You may have noticed that many of my recent posts have been contributions to the community challenge “Squaddie September” run by Azazel of Azazel’s Bits Box (so much so that I think I’ll put up a self-indulgent round up post in the near future!). However, never being one to shirk from hobby productivity, Azazel also ran “Scenic September“, with the aim of motivating us all to paint some of the terrain, large or small, which might otherwise remain unpainted for another month. As my own terrain collection has been suffering in the doldrums for a while now I decided to take the opportunity throughout last month to chip away at as much as I could, and although the larger projects are still not done (I’ve only got one pair of hands dammit!) I did at least manage to get my teeth into some more of the barricades, scatter terrain and other odds and ends I’ve had waiting for attention.
First of all we’ve got a heap of rusty junk that was released as part of the Speed Freeks Ork racing game from this time last year. In part I used this as an opportunity to experiment with contrast paints for terrain and I’m fairly happy with the results, although there are definitely things I think I could improve upon. However having faffed around with it quite a lot I think I’m going to call this one done – I have several more in the same style so I’ll take what I learned here and apply it to them, and then perhaps come back to touch this one up later if I still think it’s required.
Then there’s this fungal monstrosity which forms part of the Deathworld terrain set released by GW a few years ago. It’s a pretty ugly model, and came packaged in with a bunch of other stuff that I bought second hand on ebay. Either some bits were missing or it simply doesn’t fit together all that well, either way a bit of greenstuff was required to turn it into something usable. Frankly I didn’t lose too much sleep over it – you’ll note for instance that not all of the trunks reach the floor and whilst I could have put some extra time and effort into fixing that or covering it up I simply couldn’t be arsed. If this is the best example of xenos terrain that GW could find no wonder the Imperium keeps purging the alien! It’s a shame really, I’m all in favour of terrain pieces (and models in general) which are bit more creative and unusual but this one just misses the mark. I think it’s improved by leaving out the fronds which normally crown the top of the model (and which to my eye look particularly naff) but it’s still nothing to write home about.
That said it should have a fair bit of utility as part of my terrain collection, handy for the badzones of Necromunda (or even an outcrop of the drug-producing fungus ghast), or to decorate the dank caves inhabited by Night Goblins and Gloomspite Gits.
And of course it makes for a fine corner of Nurgle’s garden, he doesn’t mind if things are a little on the ugly side!
Next up, something I had more fun with. I really want to get started on Warcry, I keep hearing good things about the game and the models are frankly gorgeous. So far I’ve only managed to absorb the setting by obsessively reading the core book and pouring over my box of unassembled models but as soon as I’ve cleared my feet a little more I’m going to be diving straight in. In order to play the game however I’m going to need to get a whole load of terrain built and painted and so I’ve dipped my toe into the water by painting up this barricade to get a feel for what it’s like to work with. This one was a real joy to work on so hopefully I can maintain my enthusiasm and paint up a load more soon.
Finally we have another piece of scatter terrain for my slow-growing Necromunda collection. I know I’ve not broken as much ground on this front recently as I planned but I always expected that the project would take a while – I’m just not someone who knocks out large terrain pieces in short order. However I’ve not forgotten about it and I’m aiming to get back to it before long. In the meantime here’s a street light for what may be a little Underhive settlement (perhaps somewhere for my civilians to take up residence).
And there we have it – four more disparate terrain pieces with which to decorate the far future and/or the Mortal Realms. I make no promises about when I’ll tackle any more but there’s certainly plenty waiting for attention so I’ll try to finish off some more soon(-ish…).