Bob’s Black Suns Terrainfest

With the walls done I moved on to the various ancillary bits, and found them to be more complicated than originally thought ( Specially the concrete barriers ) as I found lots of little bits of interest. All were done  with  various Contrast and  Speedpaints with a final thinned out Agrax Wash to grime them up a bit..

Starting with Sandbag walls from Spec ops , which I initially thought would be quick one colour  bit  I found odd ammo boxes in side of some of the walls.

With those done I started on concrete road blocks thinking again they”d  need just  contrast/Speedpaint grey began to librally coat in grey till I spotted the Sandbags, again items form Spec Ops Starter.

Some of the features on the Mantic Mars Attack terrain got me to Google the colour of litter bins( trash cans for those across pond) which you use most days but don’t really think about, but are a drrr@ moment when you realise.

The Supermarket trolleys at end are a nice touch.

And finally signs , barricades and misc boxes…

The boxes have can contents again nice touch.

I haven’t painted names on the two sign posts as plan is to print them as even when using a paint brush my hand writing is appalling. Plus I haven’t totally decided on them yet, though thinking Alicia Strasse, and La Rue de Susanne, after the neices.

One other aside to this is intend to put all my incidental bits of terrain in one easy to find box, for easy use in future games.

Once I’ve sorted box, as I found previously completed items they can be added to the box’s collection..

Well this is the 1st of this week’s project updates, I started with my Terrainfest project 1st, as there is Less to update and 2ndly so it looks like I have at least made some effort.

I started with all the bits of scatter terrain that I got with Spec Ops starter and the re finding of Mars Attacks box with all the scatter terrain in.

The strange thing is when painting it  it struck me, that these are the sort of bits and models that are likely to appear on numerous games fitting from pre WW2 to ultra modern. Therefore are likely to actually to see more use than any of my Armies, So why are bits of terrain often left till last or forgotten altogether ?

Any way I had originally intended to start with the Sand bags , bins signs etc as I thought they would be quicker to paint once base coated white. As it happened I actually started with the Walls , which I had base coated with Colorfasts Peachy Peach rattle can spray.

This gave a very new brick base colour, which as I progressed worked well.

I started on the Resin walls from the Spec Op starter set, I tried to do a lighter Mortar colour for the brickwork, by coating the walls with GW Apothecary grey and then wiping it off  surface with a tissue. This did work but, the Grey wasn’t really light enough to contrast , plus when I put on Agrax Earthshade thinned out wash it pretty much hid it, so I dropped this process for the later Manti brickwork.

There was one upside to the above effort in that it put a surface on the smooth resin which allowed the wash to pool in places darkening some of brickwork quite realistically.

I just used wash on the Mantic walls as the plastic had a rougher surface than on the spec Ops resin. Most of these though had other features to draw the eye.

All wall peices got a very light white dry brush post , which I’m not sure why seems to work well.

Well just working through the misc bits in the Mars Attacks box found some very nice misc modern Street scatter.

The terrain is designed to be modular ,with a view to breaking up to put back in box, but I decided I wanted it more permanent, to fit in various ruins I already have so I glued bits together, using the nice mantic joint pieces. No major hiccups other than just checking brickwork goes same way.

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Bit of a learning curve on best way of putting on Brackets so they stay put, but ground floor done. Letting glue before putting on 1st floor.

Putting on the 1st floor was a pain, as the  brackets kept coming out and the whole process took way longer than it should.

In comparison the 1st floor walls went together fairly smoothly, though I had a fair amount of experience with those .

The experience with 1st floor helped when doing the roof, but it was still a pain.

As I want it so I can take the floors off I put just a  couple of brackets to help them sit..

Not totally figured out how I’m painting interior, but have found Peachy Peach rattle can by colourfast that should do nice for brickwork.

My projects can often start as one thing and  morph into other things as I start building it up.

In this case even before I start, it’s taken a sideways slant. This sort of follows what’s happened with my Black Suns Project, which has strayed into Moderns with Stargate and Forbidden Ruins , which itself has morphed as I discovered the Spectre minatures and their games.

As a Xmas prezzie for me I had purchased the starter box , and having painted up the figures, have now come to look at the little box of starter terrain that comes with it.

As I looked at it originally I thought looks a bit familiar and I rembered .

Which has a pile of similar terrain in it. Now I rembered this before xmas, but only rembered to look to see what was in it this week!

This jogged another memory, and I rembered another purchase from Mantic at Salute a few years ( I think a lot of years) .

Strangely for me, I actually remembered (as with Mars Attacks)where I’d put them!

So I have a bit of building ahead of me!!

I originally had not given Terrainfest much thought this year  having got multiple hobbybprojects on the go  be it Blak Sun, Halo, the constant ongoing Battletech etc , then realised I had unintentionally started, with Black Sun I  that I had been slowly getting together odd bits of for Terrain for it.

Firstly back in September I had picked up two Sarrisma Precision’s Bamboo houses. Which I figured would make nice centre peice for table. I had built them and base coated in  GW Zandri Dust. One had been a further coat of wash and some staining of the roof  then left.

I also had built the spare bits of Rubicon’s P76 for the floating version, planning to do it as a terrain feature waterlogged destroyed tank, as had been thr plan for thr Broken Huey, from my original attempt to re visit Vietnam some time back.

There had been no real plan for Terrainfest  but I sometime ago loaded the Temu app, and had been bombarded by offers   which I have generally ignored.

One of the things that did peek my interest though had been a steady amount of 3d Terrain and models  predominantly for 40k  but some fairly Generic, particularly things like Dungeon walks and trenchworks, very reasonably priced, so thought give them a try  . I now have 3 sets with one more on the way.

Now on these 1st two, the narrower trench isn’t wide enough for standard 25mm bases to sit at bottom,  so they perch half way up, but this final peive is spot on.

I already have a couple of bigger pre painted  sandbag bunkers, that cover multiple periods which these trenchs van be added too

Do here are the bear bones of project.

A small village

2x drowned vehicles

Trenchwork for a Firebase.