Alien Trees 2 6mm-15mm or 28mm Scrub

In my continuing push to make scenery for my Mechanoid game, I was considering the plastic aquarium plant selections, but they all seemed to big and didn't do it for me. I wanted small leaves.

I also wanted an alien feel to them so green was a no go.

In a previous article I talked about making Alien trees these were for 28mm 40K games. These were wire and string efforts. I pushed the idea on with variants for Saga/Frostgrave producing a very tall Cedar of Lebanon. In 40K you also need some Jungle Terrain and you can make that with plastic aquarium plants, the problem being with them that they are too low. However by threading them through a kebab stick fixed in a drilled mdf board, you can have almost as much height as you want.

Mind open to ideas I waited, I find if I go looking for stuff I wont find it, it has to be a light-bulb moment and is often better because of it. I also find that if I don't feel like moving forwards with the plan then there is something, some point I've missed. So I wait for fruition, of course some times it's instant but I wasn't happy with my plans.

It grew on me:
1) the red flock
2) getting a mat with red patches on it.

Then I found a plant option I pulled a few bit out in the store to check it out and the leaves were perfect, I pushed the small spray back on and bought it, in fact I've been back to buy a second and 'Oh there is a large green ball too!'

But... it was mauve, I tried to think of it as purple as that would fit better but it is most definitely the blue side of purple, mauve trees on an alien planet? Why not, but yet...

















I played around with the idea and used cocktail sticks as the holes were smaller than aquarium plants. I threaded 2-5 pieces on each stick to increase height and thickness of the 'plant'.















You get the idea. And there I stopped, dithered.




The the light-bulb moment was more a memory as I went through stuff from way back in the 1990's the precursors to the jungle terrain I'd made for my 9 year old son (who am I kidding? and me!).

The foliage had come from a supplier of artificial planets to florists. This is way back in time before plastic aquarium plants! The items were gold in colour so I'd spray painted them green, in time the green had peeled off.

But now I had proper plastic foliage and proper acrylic spray paint, in fact I had Blood angel Red or Dragon red depending on your supplier and voila, now we are motoring!

N.B. don't be too accurate with your red paint, green and mauve showing through adds belief.

My usual wood filler as basing material on to small MDF bases and some larger ones, can't use CDs as I want to drill trough them and glue my cocktail sticks in. Black spray the bases, dry brush grey and then almost white, as described earlier, flock then drill hole from top through base onto old wood, not wife's favourite table top, as if (cough). For variety do a large base and clump it with 4 sticks.I use the small plants as scatter on my wood defined areas, moving them to one side as unts pass through, the larger bases I place as individual clumps of impenetrable, LOS blocking, dense terrain.









Cocktail stick pushed in from below point first, then last bit  glued before final push through base. At this point my youngest kitten jumped on to the table I had 20 of these bases out and at that moment they looked like a field of caltrops I had visions of a stabbed paw and a large vet's bill. (Never mind the flack from CiC/SWMBO.)

However after threading the plants on I stuck a small bead on the top, it looks like the budding growth point of the plant - need is the mother of invention and inspiration.

I've made these for 6mm, they'd work for 10-15, just lengthen the cocktail stick my max length was 2/3rds. OFC they would also make good scrub for 28mm, and that's what I like versatility.

Hope you approve.

Mechanoids Revisited - Going to JOS

The great plan is to use the Mechanoids, their domes, tree scenery and cloth at the next Joy of 6  which a must visit for UK 6mm gamers.

So a few practise games to get our hand in so to speak and a realisation that green cloth and trees doesn't do it.

Hence the push for Alien terrain, cloth, etc etc.

Rather than rebase my existing mechanoids and being one of those that never does anything by halves, when I can do 5 times more than I will ever field at the same time. I cracked on with some new models.

Having learnt from my previous efforts, I now base my models (whisper it, beads) and then undercoat, especially as I want black basing. I then add the panel pins and for the new large battle Mechanoids because the hole in the top is too large I thread the panel pin through a black sequin first.

Mechanoid are then dry brushed with chain mail and then the visual unit is painted on Jade green with another lighter french green on top. I wasn't getting the results I wanted with the vision panel and accidentally ended up with a horizontal bar, which I prefer so redid those already done and pressed on.
One of the issues I have is with a black spray paint I'm using as undercoat that refuses to be painted. applying paint is like adding oil to water it probably isn't an undercoat per se, you live and learn.

