Tablescapes Urban Tiles: Base Coats

I've been struggling to do anything major over the past month or so but I've been able to chip away at my Secret Weapon Tablescapes Urban Tiles every now and then as I only needed to pop out to the garage to 5-10 minutes to spray a colour half dozen tiles. Over the course of a couple of weeks it mean that I have gone from Black Primer, to Dark Grey all over, to Medium Grey on the sidewalks and a light patchy dusting on the roads.

Next up is to paint the metal bits with a gunmetal colour and airbrush a lighter grey on each of the individual sidewalk tiles - that is going to be the really time consuming part. Once that is done I'll put some road markings on, must first experiment using a mask made from CCG cards worked badly so I will be picking up some low tac painters masking tape and trying again. After that I will mix up a few batches of oil washes - one brown, one black and one brown/black and apply liberally... at least that is the plan!

Cheap spray cans from my local Bunnings (NZ DIY store)

Laid out in my garage. Don't skimp on the newspaper surround. I have a large "overspray" of black and grey paint on the concrete now. Luckily its just the garage.

Sold coat of the dark grey spray on the tiles.

After the dark grey I used the plastic lid from an FFG Imperial Assault Carrier packaging to mask off the footpath and gutter whilst spraying the light grey on the sidewalks.

And I made a mask out of two old Battletech CCG cards and a lot of packing tape to help with the corners

And this is what 6 (out of the 32) tiles look like. Right now they all look like this (except 2 test ones) so I have a lot of airbrushing to do.

Each one of those tiles will need to be airbrushed using another card template. I've made one for the smaller "plaza" sidewalk tiles and I need to make a second one for the bigger sidewalk tiles.

And each square gets airbrushed from a different direction so that when a table is laid out the hightlighting of each individual sidewalk tile blends it all together.

Once it is all done, I still need to find some fairly generic 28mm buildings that I like to finish the whole thing off.

So what’s the plan for 2016?

This year is already looking exceptionally busy on all fronts (whether it is home, work, or hobby/gaming) and whilst I should set realistic expectations of what I want to achieve, it is far more fun to dream of doing more.

Team Yankee
Let’s be honest I am pretty excited about Team Yankee and all that it entails. My copy of Team Yankee (along with a host of other great “Cold War Gone Hot” books) were read over and over again way back when and the chance to return to some modern gaming using our figures is too appealing to pass on.

Americans: I’ve been chipping away at my US force for a while now and making slow progress. They are largely assembled and some parts are painted. I think I just need a burst over the course of a weekend to really push them along. Of course it wouldn’t hurt if this year’s FlamesCon had a TY event as part of it!

Soviets: On the list somewhere – who doesn’t want to paint up 6 Hinds and then terrorise their opponents. I’ve managed to hold off since I haven’t finished my US force and because I haven’t really worked out a hook for the force yet. It will come though.

Germans and British: I’m in… end of story! I have a plan for the British but still need to work out something for the Germans.

Other nations: I spent a little time over the Christmas break assembling some more of the Syrians and I figured that I could proxy their T-55s for Soviet T-72s until I work out a list that appeals.

Terrain
I’m pretty happy with how the first couple of test Tablescape pieces have started and whilst there is still plenty to do to finish them I’m going to push ahead and get the rest of the pieces airbrushed up to the point where I can start putting oil washes on them – primarily so that I can mix up a couple of batches of different oil washes and not run out half way through and need to remix.

The new Team Yankee terrain also has me pretty excited and I am planning on doing a short article for the website on enhancing the Petrol station with a couple of easy steps; painting the pumps white and roofline in yellow with a red band, putting some product posters up etc, and maybe making a base that it can go on alongside the road.

Trollbloods
Yeah, you know the drill…. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but let’s see if I can get my first 50 points finished this year…

US Marines
With the Pacific book Gung Ho due our shortly I am definitely planning on building a Amphibious Tank Company with the intent of taking the basic building blocks of it (i.e. the first 1000 points) to Panzerschreck later this year.

Sounds like a full year’s work, anything else?
Probably… who knows what will strike my fancy part way through the year and completely distract me? I’m still keen to paint up my Armada fighter squadrons and there will be a plastic Berserker kit for Warmachine that would go nicely with Karchev. Not to forget the thing, with the thing… (and so it begins!). 

What about Tanks!
Too early to say much about this one, but it is coming soon, it’s cool, and along with the rest of the team here I helped to design it. Definitely going to be painting a few Pershings just for this project!

Unboxing Secret Weapon Urban Tilescapes

Urban gaming is (in my opinion) one of the hardest theatres to represent on the tabletop when it comes to gaming and without building a table specifically for it (something I will never have the time to do, or space to store) I always feel a little underwhelmed by the results when I try!

Needless to say when Secret Weapon ran their Kickstarter for a new range of terrain tiles I was really excited because they were going to make a couple of Urban sets for 28mm gaming. The tiles were fairly generic and would work for any period (more or less) so I thought they would be great for everything from Dust, to 40K, to anything else I would ever be likely to try.

A few weeks ago they finally arrived....

The box - this one is a "keeper" as it is sturdy enough to transport and store your tiles. Especially if you do a lot of your gaming away from home.

Opening up the box a basic set of 16 tiles doesn't fill the box. Good planning because it means you can fit an additional 8 tiles in there to expand your table. More tiles = more flexibility.

The tiles were really well packed, with each one in an individual bag, then each 4 tiles in another bigger bag.

The underside of the tiles looks like some serious engineering went into working out how to keep them both light and strong. I know it is wierd but I thought this was one of the coolest parts of them!

