Pick Up A Pint

 I've been pretty effusive in my praise for Atomic Laser Cut Designs' MDF kits, and have built several of them. Well, I posted pictures of my Urgent Care on Facebook and tagged the company in the post, and Vince, the owner, was pleased enough with my work to send me a complimentary copy of one of the latest kits - a long, narrow retail space with a small back room and a trap-door in the roof in addition to the normal front and back doors. As soon as I saw the design, I knew it'd be perfect for a liquor store - one of the businesses I'd been wanting for my table but hadn't found an option I was happy with for yet. 

 

I started off with a spray of Montana Gold "Sahara Beige" for the exterior, picking out the bricks first in a raw sienna craft paint, then doing singular bricks in shades of brown and tan. My usual lost dog posts and "No Entry - Staff Only" signs are on display as well, along with some Greenstuff World graffiti decals. The sign over the front door is printed paper, cut to fit over a 50x25mm Renedra flat base painted black. 

I didn't bother with a printed paper floor this time, in part because the gray spraypaint I put down with on splotchy and with a lot of texture. Bare concrete floor it is! 

The interior walls were primed white and painted with a bottle of craft paint called "Sea Glass," a very pale blue-green tone. I printed a bunch of alcohol ads scaled down to serve as posters on the walls, along with "No Refunds" and "No Sales to Under-21s" signs. I need to get a counter for the store, but once I do it'll go right in front of where these signs are hung.

 The backroom has a pallet and stack of cardboard boxes, both of which I pulled out of a Mantic Terrain Crate set - "Abandoned Factory." To this I added a pair of 3D-printed boxes I had laying around.

 What's in the boxes? Who knows - there might be "business" being conducted in the back room unrelated to liquor sales...

 More furniture to come - I'll need to get some shelves and a counter at the very least. But considering that I basically dropped everything (except the zombies, which I mostly painted at my usual Monday night paint-hangouts) to start this kit immediately, I think I've done a pretty good job.

It's a little different from previous ALCD kits I've built - the base plate is different, lacking the front sidewalk and with the walls plugging flush into the edges of it instead of slotting into holes cut into the base. It's not bad, just takes slightly more effort to ensure the walls line up with each other. I've got a second one, because I ordered a copy of this kit before I knew Vince was sending me a complimentary one! 

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 168

Terrain Acquired: 2

Terrain Painted: 8

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 10

 

Here Come the Zombies

 The first 20 Zombies are finished, which means hopefully I can get a game of Zombie RV in sooner rather than later!

 This first batch are 50/50 Copplestone Castings and Recreational Conflict figures. I like that there's themed groupings within the Recreational Conflict line - this batch has four zombies in paper hospital gowns, a zombie doctor and two zombie nurses - one in scrubs and a hairnet, right up front, and one in the little white uniform who's not super visible in the group shot. 

So let's break this group down into smaller groups, shall we?

First up are the Copplestone "Zombie Troopers." This was a fun batch, and I kept their clothing uniform - Army Painter "Woodland Camo" pants, Reaper "Desert Stone" shirts, washed with Army Painter "Strong Tone" and highlighted with the base color. The body armor was Reaper "Midnight Blue," washed with "Strong Tone," then highlighted with "Twilight Blue."

 Next, the Copplestone "Plague Zombies":

 I appreciate that two of them are in their underwear. 

Next up, the Recreational Conflict zombies - Doctor, nurses, and four patients in paper hospital gowns:

 And yes:

 And finally, for now, another three Recreational Conflict sculpts I grabbed from my primed pile:

 The one on the left is a surfer, I just still need to paint and affix the remnants of his surfboard, which appears to have been bitten in half by a shark.

 What's next? I've got another 14 Recreational Conflict sculpts to work my way through. But first...

