Today’s scenery post is from a “new” company to the blog – Micro Art Studios and their Outpost Vents. I found these in 2-packs pretty much by chance whole browsing a local online place, and picked up two sets. Because that’s how I roll.
Given their size. I wanted them to fit in nicely with both larger scale games (think 40k) as well as smaller games like Necromunda and Kill Team, with more densly-packed industrial terrain. With this in mind I went with Dark Green as the scheme, since I find too much grey to be a bit boring, and a nice dark Sacramento (or Dark Angels, if you will) black-green fits in nicely for both 40k and “military” feels as well as industial settings.
While these pieces most definately pass the 4-foot test, up close they’re unfortunately riddled with literally dozens upon dozens of tiny (and less tiny) bubble-holes. I wasn’t super happy with them, but by the same token there’s no fucking way I was going to spend the time on these required ot fill them all in. This is one of the big reasons who I bought them a year ago on September 2019 and only got around to making myself paint them now. Partly because of Dave Stone’s Winter of Scenery Challenge but honestly even moreso because the fuckers were sitting in a giant stack on the table we’ve been playing the D&D boardgames on, so they were constantly in my face. A good enough combo to encourage me to bring them inside and finally paint them.
So we’ve got not one, but four of these things, with an endless number of annoying holes in them. What to do? Well, by now you’ve seen my solution in the two close-up pics. I used paint to lean into the problem that the bubble holes presented, and tried to “Turn Chicken Shit into Chicken Salad” (thanks to Jim Cornette for that one – just don’t think about it too hard!) I added a bit of metallic paint to each and every one of those holes and most of the dings in the foam, then added some orange for rust, and then added streaks and pooling where the rust had run over time. Along with the other weathering it seems to have worked out pretty well in the end, and dinged up machinery suits pretty much any of the genres or games I’d use this with – 40k and it’s environs, general sci-fi, and something like this wouldn’t even look too far out of place in a (slightly-sci-fi) post-apocalyptic wasteland.
So now I have four pretty good looking and substantially sized terrain pieces for any of my Sci-Fi gaming. They were pretty affordable – especially given their size – and despite the millions of bubbles weren’t too hard or arduous to paint.
Done!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
They look nice, and the pic of them next to those Rhinos really shows off their size. Shame about the bubbling, but your fix worked really well!
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Yeah, they’re nicely substantial and take up a good amount of space, unlike so many of the tiny things I tend to get painted…
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They’re cool. Big and chunky too.
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Yeah, in a way they’re almost like sci-fi rocky outcrops. You know those hills that aren’t so great for models to run up, but they can kinda stand on top of, but mostly they just break up line of sight…
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So cool!
Would love to see some of those on my post-apo gaming board 🙂
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Yeah, they would look great, I think!
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Your end result looks excellent, you mentioned it was made of a foam, have seen other companies use this, and all have suffered from the holes, your solution to the problem works really well
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Thanks Dave. Even with the casting flaws, I’m still good with them considering their inexpensive price and substantial size. It’s an acceptable trade-off, and being industrial the “fix” via was also acceptable…
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Yep I really like those a lot, might have to go and have a look for them on the net, I could see them on a “post apoc” table.
Lovely solution to the bubble problem too, great stuff as always.
Cheers Roger.
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They seem pretty readily available. I guess COVID-shipping-interference might be a factor depending on how close you can find them, but I’d love to see some done up in proper worn and rusted post-apoc colours!
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I think that your weathering covered any defects exceptionally well. I could not see any, and I love the heft of these pieces. Green was a good color choice too.
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Thanks Mark – the green works well for 40k and is also a proper industrial colour. It was either that or grey, but the more overt military overtones took the win. (Though grey would have still looked good, I think!)
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Those look good. They should make decent line of sight blockers.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete – sci-fi hills for when actual hill models won’t be approprate for the table!
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Argh, resin bubbles are the worst. I find that most manufacturers of terrain have products that are riddled with them. I bought some TTCombat resin pieces for example and they had similar and worse problems which was aggravating and disappointing. Your strategy of dealing with them was very smart. I like the dark green colors you chose too. Perfect for 40k but also that military feeling like you mentioned. These are some great pieces of terrain and I would imagine they’ll be very useful in the future too!
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Yeah, these were probably amongst the worst in terms of sheer numbers but ironically the least bad when it came to interfering with the actual model or paint due to the way I was able to cover the issue. Looking forward to seeing your TTCombat stuff once it’s done as well now!
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I’d chalk that up to your creative thinking/problem solving. One thing that Micro Art do do well is their bases. Those are worth taking a look at if you haven’t already done so.
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Thanks mate – they do make some great looking bases, but I find I generally prefer ones that are a little more neutral, or add the little details myself. Even GW’s Shattered Dominions bases I often have a hard time with – I’m barely comfortable with recently splitting my models into temperate brown/desert/urban/mechanicus/dungeon themes. I’m also too tight to pay the money for decorated resin bases!
Secret Weapon had a KS for some very nice looking ones recently as well, but again a bit too specific for me,
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Shame about the bubbles but you’ve turned these around nicely. I’ve had my eye out for some big fans like that for my (very slow burning at the moment) Necromunda terrain collection – knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time and advise your past self – would you still get them? I’m in two minds myself but these are the closest I’ve seen to what I’m looking for.
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