Kira’s Club Terrain – A Spring Clean Challenge

My Pledge for Week 1: Monday 25th March 2024 – Sunday 31st March 2024*

* As you may have noticed, the period for this week has already passed at the time of my writing this. Well, that is correct: but my sin was not a lack of hobby but rather on being around a personal device to write it up. Between work and being away over the Easter weekend at multiple family gatherings: I have not had a moment to sit and do this.
That being said, I did indeed make my pledge and I did work on it. So I’m going to write this one as I would have at the beginning of last week and review what actually got done in my next post. Everyone onboard? Okay, let’s go.

My first week’s pledge is to finish up the MESBG Rohirrim Battleforce I was already working on and then to move on to some of the 4Ground buildings.

Here’s a picture of where this is up to.

I’ve worked through the Warriors (bottom larger grey tray) and the Riders (top smaller grey tray) and removed their mould lines (so… so many deep mould lines on these old kits) and stuck the horses together.
The horses (the lower wooden tray) are going to need some work with the filing tools and some sprue-goo to fill out the gaps and smooth the joins over. These are no Golden Demon entries but deep lesions to the necks and butt cracks running up the saddles look a little silly even in bare plastic so these need a little work in preparation for future painting.

Next is Éomer, Marshall of the Riddermark (sprue in the top right) which contains both his Infantry and Cavalry versions to put together. There are some options to this around weapons and armour but I’ll make them as I get to building them.

With a great bulk of these kits to work through (and with some encouragement from my 6 year old “Thing 1” who is excited for some of the buildings to be used for decorating our model railway in the future) I have decided to plough straight into putting together as many of these building kits from 4 Grounds Europe at War range.

I previously organised these kits by their product codes because each code contains a set number and each set shares the same number with some modifiers so this made it easier to gather all the kits together.
Take kit 101 for example, this contains the following three variants:

• 15S-EAW-101: North Western European Stone Hotel/Apartments
• 15S-EAW-101D: North Western European Stone Hotel/Apartments (Damaged)
• 15S-EAW-101A: North Western European Stone Hotel/Apartments (Add-on)

This trend continues through the range with xxxD codes being the damaged version of the building and xxxA being add ons (an extra floor that can be slotted into another of the building to increase it’s height).

I haven’t worked on these sorts of kits in… years now? It’s been a while so I’m unsure how I’ll get on with them so I’ve pulled the first four sets to work through and see how I get on. Now, this represents the following 11 kits of various sizes and complexities: North Western European Stone Hotel/Aparements (101, 101D, 101A), North Western European Ashlar Stone Bank/Apartments (102, 102D) North Western European Terrace Houses (Type 1) (103, 103D, 103A) and North Western European Semi-Detached Houses (Type 1) (104, 104D, 104A).

That’s a lot of North Western European kits.

I’m just going to put as much time as I can into these and see what I can get through to give me a sense of what is a reasonable rate for me and my free time. Check back in the Week 1 progress report to see how I did.

Next will be the results of my first week where we see how I got on and use these results to think about what I will be doing next.

Like most people in this hobby, I have had my time in Games Workshop. These days it tends to be using their models as I love the lore and setting but drop them into other rule sets (Grimdark Future has been gaining some traction recently).

But as I mentioned, this is for a club and as such, we get quite a bit of Warhammer 40,000 and Kill Team being played and so some terrain from the same line gets quite a bit of use.
The sets here are:

• Sector Mechanicus
  A smattering of stuff from Kill Team boxes, picking up issue of those Hachette Partworks magazines and stuff donated by members, all of this is just sprayed Leadbelcher and left as is.
  I think I would like to add some accent stuff to this lift it up a bit but not go mad so that it could overshadow the models being played over it. Maybe some washes, quick drybrushes and/or some Modelmate sprays might be in order before picking out some complementary details.
• Space Hulk stuff
  The Into the Dark season of Kill Team was a big draw for me as I was in to pretty much all of the teams that were a part of it. As such I ended up with three of the launch boxes and picking up a sprue of the unique bits from the other. This has actually seen a fair bit of play as it really is it’s own things but I’ve been reluctant to paint it as the put together and take apart nature of it means exploring a world of varnishes to protect the paint I’ve never really explored before. A good learning experience when I commit to this.
• Octarius
  The OG set of terrain from the first Kill Team second edition launch set. This one also sees a lot of play as it’s one of the few terrain sets that isn’t blatantly imperial so it’s great for everyone not playing for the Golden Throne, even if they’re not Orks but just fighting through the ruins of a scrap town.
  Like the Mechanicus stuff, this has just been sprayed Leadbelcher and could do with some lover to bring out some of the details.

