No, not the new/current incanation of WarZone by Prodos Games, but 1st/2nd Edition Era stuff. These pieces came out in the same kind of retail blisters that almost all of the Scotia Grendel stuff that I’ve been showing off recently, so I think it’s likely that Grendel made them under licence from Target Games/Heartbreaker, back in the day. These all sat in various containers and boxes for a good decade and a half until recently, towards the end of last year when I pulled them out and decided to paint them, and practice some new techniques.
Entranceway
I did a lot of playing around with Verdigris effects on these. Pretty much figuring out how to do it. I missed that little Dark Legion icon up top of this archway until I was looking at these photos. Maybe I’ll go back and paint it with gold/brass/verdigris.
Inside(?) of the archway. Surely not the outside?
Obviously, I used a lot of drybrushing on these sets as well. I almost always use it on stone, but I usually hand paint and shade things like skulls. In this case, however, they got drybrushed as well, and the starkness actually turned out really well, I think.
Long walls
I also had a bit of a play with weathering powders and Tamiya’s weathering compacts on the bottom of these scenery elements. The compacts worked a lot better than the powders, especially as the scenery needed to be varnished and will be handled a lot.
Short walls
I basically bought one of each set. In retrospect, maybe I should have bought some extra walls and corners, but then, I didn’t have unlimited funds back then, and we tended to spread stuff like this out a bit to use as ruins to fight on and around in 40k and WarZone.
Concave walls
I also had a bit of a play with some MIG rust washes on the metal parts of the wall reinforcements. Not bad, but probably better used elsewhere, or more carefully, as using it in these places became tedious and didn’t allow for the best effect of the realistic rust effects. Well, it could have, if I didn’t have to do so many of them. Looking at the pics I can see small areas I could have focused on to enhance the rust effects, but hindsight, eh?
Convex walls.
I quite like the utility of scenery elements like this. Pretty much everything I bought as scenery back in the day was done so with at least one eye towards using it for 40k. Even scenery that is nominally for Fantasy and other games – The farmhouse seen a couple of posts ago has spent more time on 40k tables than fantasy ones!
Dark Legion/Chaos Throne
Since – let’s face it – this scenery is going to spend more time on Warhammer-game-themed tables than Warzone tables, I looked around for awhile for something appropriate for the banners. Originally, I was just going to paint some runes of Khorne on them, but that seemed a bit too boring. These stars appear to be used by the “Blood Pact” Renegade Guard forces from one of the IA books, but also look generic enough to be more general Chaos than just Khornate. Turned out better than I’d expected, too!
Outer-wall side of the throne piece.
Subtle? Dark Legion? Chaos? Naaaaa!
All of the pieces
Here’s all of the pieces assembled together. You can see why I’d have bought some more walls and corners pretty well here, but in practical use, these pieces will be combined with other resin and stuff, ruined walls and so forth. It will work equally well as scenery for 40k and other sci-fi games (WarZone, maybe?) as well as Fantasy games such as Kings of War, Mordheim SoBH, etc. It’s all pretty Pathfinder/RPG friendly as well.
Stone Stairs
This Spiral Staircase can be useful as a connection piece to higher-up scenery (Fortress Walls, etc) but is also useful for Pathfinder and Role-playing. It’s amazing to be just how much of this stuff is still available!
Staircase details
Some nice little hidden details on the underside of the staircase.
Porticullus
This piece is more useful as a Role-playing element than a tabletop wargame one, in my opinion. I had a play with the new Army Painter coloured washes on the runes above the grate. I could have gone nuts with glowy effects and OSL, but that was a bit too much for something that will be used as a mundane piece of dungeon terrain most of the time. Still available from Grendel.
Sewer grate
I really like this Sewer grate. It had a couple of the oversized skulls that I wasn’t fond of, but my clippers took care of that (one skull went flying through the lounge room and has still not been found!) My big plan for this piece is to use it when playing Helms Deep in LotR SBG or WotR – or Helms Deep-inspired scenarios for Kings of War. Butt it against a castle wall and let those Uruk-Hai sappers loose! Once again, Grendel are still selling this – in a three-pack this time, along with two pieces I painted and showcased awhile back. (about halfway down the page).