I have to update another line on the tracker as well - Atomic Laser Cut Designs sent me a complimentary copy of one of their kits! They rolled out a new retail store kit and I'd commented positively on it on their Facebook page, as well as provided some free promotion on my own page. Next thing I knew, a copy of the kit showed up in my mailbox - just hours after I'd ordered a copy! Now I've got two; in keeping with the run-down, seedy and a bit low-life vibes I've gone for with my terrain, they're going to be a liquor store and an adult bookstore. I'm already working on the liquor store, and here's a sneak peek:

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 164

Terrain Acquired: 2

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 10

 

Hitting the Open Road

 One of the things I'll need if I want to start playing Zombie RV (besides zombies) is... an RV! Fortunately, I had one in my backlog - a clever 3D-printed kit from Miniature Tanks here in the US. I got a bunch of vehicles from them for Christmas this past year, and I decided it was time to get this one assembled and painted. Assembly was pretty easy, though I did need to use a pair of tweezers to glue on the railings at the top and the silver bits on the side - weight supports when parked, I'm guessing? 

 

Because it's a 1970s Ford F-150,  I started looking up 1970s paint jobs, and found a pretty sharp-looking black, red-orange and silver example. I decided to change the red-orange to just plain red, and got to work. Except for the headlights and taillights, everything here is just done with cheap craft paint instead of expensive hobby paint. 

 I painted the license plate yellow with blue lettering to match the color plates on my own car, and carefully freehanded "ZRV" in lieu of trying to squeeze on an authentic plate number. 

It's not going to win any awards but it's a solid addition to my scatter collection, and I'm looking forward to seeing it on the table. 

The Last Liners are never far from hand so obliged for a scale shot.

 

Miniatures Acquired: 178

Miniatures Painted: 129

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 10

 

Urgent Care - You're Gonna Need It!

 While I still have furniture to paint and glue into place, I've completed the building itself for this Urgent Care center from Atomic Laser Cut Designs - making this my fifth building, and sixth kit overall, from them. As always, I've done a little customization and decoration to make it feel a little more alive.

 The exterior walls have gotten some graffiti, courtesy some GreenStuffWorld decals, as well as some lost dog signs and a "no littering" sign I pulled off Google Image Search and resized before taking to my local office supply store to print out. The windows (including the window separating the receptionist's area from the waiting room) have "glass" cut from overhead projector acetate sheets and glued into place.

 The floors are likewise printed paper, from a set of floor patterns I got from Sarissa Precision. There was a lot of careful measuring, re-measuring and cutting, believe me! 

 Inside, we've got more signs in the waiting room (including one on the receptionist's window reminding patrons to be polite, based on ones I've actually seen in waiting rooms post-pandemic), and a bulletin board in the receptionist's office. 

The one piece of furniture I've painted and glued into place so far is an air conditioning vent from OshiroModelTerrain. Most of the rest of the furniture I've got to paint is also from Oshiro, save for a pair of bench seats for the waiting room from GreenStuffWorld.

 I had some nerves going into this kit - it's one of the most complex Atomic Laser Cut Designs offers, with multiple interior rooms, and I knew I wanted to split the flooring between wood and tile. And yeah, I snapped a piece while I was test-fitting. But other than that, I just took my time and did a lot of test-fitting and sanding and cutting and ultimately it was less stressful a process than I feared it would be. 

In others news... while I'm not keen on zombie movies or TV shows much any more (post-pandemic they feel a little too close), I've gotten the bug to try out one of the solo zombie apocalypse wargames on the market - specifically, Zombie RV, which I know my friend Mike over at Lead Legionaries has spent some time playing. Thing of it is - I don't have any zombies! So an order was placed, and I fall well behind on my painted vs acquired tracker! At least they should be fairly fast and easy to paint up...

 

Miniatures Acquired: 173

Miniatures Painted: 129

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 9

 

Here's Your Sign

 Another piece of terrain for my modern tables, this one has been sitting awaiting attention for a bit. This is a straightforward roadside billboard from Atomic Laser Cut Designs, that went together a treat, without too much sanding. 

 The base was sprayed cement gray and the sign itself a dark brown, before getting a dusty drybrushing of tan craft paint. The actual advertising was what I could knock out with my slightly-busted black and white inkjet printer at home; I'll probably end up doing at least two more of these and I'll make the trip to Office Max for color printing for those, with billboards for local defunct ambulance chasing lawyers and a used car salesman who had omnipresent ads and slogans for years.  

The base got some glue painted on it and dipped in some gray "fine ballast" from Woodland Scenics before getting tarted up with a few tufts and a 3D printed cardboard box. I've got a bag full of assorted little cardboard boxes a friend printed up for me and I think they add some visual interest.