Tackling these will definitely be on the list simply because they get used so much.

These are all the gubbins that have come with other Terrain kits over the years, the small bits that don’t really add up to a piece of terrain themselves.

Individually they are small enough that putting them on the table just makes more of a mess than anything else so they have been banished to the box to accrue over the years. Going through this I was struck by the idea of gluing these together in little groups and adding them to bases to make still small but manageable scatter terrain.

I shall have to go and have a rummage around my bits and the internet for some ideas on completing this.

Just a bunch of stuff that I also have around that aren’t really complete sets in and of themsleves.

1. A bunch of Fantasy bits, mostly from Oathsworn (yes, the Burrows and Badgers people) and Warbases. There is some nifty stuff in here like the stone circle with a changeable centre is a cool centre piece and the quaint mouse house is full of whimsy.
   The stockade is one of the first pieces of terrain I ever owned and it;s serviceable enough but it’s a little small for most “28mm” scale stuff I find. Perhaps it will be donated to the TT Scale model train stuff and find a new life there.
2. These are some boards of model trees and some rocks made of some foam (I think XPS foam but unsure under the paint) that was donated by club member. They are actually pretty good on the table but have had a rough life. Some of the rocks have worn away at the edges and a few of the trees have come away from the board (revelling what I believe to be a cereal box).
   Another set that could be really something with a little TLC and a better storage solution than shoved in a box with some bubble wrap. A bit of paint to cover the scuffs on the rocks and I’m thinking of either a new base for the trees or adding an additional base layer to the trees to give them a little more weight and rigidity. I shall have to see but these are so nice to begin with I would hate to not bring them back into the fold.
3. Stuff to get rid off:
   Yep, in routing through all this stuff I found some things worth getting rid of. Most of it is a series of GW ruins all in the same style, some painted and some not. There is nothing wrong with these but they are relatively bulky and take up a lot of space for what they are. Seeing as I stack all the club stuff on a cart on the night we meet and wheel it over to our venue they are becoming less and less appreciated by me.
   Perhaps I’ll get them all based (those on the box are primed… Mechanicus Standard Grey I think) and then offer them to one of the other local gaming clubs we know that have storage on site where packing it up and moving it each time isn’t so much of an issue.

So, that is everything I have to work on, in club terrain at least, and lets not get into the likes of half painted minis and ideas cluttering my painting space; that’s for another project.

Time to take stock, figure out what I want to do first and then set my first weeks goal. As mentioned previously this might involve some other bits and pieces (for example, I’m on some MESBG Rohirrim for a learning game that should probably keep on top of getting built at least) but come tomorrow, I should have a direction to begin this journey.

Starting off the pile of things needing some work is a whole pile of kits from 4Ground’s Europe at War and and something with the acronym TOA ranges (if anyone knows, comment below: I’m now curious).

I may have gone a little mad when 4Ground announced they were going out of business as I had always wanted to do something big in a small scale for the turn of the last century (Flames of War or Crossfire being the front runners). Since then they have languished as something that would be done eventually.
But now they have a possible second purpose…

Story time:
Channelling my inner Lloyd, my boys and I have started getting into model trains of late. We started with the typically British OO Scale but, in order to try and fit our toys on the dining table rather than building a extension to our house for them I recently decided to get my hands on the new TT Scale being championed by Hornby and Pico. This range is scaled at 1:120 which for those who know their scale is around what 15mm stuff is set around (1:100 – 1:120).
When I was getting all this stuff out to sort it out, my six year old had a rummage through this stuff and is now excited that one day we could have a little train running around next to a village of mid last century buildings.
Well, add the fact that there is a TT Scale LNER Eastener set in the loft that he doesn’t know about (this was a Christmas present and I only went a fell down the stair Christmas morning, breaking my ankle: we’ve been waiting till I’ve healed up to get it out) and now I have two reasons to get these buildings built and ready to play with.

