Yearly Archives: 2018

Mantic Terrain Crate – First bits of painted scatter.

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Mantic Terrain Crate
A few weeks ago I had my Mantic Terrain Crate Kickstarter pledge arrive. I basically got the “one of everything” pledge, so it was interesting to go through all of the bits and pieces, and see what came out nicely, what was warped and fixable, what was warped to hell, and what I could just start working on and knock out quickly and painlessly. Of course, I ended up mixing the pieces together without regard for which set they came from, since my intent was completely to work out which ones I wanted to paint first.
Mantic Terrain Crate Logs
Logs are pretty simple, but they work for what they are. Sure, you could do much nicer and more detailed logs with real wood, but these are nice enough and easy to paint. So they work for me.
Mantic Terrain Crate, Hay Bales, Boxes, Crates
Similarly, bales of hay and wooden crates are fine. These single crates are detailed on 5 sides rather than 6, so they’ll always have the “grate” side on the top. I’m fine with that, but it’s just worth noting. The hay bales on the other hand are detailed on all six sides.
Mantic Terrain Crate, Boxes, Crates
The multi-crate stacks are pretty decent as well. They’re like a similar but larger version of the old resin ones that were sold by Grendel (and probably others) since the 1990’s. They’re pretty solid bits of scatter and can be used as background stuff in many genres of game or even as objective markers. I gave some of the individual boxes in the stack some (very) subtle differentiation with extra glazes of Flesh, Soft and Strong Tone, but wanted to keep them all pretty similar. Just enough variation so that the viewer doesn’t notice the variation while also adding enough small difference so that you don’t consciously notice that they all look exactly the same. So while this might not be a super exciting post, and it’s certainly not a comprehensive review of the Terrain Crate stuff, but these pieces are the first that I’ve painted, and they’re all of solid quality – especially once painted. They’re not boutique resin-level quality, but for the price, they’re pretty nice. I’ll continue to offer my thoughts on the Terrain Crate stuff as I continue to work my way through them.

WarZone 1st Edition: Edward S. Murdoch – Imperial Golden Lion Hero

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WarZone 1st Edition: Edward S. Murdoch - Imperial Golden Lion Hero, Heartbreaker Hobbies

I’m back to posting. Today’s model is one of my old 1st edition WarZone models. I actually updated this guy last month and even included him in the monthly round-up, but I somehow forgot to give him his own post at the time. Yeah, I’ve been real tired. Anyway, this model is a named hero from the Imperial (British-themed) faction. This guy is Edward S. Murdoch – Imperial Golden Lion Hero. He’s apparently an ex-Blood Beret (Not-Parachute Regiment, I guess) who is now a Golden Lion. To be quite honest, I don’t remember enough else about the minutia of the WarZone background to go into more detail – and besides, it’s not important here.

WarZone 1st Edition: Edward S. Murdoch - Imperial Golden Lion Hero, Heartbreaker Hobbies

The paint scheme I gave him completely disregards whetever the WarZone canon might be, and instead he was painted to go into my Imperial Guard force as a Lieutenant to lead one of my infantry platoons. As such, his outfit has been painted as carapace armour in an Auscam pattern, along with a sand-coloured beret. A plastic pouch from a 1:35 scale US infantry model replaces the slot on his belt for his sword. Can you tell? No? That’s the point. 🙂

WarZone 1st Edition: Edward S. Murdoch - Imperial Golden Lion Hero, Heartbreaker Hobbies

This shot shows off the unit markings I added (via decals) to 40k-ify him. Aside from those and replacing his sword, the model is stock. The figure was painted way back in either the mid-late 1990s’ to the mid-2000’s (I can’t remember) so all I’ve really done here last month is a touch-up on a few parts to repair a bit of scuff, and rebasing him on a 32mm, which suits a figure of his stature much better than the 25mm base ever did.

I’ve been struggling to care about blogging for the last few weeks – mostly due to burnout and exhaustion – both mental and physical. I’ve tried to at least kind of keep up on other people’s blog posts when I can, but there are a few people whose recent posts have suffered from my lack of energy to comment on meaningfully – and of course the Technical August roundup is now a week behind. Turns out there were a lot more contributions than I realised/remembered for Technical August, so the round-up post is *part* done as I got started last weekend, and I’m hoping to have time this weekend to finish it. At least the next three weeks of work should be a lot less full-on so I can start to rest up, the weather is changing for the better, and I can finally go get some work done on my knee, so things should start looking up a little – barring needing to go into work this Saturday…