The tiles looked nice... not much more to say..

Plenty of detail to paint and whilst there was some inconsistency in the texture I suspect you are not going to notice it once it is painted.

Nice cracks to paint and add flavour once finished.

You get a big bag of clips to keep the boards from moving around once you have come up with a layout. It took me longer to figure out how I wanted to arrange the tiles on the table, than to put the clips on and be ready to play.

There is an art to attaching and detaching the clips, but it only took a moment to work out the order to start attaching them. The clips seem pretty strong so I expect them to stand up to a lot of gaming.

Next step, build a quick 4' x 4' table to see how hard it is to do.... not very is the answer. Although I do hope some smart person comes up with a pile of sample layouts and puts it on the internet for those of us that are lazy and just want to copy something.

Once the table was built.... I had to put some figures on it to see how it looked.

Even unpainted I thought it looked good. Definitely going to be using them whilst I find the time to start airbrushing them up.

Closing thoughts
I really like these and if I thought I could sneak another box of them past my wife I would do it in a heartbeat (pity she reads the blog). I just dropped some Battlefield in a Box Gothic buildings and craters on there and had a nice little table in five minutes.

The clip system was easy to use and whilst you will want to put them on in a certain order - for example: from the centre out, or pick an edge and then go across the table when putting the tiles together, then reversing the order when pulling it apart - they were nice and easy to do.

The surface detail of the tiles did have some small blemishes (probably caused by too much plastic on the reverse side) or inconsistency of detail. However I felt that these will work out to not be a problem once painted as no road is consistent across its length and breadth, especially one that has 50 ton tanks, or massive walkers thumping around on it.

What I would really like to do though is get four of the Secret Weapon Rolling Fields tiles - preferably a couple of flat pieces, and a couple with the gentle rolling hills. The sea of pavement got a little much for me and a decent city planner should be incorporating some green spaces so that office workers can pop outside for lunch, walk on the grass, maybe even lay a minefield to stop an invading army. Just the usual everyday activities that we engage in...

So... 2015... the year of the Trollblood army (stop laughing, I know I have said that for the last two or three years, but this time I mean it!) and the year I paint up my Secret Weapon Urban Tablescapes! Also with a bit of luck, the year that Secret Weapon do another Kickstarter for the 28mm Trenchline system that they were aiming for in their last Kickstarter, but ended up falling a little short of. I am sure my Khador would love to fight over a table like that!

SSU Steel Guard Ready for the Production Line!

The guys in the BF Studio have been getting quite excited about DUST ever since the announcement that we would be working with Paulo, Olivier, and the rest of the DUST team. The agreement to take over distribution of the DUST range started with the Wave 8 releases, leaving product a little thin on the ground if we wanted to get in and start building armies immediately (although the recent FFG sale has resulted that excitement building as the guys ordered some stuff to get armies started!). Luckily for me I was really interested in the release of the new Steel Guard figures (they reminded me a little of Battletech Clan "Toads") and was able to grab a couple of boxes to start building a small force.

I'd decided I wanted to paint the army, but I also wanted to make sure that I was not going crazy and spending too much time on a per figure basis so I decided to go with a primer red, straight out of the Zverograd factory look. I airbrushed the figures with Tamiya Hull Red, and then did a little highlighting from the top with a Hull Red / Dark Yellow mix. As you can see from the results I ended up with a some nice highlighting of the top surfaces that (I thought) looked really cool. I then varnished the models (and was a little disappointed at this point as the varnish really flattened out the highlighting!) and pin washed them with a MiG Productions Dark Wash. The guns was painted Vallejo Black Grey with a highlight of Oily Steel, the springs in the legs were also painted Oily Steel. The uniform and bed roll were painted English Uniform, given a quick wash with some black paint, then re-highlighted with English Uniform, and the whole model a quick (light) drybrush of Buff.

For the bases I glued on GF9 basing grit, undercoated it black, and then drybrushed on Green Grey, Stone Grey and a little Sky Grey (letting the drybush of this go over the feet and lower legs of the figure a little. Then glued on some "bricks" from the guys at Secret Weapon Miniatures just to help reinforce that Zverograd feeling.

I am pretty happy with the finished model and although there are a couple of things I am not entirely happy with, I was able to complete it quite quickly meaning I can get a small army on the table and play some games over the Christmas break! The rest of my force is undercoated and ready for the pin washing and detail work, with the HQ section currently on a plane somewhere between our factory / distribution hub in KL, and New Zealand. Once these figures are done I am definitely looking forward to painting a couple of the massive SSU tanks as well!

Secret Weapon Town Square Bases

Earlier this year I took a look at some of the resin bases that are available to wargamers in this post here. A couple of weeks ago the good guys at Slave To Painting had a nice sale and I purchased some of the Secret Weapon Miniatures Town Square bases. I’ve been eyeing these up for a few months but been reluctant to commit thus far, so with the option of a discount I finally weakened! Below are some sample images from their range.

30mm Bases (10 different designs)

40mm Bases (5 different designs)

50mm Bases (4 different designs)

120mm Bases (2 different designs)

For those of you that have never heard of Secret Weapon Miniatures, it was started a few years ago by Justin "misterjustin" McCoy and has grown to have quite a range of cool products including bases, pigments and washes. They also ran a very successful Kickstarter (who isn’t these days) for injection molded plastic table tiles which just look fantastic and I cannot wait to get my hands on the Urban Streets set!

After seeing the quality of these first bases I am seriously tempted to head back to pick up some of their Trench Works and use them for either my Khador or Rhulic army.