Damn, Grendel should be sending me some freebies when you consider the amount of their stuff I’ve been showcasing lately! This is pretty much all stuff I bought years and years ago, during my personal golden era of FLGS gaming in Melbourne, around 1995-2002 – and in most cases never got around to painting until now.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Wow, these are wonderful. Im not familiar with Tamiya weathering compacts, but I will have to pick some up to try out. Do you recommend a couple in particular to start with?
The verdigris on the icon on the convex walls is really great. If I would change anything in the items shown it would likely be to apply the convex wall icon effect to the statues and possibly the some of the other detail on the entranceway. You hinted that you might go for that anyway 🙂
I can see why you wish that you had bought more of those walls. Have you picked up a GW Garden of Morr kit yet? If they were painted in the same techniques as these pieces were then it might be possible to butt them up in a reasonably convincing manner for the once in a blue moon that you require a larger compound. The architectural style would differ a bit, but it might be good enough.
The old Grendel ranges are full of gems.
Your photo booth seems to be working extremely well too. Great stuff.
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Thanks for the encouraging feedback! The Weathering compacts “Tamiya Weathering Master” all have some useful tones in them. I picked up all five that were available at the time, though there may be some more now. Sets D and C have one really useful one in each of them with a couple of others that are less useful (Oil Stain and Orange Rust). The better two to get in my opinion would be A: Sand, Light Sand, Mud – and B: Snow (not so useful) Soot, Rust (both super useful). You’ll also want to get a couple of cheap eyeshadow foam brushes to avoid mixing the one brush the Tamiya sets come with.
Haven’t tried the Tamiya Weathering Sticks yet, but they look pretty good for mud effects and so forth, especially on tank tracks and so forth. It’ll depend on if the stuff dries hard or stays soft forever, and I’m not sure how it goes after application.
The statues have some of the Verdigris on them, just not as heavily as the Gargoyle faces on the wall sections. I will go back and add the same effect to the icon above the archway though. No Garden of Morr yet – after I started looking into the GW scenery kits, I was reading that several of the kits had been discontinued, so I bought a full Warhammer Fortress kit (which I’ll pair with the one I bought back on release a few extra towers and walls and never finished painting.) The following payday I picked up a Skyshield Landing Pad (which I’d wanted since I first saw them years ago), Deadstone Blight (shades of World of Warcraft’s ruined towers!) and Arcane Ruins (again, liked it for years). I planned to buy the Sigmar’s Blood three-pack, but they discontinued it when they revamped their website a couple of weeks ago. Bastards. A few more discontinued kits to try and grab this week, (I tracked down a Temple of Skuls, the Chapel and a 40k Battlescape) then I can get back onto the still-safely-available stuff. Good idea on combining the two. I’ll have me one hell of a graveyard once I get all of these kits in hand and painted. Then it’ll be time to get some Renedra gravestones, and then have some some crazy thematic skirmish games using the Mordheim or SoBH, etc rules… where I control the undead NPCs 😉
Once I’ve got all of my existing Grendel stuff, I’ll look into ordering some more stuff from them. My main concern is on whether postage for all that heavy resin will too terrible from the UK, but then the kits are bloody cheap, so hopefully it can at least balance out…
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Thanks for the info and links regarding the Tamiya weathering items. Something else for the shopping list.
I didnt realise that some of the WHFB plastic terrain kits were being discontinued, but it makes sense I guess. Thats a pity. I quite like a few of those, although I dont play fantasy games really, so I can confidently avoid the squirrel mentality regarding them going OOP.
I didnt bother with the Battlescape: its a bit confused looking to me. Is the landing pad going OOP? Again, Im not terribly keen on it, but I need to take another look to be sure if its going off the market. Off the top of your head do you know what other 40K terrain is being dropped?
Bah, it never ends 😉
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Found the post with the info finally!
Here’s the pertinent bits around scenery:
It seems GW is quietly abandoning the fantasy scenery line. The following products are no longer stocked and may no longer be shipped to resellers:
* Dreadstone Blight * Skullvane Manse – Lair of the Astromancer * Temple of Skulls * Citadel Chapel * Citadel Watchtower * Fortified Manor
—
those that start with a X are those that were removed in the current month, those that start with a o are those that have apparently disappeared for good.