My friend Chris and I are looking at getting some Fistful of Kung Fu in this month, and martial artists are actually something I don't have much in the way of; so I've ordered some street fighters and ninjas from Crooked Dice to flesh out life on the mean streets of Tabletop Town. And speaking of fleshing things out, I've got a dozen civilians (well, mostly civilians) on my painting bench at the moment, with most of them nearly at the point of just needing their hair painted. 

Time to update the tracker - and I've been going back and forth as to whether the billboard counts as scatter or full-blown terrain. I'm going to count it as terrain.

 

Miniatures Acquired: 149

Miniatures Painted: 113

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 6

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 8

 

Another Monster and Some Terrain Faffing

 I had had every intention of starting work on some samurai terrain. And then a buddy started enthusing about the game "Five Parsecs From Home" and the next thing I knew, I had a bunch of 3D printed scifi terrain that I'd bought years ago and, at best, hit with a coat of pale blue-gray spray paint, sitting on my work bench. The rulebook for Five Parsecs From Home should be here Friday. It definitely does seem like something up my alley, and I'm trying to treat it as something I can use figures and terrain I already own for so it's not really a new project. 

We'll see how that goes.

But I did finish painting another monster for my Majestic 13 stable. This is another one of the Zombicide: Invader "Abominations" I bought off a friend, this one the "Stomper Abomination." I have no idea what any of it means in Zombicide, but it's a nifty sculpt that painted up well. I used the "Coconut Crab" painting technique across it's shell and I think it turned out really well, and was a surprisingly fast and easy process - I think I did most of the painting in a single evening.

 And I painted four pieces of scifi scatter terrain to my satisfaction. These are some scifi cargo containers, printed from STLs by "WArLayer" that I ordered off Etsy back in 2019 and have been sitting unpainted since then. I hit them with a coat of gunmetal gray spray paint, gave them an oily-looking wash, then drybrushed with silver craft paint before adding some striping and detailing the screens.

 While I had the silver craft paint out, I finished a bit of detailing on my 3D printed video store that my friend Dave printed for me last year. I'd painted the exterior before Wargames Among the Warplanes last year but hadn't gotten around to the interior until about a month or two ago. All that was left was painting the window frames on the inside and gluing some signage to the interior walls, so I got that taken care of last night.

Two of my favorite 80s B-grade horror movies!

 

I am still waiting on some furniture (a counter and some video shelves) to fully furnish it, and Dave has had the STLs for that for printing for a bit. I hadn't realized he only fires up his resin printer once every few months when he has a bunch of things he can print all at once. 

I did order a few more figures for Majestic 13 as well, so let's update the tracker:

 

Miniatures Acquired: 137

Miniatures Painted: 113

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 8

 

The Hounds of...Maybe Not War, Exactly, But...

 Two more figures off the workbench - a pair of Pugs from Dunkeldorf, sculpted by the Pugmeister himself, Jason Wiebe. These were fast, easy and amusing to paint. I could see using these in a scenario where a VIP must not only be protected/captured, but their precious dogs as well. Having these move randomly across the board with player characters in pursuit...sounds like fun to me. 

 I've got a baker's dozen of other figures - samurai, bandits, the oni - moving along towards completion, slowly but surely. I'm only getting about an hour's time per night to work and I'm at the stage where I'm doing more of the detail work versus broad brush strokes. 

I've also had some terrain come in to work on: Three sets of Feudal Japanese terrain from Things From The Basement here in the USA, which will be combined into a single terrain tile. I've got a Buddhist temple, a Torii gate, and a set of prayer wheels that will all be attached to a 12" square MDF tile that will be textured and painted and flocked and probably have a copse of trees as well.

 

 Base colors for these will all be laid down with spray paint on sub-assemblies before weathering, and it should go pretty quickly and look decent on the table. I've never done a terrain tile before, always just had loose buildings so I can arrange them as I please. But I think it makes sense to combine these into one tile, since they'll always been fielded as a group on the tabletop. And since they're going to be combined, I'm treating them as a single terrain piece for the purposes of my tracker (already counted below).

 

 

Miniatures Acquired: 135

Miniatures Painted: 98

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Faffing About

 I've been puttering away at plenty of things, and not completing hardly any of them. I did finish the jungle terrain with the Olmec head:

I'm pretty well pleased with how it turned out. 

