Category Archives: Wargame Scenery

Mantic Terrain Crate Lookout/Observation Platform

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Mantic Terrain Crate BattleZones Lookout/Observation Platform

The next decent-sized bit of terrain I’ve finished this month is this …Lookout, or Observation Platform. I stole the build concept from someone else’s construction that I had found from some random GIS. Sadly, I’ve lost the page so I’m unable to give the original architect their credit right now, but if I ever see it again, I’ll edit this post and drop it in. The reason I really liked the look of it was, essentially, the flexibility it offers.

Mantic Terrain Crate BattleZones Lookout/Observation Platform

This is why I once again decided to go for a dark green – so it could fit into either a battlefield or industrial setting role – though I brought the shade up a little. I think it’d also work for post-apoc settings, though for that a bit more paint chipping and wear would probably help, though I’ve added a bit of that kind of weathering regardless.

Mantic Terrain Crate BattleZones Lookout/Observation Platform

I added the lambda/chevron decals to it as well to give it a small visual tie to the Sedition Wars barricades I painted several years ago. I figures since they both had dark green paint in common, and I wanted to use some more decals to add a touch of interest to this piece. Sure, the shade of dark green is quite different, but, you know, close enough. 😛

Mantic Terrain Crate BattleZones Lookout/Observation Platform

The other decals I used were of course Roman numerals inside a yellow circle, from the many Ultramarines/Space Marines decal sets. Again, combined with the dark green it creates a small visual consistency link to the Micro Art Studios Outpost Vents I showed yesterday. (Or in the background of the pic up top!) And yeah, I had some lighting issues today for this one. Due to the size of the thing, it didn’t fit in my light box properly, and so due to the placement of lights for the gaming table, I had a choice of dark front barriers, or a dark platform. So I kinda went with a mix in the end.

Once again, I’m submitting this for Dave Stone’s Winter of Scenery Challenge but . With one day left of August, I’ve got another 2 posts worth of terrain for it already ready to go up over the next two days, plus depending on how productive I can be tomorrow, another 4-6 posts worth of terrain that are thaaaaaaat close to being finished before September. Plus a personal round-up post. Gonna be a busy day tomorrow!

Micro Art Studios’ Outpost Vents

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Micro Art Studios' Outpost Vents

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.

Micro Art Studios' Outpost Vents

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.

Micro Art Studios' Outpost Vents

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!