On a related note, when I got these I added on some extra bits for the Laser Cut Architect’s Defence Line terrain. I actually won my original set here on OTT from a Weekender some time back and it a great kit.
I magnetised the roofs of the tower blocks so they could be popped off for taller models and they are a popular pick up at the club for that real military base feel without being the usual ruined Gothic building (or often, mixing the two).
The extra walls will just give the set that bit more coverage for larger games or for more variable layouts.

Oh boy: Dungeons & Lasers.

I love this set, and I mean LOVE this stuff but Roleplay has taken something of a back seat in my life since The Event and consequently, so has my working on this.

This pile contains stuff from the first three or Archon’s D&L campaings in various states from clipped and cleaned through to just taken off the sprues to fit in the trays. The photos in order contain:

1. Fantasy:
   The single biggest part of the collection as this has been the focus of much they have brought out. This is possible the least immediate part of the set as I’m not really finding to for RP at the moment but then again, am I not finding the time because I don’t have a pile of neat terrain to inspire myself into getting a game together?
2. Sci-fi:
   A smaller set as this hasn’t really come back since the original campaign. There is one thing that might make this a bit more exciting: Sci-fi Skirmish games.
   Having laid this stuff out I am suddenly reminded of the likes of Necromunda and Kill Team’s Into the Dark rules. Both games that work well in internal spaces that these could be built to cover. I’ve never brought these to the club due to their incomplete nature but I reckon they could be a fun addition.
3. Miniatures:
   Archon have done a wide variety of miniatures along with campaigns from Giants to Kobolds to Townsfolk to Phoenixes to Dragons. This is a big pile of them.
   Again, this is more RP that Wargame so may be more towards the end given my goal here but who knows, maybe they can come in as a palette cleanser at some point.
4. Scatter:
   Scatter for both Terrain (the one with more) and Sci-fi (the one with less), Like the Miniatures, these have been scattered across the campaigns Archon has done. I don’t know if I’ll tackle these as there own things or try and do them with their respective terrain sets, I shall have to see.
5. The Connectors:
   So, so many connectors. Last priority as they are hidden underneath anyway. I suspect if I do end up expanding my D&L terrain in the future, the connectors from those sets will just never be clipped as I doubt I’ll ever want to use every single piece at the same time and there is already so many here.

As suggested, I am unsure how much of a priority this lot will be up front as their use is less immediately beneficial to the club setting but maybe some of the Sci-fi stuff if people are feeling up to some rounds of claustrophobic space shoot outs.

And speaking of Archon…

Where as Dungeons & Lasers is Archon’s small building inside and out more Roleplay targeted range, Rampart is their more traditional big pieces of line of sight blocking for Wargaming targeted range.

This is from their latest Kickstarter where I picked up four styles (the Ethereal Cathedral, the Temple of the Operators, the Kazumi Temple and the City Ruins). This is just a big old pile of modular walls, lifted floors, some stairs and gubbins to stick out of said walls.

This one has real potential for the club as line of site chunks of ruins is the typical type of terrain for the current set of Warhammer 40,000 (and being a gaming club this is off course our most played game being the biggest fish in our niche of a pond). I think some of this is likely to be prioritised sooner rather than later.

And seeing as I am running out of content slots, this just became a two part post.

As many of us do at this time of year, we look over our Piles of Potential and wonder, “what is it that we want to get done and ready to play with”. This year, I have answered this question with “Terrain”.

For context, I run a small local gaming club and over the last two and a bit years I have gathered not insignificant pile of club terrain which is a mix of my own, things donated from members and things acquired specifically for others to use. However, as I am sure many of us are familiar with, over that time the ideas have outpaced the action on getting this stuff built and painted and ready for use.

To this end I have already been through the garage and sorted all my boxes of stuff and worked out all the stuff that wants for some work.
From this I intend to set myself weekly (or maybe fortnightly for some of the big stuff) goals and then reporting back on this project as a means of keeping myself going. These might not all be the greatest amount of progress as I do have some regular mini stuff still going on but these might turn up in posts as well. The goal at the end of the day will be to get to a place where I have more toys ready to play with than before.

Looking at the Pile as it stands and setting goals for the first week.