In other news...

My friend Chris sent me an early birthday present. I'd enthused on BlueSky about the old I-Kore "Celtos" line of Celtic fantasy miniatures, having discovered it's still in production through Brigade Models. I'd been eyeing these models since the early 2000s, but never had a good justification for buying them (and especially back then, when I was in my late teens and didn't have meaningful money coming in). Chris pulled a whopping collection of Celtos Sidhe figures (basically elves) out of his own pile of shame, including archers, swordsmen, mages and dragon riders. 

I may or may not rebase them, but either way I'm overwhelmed by the generosity! 

Besides that...

I found out a local friend of mine has a Wargods of Olympus army from Crocodile Games, which inspired me to dig out the Wargods of AEgyptus army I painted most of back in 2020; the two games are cross-compatible so it's entirely possible I might actually get a game of Wargods in without having to drive to Historicon or Adepticon for it. 

Having been dissatisfied with the contrast paints I used on the Basti Archers (leading them, and the army, to be left unfinished back then), I stripped the paint off them to start fresh, and I cleaned up one of the chariots I'd bought and built some sub-assemblies for painting. 

Once painted, the horses will have their tabs trimmed off and the entire assembly glued just to the 50x100 chariot base. I've misplaced one of the chariot runners in the past six years, which is annoying but not insurmountable. 

I'll do these with contrast paints to match the rest of the army, though the Basti will be getting a blue and white color scheme instead of the turquoise and red look I tried in 2020, and probably some more variety in their fur colors. Also, all of the bases in the army are getting redone to replace the awful "baking soda and superglue painted as sand" thing I tried to do back then. 

So let's update that tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 116

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Mesoamerican Terrain

 I have quite a stack of Mesoamerican terrain, both resin and MDF, to chip away at getting painted if I want to put on a Maya game at Wargames Among the Warplanes in September; as is, I think I'm going strictly as a player to the June show to save my energy for September. 

I've finished the first two pieces, a pair of resin buildings from Acheson Creations:

These were kept pretty basic - primed a dark brown, the stones are drybrushed with successive layers of Raw Sienna, a medium gray and a paler gray. I used cheap craft paint for all of it, and mostly stuck to the color scheme Mark Morin used when he was painting this model. His blog tracking his own Aztec project has been a huge inspiration for me with my own Mesoamerican project. 

Unlike my modern buildings, I glued the roofs down rather than worrying about drilling the resin and adding magnets to try and hold them in place. 

Up next I've got another four buildings, these with thatched roofs. They've been primed (dark brown for the stone, a yellowy tan for the thatch), and I should be able to complete them this week.

I'm also beginning work on another set of jungle terrain pieces, including a couple with incorporated Olmec heads:

Unfortunately I ran into some trouble with those yesterday - I used torn pieces of cork sheets to add some elevation to a few MDF bases, only to discover the PVA glue didn't bind the cork to the MDF, so the cork is now just sliding right off. Superglue it is then! 

Miniatures Acquired: 97

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 4

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Elric of Melnibone

 I had to put the Warhammer Orcs aside; I got hit with a bad case of painter's block and just couldn't keep going on them. Instead, I pulled out some Sword & Sorcery (and Sword & Planet, it's interstellar cousin) figures from Bronze Age Miniatures and got them cleaned up, glued to bases and primed; I've been eyeing Bronze Age's figures for a very long time - since the days when about half their catalogue was "blank" figures intended for you to sculpt your own hair and clothing on to, but it took me quite a while to pull the trigger.

Last night, I pulled one of them and set to work. Bronze Age lists this figure as "Grey Elf Wolf Lord with Rune Sword" but he's pretty immediately identifiable as Elric of Melnibone, a creation of British author Michael Moorcock. First appearing in print in 1961, Elric was conceived as something of an anti-Conan; instead of being a big beefy barbarian who eventually makes himself king, Elric is a sickly albino sorcerer-king, ruler of a cruel race, too conscientious and empathetic to be loved by his subjects, and kept alive by the vampiric powers of his demonic sword Stormbringer. He's doomed to bring about the end of the world, a fate he struggles to free himself from. 