Bases are then dry brushed a medium grey which seems to have a brownish tinge to it, that fits well with the cloth and then I add white to the grey and a lighter dry brush. Then it's add a little PVA and red flock, I'm using a mix of reds with a little green, original packets all bought from e-bay.

Those who read the previous Mechanoid construction Blog will note that there is now a much larger bead doing service as a Battle Mechanoid the previous versions have been re worked as Mechannons.

4,000 point army list, an adapted HOF Droid list for fun I've renamed the droids. Those keener eyed amongst you will spot the version number is based on shooting attacks and range, well why not?

Mechanoid Domes - construction

Having made your Mechanoid army you want suitable scenery.

A lot of the games we have been playing on are on a Tinywar games Terminator mat with the 28mm iconography (tyres/skeletons/roads) removed and lately with red grass printed on it. See link

I now wanted a Mechanoid base or settlement but what to use. I was thinking of the Eden Garden Project for this.

With this in mind I went about normal life with what you know is a 'Wargamers eye', a request came in from my CiC to go to IKEA, and I was happy enough to go along with the idea even if it was only for the Swedish Meatballs. As ever we went to the left over bin, with old or damaged or ex-display stock and there it was my Mechanoid settlement. The CiC saw me looking at the redundant Xmas tree decorations, saw the look in my eye and said, buy it. She knew there would be no peace until I had. For less than £1 I bought two packets.

Once home and other duties complete I got out the old hacksaw and cut the very top off one and I cut the second in two about a third of the way down from the top. With that moment of instant creativity that sometimes catches you I  placed the small top of the first cut on top of the smaller top end of the second which gave me a small dome with satellite dish
In the image below you can see the just cut examples, the decoration to the right awaiting its turn.

I didn't expect to get three domes from two ornaments or indeed as I repeated the sequence six domes from four; it seems I bought too many ornaments, guess they can go on thee tree next year.

I based these up on old CD's first putting on a layer of wood filla I applied 'Copydex' (a latex glue) to the bottom of the ornaments and pushed them home. This basing system requires an overnight rest to bond well, but has the advantage of being very strong until you add a lot of water whereupon you can easily separate them with out damage to the models or scenery. However ready or not I could photograph them and here they are with newly painted Mechanoids, these have matching black bases.

Dry brushed and flocked they await the first game. The red flock/static grass is a home made mix of various reds and browns purchased from e-bay. The red bushes are pulled from the centre of a floor cleaner/polisher, the bit that is discarded to fit onto the head. 

I was going to paint or ink the domes, but thought hell no, let the alien sun shine brightly on the domes.

The green dials/observation nodes have since changed shape, and have been repainted as oblong like slits.

Mechanoids establish their grip on their new world

Every Mechanoid planet needs a name and this one they called; 01011010 01001011 00110010 00110101 00110001 00101111 00110011

As they move from the highlands where they landed and move down to the lowlands they encouter areas of 'fertile' scrubland, this they ignore, aware only of the possibility of hidden predators they push on seeking out the metals they need to create new Mechanoid life, the circuitry and metal carapaces.

First base

Mechanoids settle a new world.

I have been playing Future War Commander and wanted a new cloth.

I wanted an alien planet look.

A friend had already purchased a cloth from Tiny Wargames that gave me part of the look I wanted and as a previous purchaser I knew the product was of high quality and that they were prepared to supply the customer with what they wanted.

My request was straightforwards.

I wanted the Terminator cloth they supply but without the 28 mm elements, i.e. no skeleton, no tyres no road.
To further confuse I wanted red grass on it, if you see their arid cloth and then look at the arid cloth with grass you will understand what I wanted.
An exchange of emails, including photos to check his understanding of what I want and it was delivered today.

I was delighted and threw the cloth over the table and as it happens over some 'Really Useful Boxes'.
The effect was dramatic, so I hung an old star speckled cloth behind it and placed some of my Mechanoid force upon it.

If you want a cloth relevant to your game I can only recommend Tiny Wargames they are brilliant.

More on the Mechanoid models and scenery later.

N.B. I order a 7' x 5' cloth so I can throw it over hills and still have a 6' x 4' table to play on.

I think it looks better than placing hills on the cloth as they never quite match.

Establishing control

FWC Marine Corp aka Epic Space Marines

Missed the Epic boat years ago and have been slowly accumulating some models.

I play FWC and don't play Epic so I've based some models on the FWC bases I use  and painted up some Iron Warriors and World Eaters as you will see they are 30K colour schemes.

Iron Warriors painted and based

World Eaters

Bases flocked and ready to fight for the Emporer

Mechanoids

Some of you may be old enough (like me) to remember these from their first airing on Dr Who a reminder of the Mechanoids  and a clip from The Chase.

