Category Archives: Wargame Scenery

Analysis paralysis: A Mantic BattleZones Bunker

by

14

Awhile ago, last year, and inspired by some terrain that Dakka user “Nerdfest” had built, I decided to dig out a bunch of my Mantic BattleZone sprues from their various Kickstarters that had been sitting untouched in storage tubs for years at this point, and make something. So over a rather enjoyable winter afternoon, I put together this bunker-thing. Being winter, there was little point even thinking about spraying it, so I let it sit, though the bare, grey plastic version did get used for a few 40k games.

Once summer rolled around, I gave it a spray. Dark Metallic Charcoal for the outside, and a sort-of undercoat of white for the interior. Now, I’m not sure where to go next with this thing. Broadly speaking, I can see three main options:

  1. Drybrush it various shades of metallic, for a rather generic finish.
  2. Paint it in military/generic “boring” tones that fit into quite a few different games. Military greens, or the more generic Greys or Tans. With or without things like signage or stancilled numbers and letters and so on and so forth.
  3. Paint it in “industrial/hive world” tones. Like the blue-grey from much of the original Necromunda card terrain. Or shades of green, or rusty reds, or…? Kinda like the above, but with more “pop” and of course, things like heavy rust and hazard stripes.

Even within those, there’s plenty of choice, though. So again: Analysis paralysis. Whatever the final verdict, I’ll probably put together a smaller building (4 squares) to go alongside this one and paint it in much the same scheme.

Anyone have any good ideas?

Technobridge!

by

11

Pegasus Hobbies Technobridge

Another scenic post today – Pegasus Hobbies’ Technobridge.

Pegasus Hobbies Technobridge

I picked this up quite awhile ago, got around to assembling it awhile ago, and then when we had a brief run of good weather several weeks ago I was finally able to paint it. Warm to hot weather is what I tend to need to get me motivated for any kind of scenery project, mostly so I can take things outside and spray them, and also because drying time is much improved. Box shot is taken from Pegasus’ website. I literally recycled the box (which I had kept for all this time) a week before I took these photos. Ooops!

Pegasus Hobbies Technobridge

I wanted it to look weathered and worn, so after the first spray coats of gunmetal and then a mid-silver, I played around with Vallejo Rust Washes, Orange paint and Pledge One Go floor wax (didn’t work out so great), drybrushing and a couple of different weathering powders.

Pegasus Hobbies Technobridge

I also wanted to emphasise the direction of years of traffic on the bridge, so I used a tissue (hi-tech modelling tools, here!) to “pull” the half-dried grime across the panels along the length of the bridge, creating a directionally weathered effect.

Pegasus Hobbies Technobridge

Here’s a scale shot, so you can see roughly how big the thing is. I didn’t have any vehicles ready, but it could easily fit a single Land Raider, but it’s just a bit too tight to fit two modern Rhinos side by side – you could probably fit a pair of original RT-era rhinos next to each other, though.

Pegasus Hobbies Technobridge

Unfortunately, the thing is too large for my light box, so this was the best I could do to see the sides of the thing once complete. Overhead light is obviously much stronger on the table. While this can easily be considered sci-fi/40k/Necromunda scenery due to its Industrial look and feel, those same design factors actually make it pretty appropriate for a lot of modern settings as well. This is A Good Thing.