Elric's story continues on in music and roleplaying games, and has served as inspiration for later characters across a variety of media. My introduction to him actually came in the form of the Blue Oyster Cult song "Black Blade," which Moorcock had collaborated on with the band to develop the lyrics. 

Outside of his eyes and the gems on his sword, I tried to sticker to cooler and neutral tones as much as possible for the color palette; I do intend to go back and add some snow to his base to "chill" the composition further, I just didn't have the time to do so tonight.

I've also had some fun stuff arrive today - Forge of Ice is taking over production and sale of Barbaric Splendour's "Ophidian Menace" figures as Kevin from Barbaric Splendour has had to step back from the business for health reasons, and Alex was kind enough to send me a set of figures since I'm doing some freelance writing for him.

As well as a spectacular piece of resin-cast terrain:

This gateway is part of a set of crumbling stone walls and towers he's been working with Ian at Fenris Games to develop, which will hopefully be going on sale later this year. Part of why he sent this to me is because I'm one of the people who made this piece possible; the battling monitor lizards design on the doors was based on a drawing done to illustrate an RPG scenario I wrote for Alex, set in his Bronze Age Lost World setting of Azor. 

Gina also ordered me some more Bronze Age Miniatures figures, and I placed an order with Gringo 40s, so it's time to update the tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 97

Miniatures Painted: 87

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Taking Out the Trash - And Painting More Orcs

 A little bit of scatter terrain that's been sitting primed on my bench for too long got finished the other day - some 3D printed wheeled garbage and recycling cans, printed for me by my friend Dave from STLs from Tiny Furniture. He printed two of each design, closed and slightly overflowing, so I paired them on some 40mm round bases.

These are actually painted to match the ones sitting outside my house right now, with the brown lid on the recycling bin. Not sure how standardized those are to other areas. The recycling symbol is just free-handed with some white paint. These will make some nice scatter on modern tables.

And having received more orcs for the Oldhammer Orc Project, I figured it was a sign I should paint some! I had primed a batch of 15 6th edition metal Savage Orcs about six months ago to accompany a shaman I painted a couple years back now. And since I received some more of those same Savage Orcs, I decided to start in on the primed ones. These have had their skin done, and tomorrow or this weekend I'll start in on the assorted skins and hides they're draped in. 

These were sculpted circa 2000 by Brian Nelson, and while Kev Adams is very much "the Goblinmaster," the more Brian Nelson orcs I paint, the more I appreciate his take on greenskins. They're bigger and more muscular than Kev Adams' orcs, but that musculature and the textures of the faces paint up a dream with the washes and drybrushing I favor. I'm looking forward to having some fun with the various furs and reptile skins they're wearing, and then going in and applying tattoos with a fine-tipped micron pen. 

Miniatures Acquired: 71

Miniatures Painted: 86

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

Hot Dog!

 A little bit of terrain today - not totally done, but as done as it's going to get until the guy I get 3D printed stuff from comes home from vacation. 

This is a "Whataburger" stand from Things From The Basement, part of their new "Americana" range of 20th century American buildings. It's a beautifully engineered kit, everything fit perfectly with minimal sanding, and frankly it's got the best door hinge I've yet encountered on any MDF kit. Joerg at TFTB really designs wonderful kits. 

I went with a dark brown exterior with red trim, based on the aesthetic of a hot dog place I worked at when I was 17-18 years old. We've got a local chain and I still go in pretty regularly for a dog and a milkshake. The sign over the front window is one that Joerg provided for the kit. 

On the inside, I glued down some printed paper with a tile floor design I got from Sarissa Precision.

I printed handwashing and exit signs and glued those to the wall, and painted a 3D printed fire extinguisher I had left over from another kit before gluing it to the wall. 

The windows are plastic acetate sheet, cut to fit and glued to the walls with PVA glue prior to varnishing. The varnish gives it a cloudy, dirty look, which helps show off that I cut it to leave the window people would pay and receive their food through open. 

The kit does come with two picnic tables, which I have yet to paint.

Once Dave gets back from vacation, I've got STLs of a grill, fryer, industrial refrigerator and outdoor trash can to print. I think that'll give me the perfect balance between a detailed and a playable interior. 

And that gives me another piece of terrain for the tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 52

Miniatures Painted: 74

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0