I've been playing Future War Commander and as my teleporting Terminators were winning every battle for me, my opponent was not  impressed. I play a Marine Corp army, essential 'Epic Space Marines' whilst I believe he plays an [FWC] Cybernetic Species X31 Army, using Dalek models.
He feels the Terminators with their teleport ability are under rated, a game changer and winner and he's probably right so I was considering another army

My wife is a quilter, this hobby takes up as much time and maybe more cash than wargaming, her stash may be larger than mine and I've lost a number of really useful boxes over the year but there are benefits there is rarely criticism of spending.

This year I was in Hobbycraft, whilst my wife was looking at buying a Sizzix machine, there was nothing currently that I wanted there for me but the Sizzix demo was still ongoing.

Mind empty waiting for release I waited for the pitch to end as I walked through the store then I passed by the bead counter, loose beads all sizes and types. Enter Wargaming Mode, the hexagon beads looked just like Mechanoids.

The Pitch over my wife didn't actually buy the Sizzix at that time but found me poring over and selecting beads. £7 ish for a large pot of mixed beads which she kindly offerred to buy for me as I'd waited so patiently.

We went back the following week when she bought it and I got in some more beads.

Once home I threaded them on to wire then sprayed them black.

Then I lined them up to see what I had whilst consulting FWC for the right army list, I decided it had to be Droids.

The Mechanoids of yore had a small black disc sticking out from the top, I figured a panel pin would do that trick

I decided the largest bead would be Battle Robots and also field as Psycoborgs be the Tanks/guns. You will note I attached small canons to them ssing the gold beads above.

The medium sized ones could be the polymorph assault droids.

The the smaller size would be the standard Mechanoid being both Cyborgs and Korbach, the difference in the two was the range so I painted the pins in the Korbach red and also the guns for the Pyscoborg (Mark 1) as they both had 60 CM range, would make it easier on the battle field.

I'd given the Psycoborg (Mark 2) a Cryonic device, and whilst that was only effective at 60 cm I painted the guns ice blue. Tru they also have a primary weapon with a 80 cm range, but it made the unit stand out.

So painted up, unusually I based them before painting, figured it would be easier.



I'd been painting the bases a Burnt Umber (see below left) but it was way too dark, so I added white to get a milk to dark chocolate colour as opposed to the very Dark chocolate/black colour it had been.

Added more white and dry brushed added even more white and dry brushed a second time.

Then flocked using a bright flock rather than my usual scorched grass

I did this as I had discovered my standard 28 mm basing was making my 6 mm models too dark they became just board pieces.

I think the lighter colour work and bring out the best.

No idea what the command pole/trees are meant to represent, I just like the beads, sad ...

Hope you like it. 

Army list at the bottom.

'Epic' buildings from Blotz.

Warfare was on this weekend and followed the usual pattern:

1   First check out the ‘bring and buy’ for 6 mm or 10 mm figures.

2  Collect Pre-orders at Baccus, Commission Figurines and get bases from Minibits

3  Walk around the show seeing what is new, and looking at demo and participation games for scenery/terrain ideas and new games.

This time I came across a trader I hadn’t seen before, Blotz, they had some beautiful well detailed buildings in 28 mm, 20 mm, 15 mm and 10 mm and did my eyes deceive me 6 mm!

I was impressed by their ‘Epic style’ 1920’s Mid-West collection, they certainly looked the part. I was encouraged to pick them up and discovered they were designed in stacks; base unit, middle block and top and they also sell all the items individually so you can add more middle units to vary the heights of the same building type or indeed swop the top to the damaged unit. You could even remove floors in game as the building received more hits changing the LOS.

So I bought 6 buildings and the 10 mm satellite dish which can be an objective and will look great on a 6 mm table.

There are also assembly instructions on the website and I certainly needed it for the satellite dish and the first building, subsequent buildings were newer and don’t yet have instruction, but having done one I understood the format.

I must say as I constructed them I was amazed at the level of detail both in design and in construction with facias that needed adding and recessed lobbies; I was constantly saying, Wow and ‘that’s clever’.

I will certainly be ordering some more buildings and extra floors; I suspect an order of £50 is in the making.

The sheets are cleanly lasered with facias to add depth and lobbied areas. In the disassembled picture, note the 'tangs' that allow the levels to lock together.

Not sure if the Cinema is 'right' for my war zones, but I bought it with the intention of converting to some kind of HQ/bunker.

