Confrontation Starter Set Scenery: Hill Ruins. (Desert Scheme)

Over the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. Amongst that stuff has been some Rackham Confrontation starter sets from the prepaint plastics days. Griffins vs. Wolfen. While I’ve not done much with the Wolfen to date, the Griffins have recently been multibased on cardboard for Kings of War, and I’ve done a bit of work on the terrain. Since I’ve got more than one of these Hill Ruins, I decided to paint them in different ways. The temperate climate hill is still being worked on, but I finished the desert scheme hill, and so here it is!

Rackham Confrontation Hill Ruins – Desert

Rackham Confrontation Hill Ruins – Desert

Rackham Confrontation Hill Ruins – Unpainted and Desert

I’ve been using weathering powders a lot more on things recently, and I found them to be a bit of a double-edged sword on this piece of terrain. I thought it looked great without the powders, and it lost a fair bit of the distinct looks of the stone slabs when I added them, but I felt that the realism of the sand gathered between the stones made it worthwhile. Added some grass tufts around, just enough to make it look a bit more “real” but not so many as to hinder gaming on the piece, which after all is the whole point of the thing. As I keep saying, I do quite like terrain that can work well across a variety of games, and this one is characterful enough that it works for pretty much anything – though the dragon might be a little out of place in the Libyan desert of WW2, it might still pass if we squint a little.

From the Painting Desk #7 – Warlord Games T-34/85 Soviet Tanks

A bit of a WIP update on the T-34s that I started assembling just the other day. I included them in the update a few days ago – partly to keep me motivated. At the time, my plans to finish them were “I still need to hit the whole thing with PSC weathering spray and have a play with weathering powders and the like. Add some decals and then finish them.” As it tuened out, it was a bit more complicated. I decided to forego the PSC weathering spray on these (I’ll still use it when I get around to my 15mm stuff) and instead pretty much spent the entire day today working on these. AP washes, multiple weathering powder washes, oil washes, pin washes, foam weathering, more weathering powders, Tamiya Weathering Master kits,  Decals, Micro Sol, some freehand and some touching up. And in all kinds of order.

Hopefully I’ll get the final bits finished tonight or tomorrow, and take some better quality photos with a nice background and such – but in the meantime, here’s some WIP shots showing the progression. Enough words – have some pictures!