Category Archives: Sci-Fi Gaming

Review – DUST Airfield Accessory Pack – Quonset Huts

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I’ve looked at these in the past, when I got some of these models as part of one of the DUST campaign sets – Operation Icarus. Basically, I liked the models so much that I bought a standalone set as well. While playing a game of KoW recently against Marouda, I decided to open and assemble the set while I waited for her to make her agonisingly slow move. This is the result.

DUST – Airfield Accessory Pack – Quonset Huts

While they’re sized for DUST to take up a terrain square each, they can easily be butted up against one another for more realistic, longer huts.

They come stacked up in the box.

Unlike the ones that come with Operation Icarus, these ones do not come assembled.

End-Walls

They do come separated from the sprue though, and pretty nicely clean – making assembly a doddle.

Slide the two walls in and you’re assembled!

With a bit of plastic cement, I went from opening the box to having them all assembled inside 10 minutes.

 

Just after taking the last shots, I went outside with a rattle can of Rust-Oleum spray in Nutmeg and had them all base coated. When the weather fines up for a little while at a time I can spray again (like, when I’m not at work!) I’ll give them a second light coat. Then I’ll spray on a bit of olive green and such. What I’m getting at is that they’re as easy to paint up as they are to assemble. And if I weren’t so anal-retentive at times they’d already be “good enough”. (Gotta do the window frames and such before I can call them “finished”, you see!)

As an inexpensive box of easily-assembled and easily painted terrain, I can’t recommend them highly enough. I’ll show them again once they’re 100% finished, which is more down to the current winter weather here in Melbourne making spraying difficult and proper photography a depressing proposition. I’ll (probably) get around to using them for DUST at some stage, but I like them because they’re flexible enough to be used anywhere in games set from WWII right up to modern times and beyond. Since my vision of that 41st Millenium that’s so popular encompasses architecture beyond the current aesthetic of incredibly gaudy pieces, or Eagle Turrets with Penis Cannons, I’m very happy to include terrain pieces like these on my personal 40k battlefields as well.

Recommended!

 

 

Zavod 311 – Post 2: Theorycrafting and the building begins.

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Zavod 311 Train and Warehouses.

 

I’ve bought a pile of the $1 sale Dave Graffam models. I was initially looking for some free papercraft buildings that I could use as templates for the storage buildings (in the background of the train pic above) and eventually found some of the DG ones that seemed to have potential for cutout templates for foam core. (And then bought a bunch more for Fantasy/medieval cityscapes down the line, because, hey – $1 each!) Not sure when the sale ends. The best I could find is June 3rd, which was already days past when I found the sale, and it’s still running now (I bought another one this morning). Here’s some freebies and examples:

 

Free Hovel: http://www.wargamevault.com/product/82128/Hovel-Paper-Model
Free Coach House: http://www.wargamevault.com/product/84421/Coach-House-Paper-Model
Free Observatory: http://www.wargamevault.com/product/92342/Observatory-Free-Paper-Model
$1 Inventor’s House: http://www.wargamevault.com/product/92484/Inventors-House-Paper-Model
Free Cargo Pod: http://www.wargamevault.com/product/115255/Free-Cargo-Pod-Paper-Model

 

Dave Graffam’s Papercraft Warehouse – the basis for my Foam Core Soviet Warehouses.

I decided to start on mine last night. After an hour or so in the shed, this is what I had, drying.

Dave Graffam Warehouse on Foam Core

Lift-off roof on Dave Graffam Warehouse.

Leonard the Cat helps me build scenery.

I then came inside, because it’s damned cold out there at night. I then found myself printing three more sets and then back out there, to cut the templates and adhesive-spray them down to more foam core.

Graffam Warehouse Templates glued down to foam core.

This morning I cut them out. I can’t do much more until I get some dressmaker’s pins. The little pinboard pins I used on the test model are just too small to be that effective. Notmuch else I can do today. Well. I guess I could bevel the edges, but I can’t be bothered right now. I wish I could find a tool to bevel the edges of foam core cleanly, since my box-cutter method is pretty rough. Any ideas?

Graffam Warehouse Cutouts.

Dave Graffam Warehouse.

Spacemans and toy car for scale. I’ll have four of these at the rail yard part of the map.

Once I’ve got all four built, I’ll cut out the large and small doors, and any windows I decide to add. I want them to be consistent, after all. Then they can be based.

These.

Obviously they’re not exactly the same, but they’ll be close enough, and representative of those warehouses. Except a Dreadnought will fit into my buildings! 😉

 

I’ve also been thinking about the tanks. 24+ tanks is a lot of tanks to paint, and I’m not typically fast with that sort of thing. Clearly, batch painting is the only way that it will ever happen. So I’ve worked out a plan of action. Should be rapid and reasonably painless. Maybe even slightly enjoyable. My new Korean best friend – Langley said he can hopefully send them towards the end of next week, and then it’s a good 3 weeks from Korea to Australia, and then I tend to do a weekly mail pickup on Fridays.

First assembly.

Prime black (spray can). Airbrush the crevasses that I miss.
Rustoleum Brown or red-brown
Airbrush various patchy different shades of red-brown through orange.
Salt.
Spray can an approximation for the appropriate undercoat colour for T-72s (research this in the meantime, then get a “close enough” from the hardware store)
Salt.
Spray can an approximation of the right colour for Soviet armour. There are a few specific cans made for FoW players by PSC and Army Painter, and they’re twice the size of the little Tamiya, etc cans you can get.
Salt.
Patchy highlights and such via airbrush.
Salt.
Maybe some badly-applied camo (as in the GY pics).
Airbrush with Pledge for a clearcoat.
Wash with oil paints.

Let dry for a day or two.

Mineral spirit some of the mess off.
Remove Salt.
Maybe some really subtle metallic edge/scratch highlights, but probably not. They’re supposed to be rotting hulks, after all.
Gloss Varnish
Weathering powder.
Matt Varnish.

Those spray colours (and spray varnish) will take forever to dry between coats, and so will the oil paints. So I’m hoping I can maybe get them done in a week or so, but it could well take two weeks or even three or four since I’ll also have to go to work, and it’ll be the mid-winter (which is obviously gak-awful for spray-can work. Or not pissing down rain. Or light by the time I get home from work.

Hm, after writing all that, I don’t know how much fun those 45 middle steps are going to be. Hope I still have my enthusiasm for the project when they arrive in about a month.

 

That’s probably it until next weekend at the earliest!