PS, Gareth Beamish  commented on Facebook:
Got one of these buildings at Warfare too. They're excellent for making ruins photo here.

Desert town

This month I went to the Joy of Six  a small show, which may be appropriate as it is all 6 mm figures/scenery, but all the human participants were 1:1.

I purchased some Desert Domes from Brigade Models for my games of Future War Commander.

Made from resin they are solid and attractive and I thought to paint them up for jungle terrain as Alien Domes.

Funny how your brush and paints take over. I tried a few colour schemes and ended up with desert terrain, ah well, will now need to purchase more 6 mm Desert stuff.  - Once again a project escalates, at least this time it is out of the packet, assembled mounted and painted before the next purchase rather than just adding to the resin/metal/plastic mountains.

They were very well cast, odd small holes that were ignorable, as they added character if you could spot them and a couple of small flecks that needed fettling, nothing serious and unusually for me I washed them before using.

I had to now choose between creating a dynamic scene or individually mount them. It's always a problem, you want the models to look good on the table, but you want to move the troops through the built up area the building are supposed to represent. I decided to go down the route I use for trees; felt cloth represents the woods' boundaries and trees scattered on the cloth make the point.

For game simplicity my towns have straight edges, none of this medieval mishmash of town planning, no a fresh planet with organised town planning from the beginning! I will place the terrain piece on the table, replacing them with grey felt if troops move in to that area.

Designing the layout

I originally thought to mount them on 2-3 mm MDF board that I'd cut into 100 mm (4") squares, they looked wrong and casting about for inspiration I saw the 6 mm  La Haye Saint model based 100 mm x 125 mm (4" x 6" almost), the rectangle looked better and when I realised I got four out of the strip instead of 4 + wastage I was sold.


The cleaned models were first assembled on to the 'cut' bases. This allowed me to think about setup. As usual I had no plan and was allowing the pieces etc to make the decisions for me.

Mixing the basing materials

Copydex and PVA backup

In the past I used to glue the models to the base with PVA and then spread around it a mix of paint, sand and glue, this was time consuming and messy. However I was recently shown another system used by a fellow gamer Chris McGill.

He uses a proprietary wood filler from Wilko, in this instance I used a brown one, you can get white. You can add colour to the filler I have a tube of Burnt Umber acrylic paint I use, although I soon saw the 'out of the tub' colour was what I was after anyway.

The paint or in my case a little water softens the mix up so you can spread it on with a knife, running a wet finger over the top will give you a smooth 'paved stone' finish you can draw lines in, in this case a dry finger roughened it up a bit as I wanted natural terrain, soil with all its lumps and bumps.


Once you have sculpted the surface you then attach the models with Copydex, ( I know weird), this then takes the best part of 12 - 24 hours to set.

Based and drying out/setting

The fact is that a later application of water to the terrain 'melts' the adhesive and the models can be removed and washed clean and reused elsewhere. In the case of 6 mm men no damage is done to a single model.

In my opinion this far outweighs any perceived disadvantage of waiting for it to set. However the odd piece will take longer to dry or be too heavy, then I use PVA glue, if the building breaks away from it's base, an application of flock hides the repair.

Once assembled I used a coffee stirrer to make paths from building to building, all leading to a central point I planned to put a 35 mm base there, a teleport/landing pad, we'll see.

I added some white some chips I'd rescued from a path some time ago.

Painted and the different densities of Ink show up nicely

The following day I started painting one base and after trial and error came up with the 'concept' I liked and finished it all off.

The buildings were first undercoated with and then painted in 'Sand' then I picked out the windows in blue (Caledor Sky), recessed lines in Golden Yellow and some patches of Jade Green, over painting the reds I'd started with, as always the scenery tells you what colour it wants to be Doors and window frames were painted with Mithril Silver.

I then washed it all over with Peat Brown, applying it straight on and watering it down in place so I got variety.

When dry I put more wash on the window's slats and doors to bring out the detail. You can't do this at the same time as the ink spreads out to other wet areas.

I dry brushed the ground with the same cheap acrylic, sand colour and was then was going to apply sand in patches but it looked wrong so I flocked over it and added flock elsewhere. Using a brown dessert grasses flock I bought years ago; GW I think.

Finished All pictures here

I had intended to ink the stone in interesting Alien colours, tried it out on a test stone, nope, so they stay as nature intended.

I like to think of the stone circles as part of the mechanics of the teleportation device/receiver, maybe on Earth that's what all the stone circles are copies off, mimicking the 'Sky Gods' bases.