Homemade Asteroids - A Failed Experiment

While perusing the local craft shop, I noticed the paint section had some natural sponges for painting with.  They look a lot like little asteroids.

I had a plan.  I took a clear plastic bin I had and put some paint in it.

I mixed it with hot water.

I put the sponges in the water.

And made sure they soaked up the paint.

I then left them out to dry.  When I checked on them a couple of days later, the color mostly ran out of them and it looks like they started growing some unwanted additions.

:-(

Dos por Dos, Manos de Azule

These two Foundry models are of unknown origins and have unknown motivations.  Are they judges, corporate security or mafia hitmen?

Sparkling Spacemats!

I've been getting into Star Wars Armada and Star Wars X-Wing games.  There is also the space combat aspect of Robotech to consider.

A necessary accessory to a space combat game is a space combat game mat.

There are plenty of wonderful mats out there with artists' renditions or even Hubble photographs.  These are quality productions with beautiful prints.  I had considered these but they are costly.

I decided to go cheap.

I visited the local fabric shop.  The store had a few space themed prints, but in the end I chose felt with glitter.  The felt will keep ship models from sliding around much, while the glitter produces an effective starfield that doesn't visually overwhelm.

Imperial Star Destroyer not included.

Total cost for two yards of cloth: $16.00.

In the future I will probably want a nebula-style setting.  I will have to keep my eye out for suitable cloth or just buy a wargaming mat.

Bates Hotel

Today I finished another of the Burn In Designs buildings.  This one is sold as a hotel and it has the definite look of a modern hotel.

Assembled and sanded.

As the others, this was easy to put together using wood glue.

Spare bits of mdf were added for unobtrusive roof details.

The covered entryway seemed like it would be a perfect candidate for adding a patio.  I took one of the entrance arches from the Burn In Designs hospital and added it here.  It fit perfectly in the space.

If you have been following this blog then you know I've become fond of adding styrene strips for enhanced details on these buildings.  This one is no different.  The edges of the roof have been lined with strips of styrene.

Tiled plasticard for the patio.  This sized tile didn't allow for a snug fit, something would have to be done with those edges.

Paint job work in progress

Here is a Zentraedi battlepod added to show how the 40mm base will fit on the patio.

Female power armor -- the 50mm base doesn't fit in, but on the raised edges.  That needed consideration.

Painted the building.  I did a three-tone color scheme.

As usual, I pasted oak tag on the interior of the building to cover the windows.

I solved the misfitted plasticard problem with clump foliage along the edges.

Spartan destroid for size.

Comparison with a couple of other recently completed buildings.  Behind is another Burn In Designs kit, while in front is a GameCraft house.

SWAT's the Matter?

I'm not going to sugar-coat it, I think that this is a boring set of miniatures.
It's not that they aren't well-sculpted or -cast, it's not that I don't think they are useful.
It's simply that the color scheme is uninteresting.
And the bad photography/lighting obscures the details of the darker areas.

I tend to go for subtle shading of black, which never shows well in my photos.

The models are from Wargames Foundry, part of their Street Violence line, which is very good for modern/near future gang and police type action.

These were gifted to me by a friend that had collected them for some unrealized project and he knew this was my type of thing.

The models are pretty small.  Although sold as 28mm, they are probably closer to 25mm, which makes them look little compared to most of the "28mm" sold today (which are more like 32mm).

For Judge Dredd, these will make excellent Citi-Def miniatures.

3 Shades of Grey

Just a quick post to show a couple of more acrylic houses from GameCraft.
I did a sloppy sort of job painting these.  They had been sitting on my painting desk half-finished for a while and I just wanted to get them done and move on to other clutter. 
I wish they came out better, but I'm going to leave them be for now and perhaps revisit them in the future.

Four story house with styrene details added.

The balsa chimney was crushed a bit on the bottom.  It shouldn't show too much on the table.

Unpainted version.

Plants in the planters!

A larger, two family house.

Gunky windows and visible varnish streaks on the wall.  Not so bad from far away, but disappointing.

The bottom floor is a shade darker than the upper ones, but that doesn't come through well here.

Fast and Furious

Got this Judge Dredd Banshee Interceptor car for Christmas.

It is from Warlord/Mongoose, part of their Judge Dredd line.

It's sort of the Judge Dredd version of the Batmobile.

The car is primarily made of resin, with some metal add-on parts.  The wheels and exhaust ports are metal, the rest is resin.

The casting is generally good.  The undercarriage of the car has some problems, but nobody will ever see that.

There were some pieces of flash  that needed to be removed from the body, but it was otherwise not needing cleanup.