so I can buy them…GET ON IT!!!

On hold until I can get the two other kits.

The Darkhearts expansion.  This is just for new heroes, but all of the creepy variety.  Since there are no scenarios I just need to get around to assembling and painting these.

Like the Darkhearts above these are just miniatures that I need to assemble and paint.  This set gives you supporting character miniatures, so you are not stuck using tokens for them, in addition some special rules for the supporting characters if you choose to use them.

Finally the newest expansion which just arrived and probably my next project.

I have been looking at the MV Austrailis since I first saw the news story here for this kit.  Black Site Studios just gave me an excuse with the Terror on the High Seas expansion.

This expansion comes with a hero and a killer like curse of Oak Hill, but it also comes with a mini rulebook for adventures on the water.

After that Camp Northwood is definitely on my radar, even though there isn’t any scenarios using it yet…guess I’ll have to write my own.

Now that I am caught up I will publish them as I build them.

Attack of the Greys was my 4th project for DLB.  This one was the biggest one yet.  Not the size of all the pieces, Sideshow Slaughter has this hands down…for now…

This one Black Site Studio doesn’t really have terrain for the scenarios, so I was scratch building one piece and 3d printing 2 others.

Unfortunately I cannot find the VHS cover for the Attack of the Greys so you will have to live with the Greys themselves…who aren’t so grey.  In this case for the minis themselves and the crashed UFO color shifting paint was appropriate.  So the greys morph from red to green depending on how you look at it, and the crashed saucer goes from purple to green.

Attack of the Greys comes with 2 scenarios and rules for alien abduction scenarios.  As I said above there is not really terrain kits for this one, so 3d printer and scratch built is where you need to go.  I couldn’t even really find a good plastic UFO model that was still in print from people like Testors or Monogram.  Yay thingiverse, they had a decent one.

The first custom terrain piece is just a straight print from Loot Studios’ Planar Cruise set.

It is 3 parts so fit on my resin printer easily.

The second piece is a bunker found on Thingiverse.  This one pushed my resin printer to its limit.  It really ended up taking every mm across the diagonal of the plate.  Actually it will only print on my lower resolution printer because the print area is bigger, I cannot print it on my 4K one.

The third piece took the most time.  The saucer is a print found on Thingiverse, but the hill it crashed into is classic MDF and Styrofoam build.

As you can see in the pictures below the saucer is not attached.  Makes it easier to transport and the saucer is heavy compared to the Styrofoam, so could damage it when moving around in a car.

A note about trees.  I had decided to print the trees using another Loot Studios STL from The Oasis set.  While I like the creepy tree look, I just was not happy with them.

There are two problems:

1. The size limit of 3d prints makes them kind of small.
2. No matter how good I am at painting them they just don’t look as organic as your standard wire and flock trees.

So I went and bought a bunch of wire and flock trees.

Sideshow Slaughter was my third Don’t look back project.  With this one I also got the Funland Main Attractions and Funland Games and Shops MDF kits from Black Site Studios too.  I am a sucker for MDF terrain, so when they released this expansion with the Funland terrain pieces I was sold instantly.  The Ferris wheel is huge.

The Sideshow Slaughter expansion comes with some new rules and 2 scenarios designed to be run on the Funland terrain.  With all things DLB it is easy enough to convert to whatever you have…especially since it is hard sometimes to get the kits from Black Site Studios.

Final Girls comes with 4 additional heroes, all are “girls” as the title would suggest.  It is takes your hero group from 6 possible to 10.  It also includes rules for special scenario rules for the Final Girl, whom starts to kick butt if they are the last player still alive. This expansion does not include new scenarios.

This is the old basic set, as of this writing this consists of the Core Set, Lakehouse Cabin, and Farm Fences.  There are a couple of bits and bobs that are not in those sets.  Most of the stuff missing from the above sets are coming in the soon to be released Camp Northwood.

Future stuff for the basic content.  There are a five scenarios, some require a camp site.  Need to queue up my 3d printer for tents and such.  Black Site Studios makes a Lakeside Campground STL pack, which I have bought.