September Monthly Round-Up (Season of Scenery: Extended Edition)

Another way overdue round-up here. I’ve actually had these photos sitting on my drive for months ready to go, but frankly I just wasn’t feeling up to posting. You know how it gets sometimes when posting on your blog feels more like work than hobby or fun? Yeah, that. I guess I finally got all the individual updates done and then burnout hit and I didn’t force myself to write this post when I “should” have. I mean, mid-October is when work becomes much more intense running through the rest of the year until the week before/of Christmas, and I do tend to disappear in November, so it tracks.

Anyway, it turns out I managed to paint a very decent amount of stuff in September before dropping off. The focus still largely being on Nu-Epic/Battletech scaled terrain, but with a bit of extra variation and finishing off of other things.

One thing I particularly like about a lot of these terrain pieces is their versatility. A lot of this stuff primarily aimed at the tiny-mans scale still works okay right up to heroic 32mm or even the 40mm Crisis Protocol/Shatterpoint scale. A while back, Frank the Tankfanboy asked to see a cityscape photo of my tiny buildings – I still haven’t gotten one and still have more work to do to get one I’m going to be happy with (more terrain to finish) but hopefully these shots will suffice in the meantime of a weird looking outpost surrounded by mesas and patches of broken ground!

The focus in September remained very much on terrain for Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery (Extended Edition) which culminated in the return of the Prodigal Sun as Dave was absent for some time for personal reasons – returning from his blogging break pretty much just as I dropped out. As it happens, EVERYTHING I completed in September counted towards it!

So what did I manage to complete in September 2025?

In all, I completed:

Fabricator’s Lair’s: Botanicae building, 8x Generators, a “1×2 Medium A” building/segment, a 2×4 Medium Building and a 2x of 2x2x2 silos, Grimdark Industrial Promethium Reprocessing Factory and Grimdark Industrial Forge.

Wargame Forge’s Ruined Gothic Cathedral, nonPareil Institute’s Power Generator, and a family of 9x variously (re)shaped and (re)sized Propane Tanks by Syllogy.

9x Tinnut BattleTerrain Rough Terrain Tiles, 11x Thunderhead Studios Hextech Hills, a 20th Century Fox logo by Isekai Heavy Industries.

2x signs from AMG’s Marvel Crisis Protocol Cosmic Terrain Pack (I need to do a group shot once I figure out where the other elements have gone!), the Beastman Herdstone for AoS/ToW from Citadel and 6x GF9 Battlefield in a Box Sandstone Rock Outcrops.

57 total. Unless I’ve miscounted.

Oh, and there’s also a little subway entrance piece from Fabricator’s Lair that got missed. You can see it between the Botanicae, Industrial Forge and one of the Propane Tanks near the Fox Logo. So 58. Not too shabby for a single month’s work!

Not too bad a haul. Looking at it all together, one realisation does occur. There are no “miniatures” in there at all. No humans or humanoids, or even any vehicles. It’s all scenery and terrain.

Last time we did this, I’d counted a total of 338 models completed, so adding in this September haul the new total comes to 396, so that’s the “365” target well and truly broken in 2025.

I have also done some painting since I last posted, so once I’ve had a chance to take some new photos, I’ll start posting the October-November-December stuff and do a combined round-up for those models. It may or may not start before the New Year because we’re still in the Family Obligation Fortnight for a couple more days and then there’s other important things to get done once the period of seeing people is finished up – you know how that goes this time of year… I was crawling around on the roof fixing things this morning – not fun!

Thunderhead Studio Hextech 3D Prints: Battletech Hills

Thunderhead Studio Hextech 3D Prints: Battletech Hills

More desert-ish themed 3D printed terrain today. We are revisiting the Hextech Free Sample Pack (Battletech Compatable) More specifically, the sample hill pieces. As I often do with these things, I printed each of the sample pieces twice, one regular and one mirrored – except for the one I accidently printed three times! Unless I missed one? or two? There are six sample pieces listed in the download.

Thunderhead Studio Hextech 3D Prints: Battletech Hills

Once printed, these sat for literally months while I procrastinated on how to paint them before using Season of Scenery as the motivation to get them done and out of the way. These sculpts are samples from four different ranges of hills sold by Hextech – in the end I just went for a uniform desert look to get them done. If I ever really, truly NEED more battletech hills, but painted for a temperate theme then I can always go through the process of printing and painting a new set(!)

Thunderhead Studio Hextech 3D Prints: Battletech Hills

The painting process was pretty simple – cover in Vallejo (or was it AK?) Sandy Desert paste, then paint in slightly-thinned Sepia Vallejo Model Wash Dip. Let that disgusting stuff dry. Drybrush the hell out of them with a sand colour, then drybrush the tops of the mesas in a lighter sand. Once dry, I went outside and played with adding pigments to them in various ratios, then sprayed them in a Matte that ended up much more satin to seal it all in and tone the pigments in. I still think they turned out pretty decently.

Here’s a quick light box shot, so you can see the final colours a little better.

Thunderhead Studio Hextech 3D Prints: Battletech Hills

As you can see, they work well enough for a “desert mesa” look, despite the hex pattern – and it also seems I’ve gotten enough stuff done in September for a simple desert table suitable for battletech and no-building Imperialis. Let’s check that.

Thunderhead Studio Hextech 3D Prints: Battletech Hills

They work fine as smaller elements for a “skirmish” sized 40k/Combat Patrol game – though you would also want some larger LOS blocking elements as well.

Thunderhead Studio Hextech 3D Prints: Battletech Hills

The little collection does appear to work ok for something like Marvel Crisis Protocol, especially if they were spread out a little more as MCP game tables often appear to be. A battle in the Wasteland we saw in Deadpool vs Wolverine perhaps?

So yeah, these Hextech STLs are pretty good, I think. I may have to pick up some of the paid packs in future – especially if I enjoy Alpha Strike enough to dive into “Proper” Battletech using hex maps and height levels. And yes – this is another 11 pieces of terrain towards Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery ’25 – Extended Edition.