40k:
Scenery:
o Battlescape o Moonscape X Skyshield
WHFB:
Scenery:
– Fortified Manor X Arcane Ruins o Dreadstone Blight o Temple of Skulls o Watchtower o Chapel o Skullvane Manse
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Thanks for the info, appreciate it.
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Awesome stuff. I really like the stone colour and weathering effects. I’d almost say the verdigris could be more pronounced, as could the rust with heavily rusted orange parts. However, that depends what stage of decay you go for. I really like all the details on those pieces. The first portal is just beautiful, even so the skulls on the backside are a bit too much for me. The dragon fries, however, is quite awesome.
You might be able to make some molds of the pieces (if they are out of print) and get more wall segments this way.
All in all lovely work and surely a fitting backdrop for any of your games..
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Thanks. I did think about the level fo weathering on the metals when I was painting them, and decided to go lighter rather than heavier.- Partly because I wanted some untarnished metal to still shine through, and partly because they’re not fully ruined areas – if the tapestries/banners had been ragged and torn then I would likely have weathered the pieces more heavily. Since the banner sculpts are pretty nice, I kept the banners clean, and the stonework adornments not completely degraded. I wonder what they do when it rains, though? I agree that the skulls are over the top (and the kind of thing you’d expect from GW in 2014), but I just choose to think of it as something like Kaplica Czaszek, only evil.
I’ve looked for the WarZone walls quite a few times in the last year, on the web, on eBay, and not seen them at all. Not too surprising I guess, given how niche a piece they must be. That’s not a bad idea at all on making some new wall sections. I’ve got some Oyumaru/Instant Mould, which shouldn’t wreck the existing paint (I hope!), and any awful casts I make can simply become ruined walls… hmmm…
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Beautiful work, might I ask if you know the company/model name for that archway with the skulls? It is exactly what I have been looking for and I am having no luck finding it anywhere.
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Thanks mate. I believe it was made by Grendel under contract from Heartbreaker – for 1st Edition Warzone. Prince August have what’s left of the current 1e WZ stock, but there’s no sign of the scenery on their page, nor on Scotia Grendel’s site. Though you might find something else that’s usable? – Just be aware that most of their stuff is drop-cast, so it’s flat and has no detail on the reverse side.
I suspect that they were made under contract rather than under licence, since if they were licenced, it’d have been a simple matter to sculpts over the Dark Legion icon on the floor of the archway and keep on selling that sculpt. Your best bet is probably eBay, though I suspect that they’d be quite rare and hard to find (though not necessarily expensive).
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Thank you much for the info, I’ve been searching high and low with no luck. I’ve found some that are good but nothing like you’ve got there its a great piece
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No worries. I’d just suggest keeping en eye out on eBay whenever you happen to be browsing it. I’ve managed to pick up a few “lost” kits from my youth as well as models I’d always wanted that way. You might be able to customise something like it using one of the drop-cast archways/doorways, a pile of cast skulls, and a bed of greenstuff/putty to smoosh them into. (Here’s one, but lots of places offer them) Best of luck!
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Hi guys, I have recently dug out some Warzone scenery I’ve had in my attic for a long time now. I have the ruined keep still in the box, the battlefield set, and some Dark Legion walls, doors, pillars, and portals. I was going to stick them on ebay, but someone directed me to this page first.
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Hey mate. If you’re interested in selling them, I guess you can list what you’ve got here or point them to your facebook with a list of prices. I’d probably be interested, but shipping from Éire to Australia might be a bit much. Lots of readers from the Isles here, though.
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I’m in Ireland and I ship back and forth to a mate in Sydney a few times a year.
Combined shipping is an achievable thing in small doses. So I might be able to help out if it’s a “must have” item Azazel.
Resin terrain is right at the top of the range of practicality for things like that in my experience, but the heart wants what the heart wants 🙂
If I can help, then I will. LMK.
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Thanks mate. I imagine that poster made an account just to see about selling his stuff and anyone interested would need to chase him down on facebook. I also expect that he’s probably after as much as he can get for the scenery – which is fine of course, but more than I’m going to care to spend on something like that. I’ve still got plenty of scenery to build and finish for the forseeable future – from those GW graveyard sets to the Mighty Fortress, so I’ll be right.
Much appreciated on the offer however – and if something comes up one day… perhaps an order from Scotia Grendel? 😉
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Fantastic!!
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