From JamieM - some terrain pieces

Hello fellow challengers!  Here is my first post for this esteemed blog.  It's taken me a while as work has been super busy since everything kicked off.  Even when I did get time to myself, it was all I could really manage to wield a large brush and some emulsion/rattle cans and so I thought I should get on with some terrain as I have an embarrassingly large pile in the garage waiting for me to do it....

These are all 28mm MDF pieces from TTCombat, who produce a ridiculously large range of terrain at fantastic prices.  There's a Music shop, super market, 2 pieces of monorail and a refuse truck.

Side vie of the supermarket and the rear of the dump truck, home maded decals for the graffiti.

The other side of the supermarket (ewww, that employee entrance is mucky.....) 

This is the side of the music store, with more hand printed decals.

And the other side, with bare brick.  I painted it all one colour and then picked out odd bricks in slightly different colours and I think it works rather well to break up the wall and make it look a little more realistic.  It's the same with the roof tiles on the super market.

The monorail tracks are to go with the other 3 that I already have to add a bit of verticality to the battlefield.  Even if nobody ever goes on them, I figure they'll look nice.

From Barks: Soviet NBC troops

Is there anything scarier than Soviet gasmasks? I used this quarantine challenge to finish off ten of these Eureka figures I started many years ago, and to add another five from scratch. I had to try and match my originals, and both my paints and style have changed in the meantime!

I was surprised at how quick they were to paint- no faces, camo, hands, boots, extraneous wargear, purity seals, skullz etc... They're lovely figures, and now I've gone and ordered myself a copy of Zona Alfa...

From Curt: 'Baba Yaga' - John Wick @ 1:05:48

Hi All!

When I saw that Spectre Miniatures had issued a limited edition figure of John Wick I knew I had to snap one up. While I've not been especially enamoured with the overall trilogy (silly assassin meta and increasing bloat), I really enjoyed the first movie's brutal simplicity.

While I was cleaning up the figure, getting it ready for priming, I was trying to recall what Wick's shirt colour was when this scene was shot. I knew he wore a white collared shirt in the earlier bar scenes, but I was pretty sure he changed to all black later in the film. 

1:05:48

So, for a bit of fun, I decided to spin up Netflix and watch the movie again to see if I could both sort out the shirt colour and also spot the moment where the pose originates. Sure enough, at 1:05:48 he's seen swapping his assault rifle for a pistol in his now iconic black suit.

For painting him I used thin layers of dark grey over a black base. Should have been easy but was fiddly as heck.

Trying to photograph black on black is evil. I must have blazed through a hundred shots to get something workable. Thank goodness for digital cameras!

On a related note, a few people have asked what process I use for working on clear acrylic bases. Well, you can definitely use normal superglue to mount the figure, just be sparing with the glue and keep the finished work away from any moisture while it's curing as it will frost the acrylic base. A fire-and-forget approach is to use this GS E600 glue as it doesn't frost and gives good adhesion. I don't know what it's made of (I suspect ground unicorn horns and distilled pixie tears), but it works. I picked my tube up from GreenStuff World.

Mr. Wick will give me another 5 points, bringing me up to 50 overall. Gee, just 450 to go...

Thanks for dropping in!

Curt

From PeterA: Ruined Apartment Block and Burnt out Car

First of all a big thank you to Curt for organising the Quarantine Challenge - a splendid opportunity to keep spirits up at this pretty surreal time.

My first submission is a scratch-built apartment block in 20mm for modern wargaming. I have been interested in the first Chechen conflict for a while now and the news that Carl Titterington is planning on releasing a Chechen War supplement for his Contact Front rules got me fired up to add some terrain. It is made out of foamcard and artists mounting board and is meant to survive the rigours of gaming rather than being an architectural masterpiece! So I haven't bothered with doors (might go back and add these later) although I have put in a few shattered panes of glass here and there (made from plastic blister packaging)

Depicting rubble is always a compromise between realism and playability - I have gone firmly for the latter so that I can place figures without precariously balancing them. With my sausage fingers, I need all the help I can get!

To make it a bit  more user friendly in games, the rear wall slides off, making access to the inner floors more straightforward. Again, function over form so no staircases, internal rooms etc. I started painting the internal walls but the card started to warp so I have left the rest. The idea of the removable wall has been pinched from Alan Sherward's utterly brilliant Stalingrad table (featured in Wargames Illustrated a couple of issues ago - you can see it here on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yJsgbZ4wUo).

Finally, a bit of scatter terrain for figures to take cover behind. This is a toy die cast VW which has been weathered using GW rust effect paint. The windows have been damaged and I drilled a few bullet holes as well, but it was basically a very quick and simple job for once.

I hope to add more bits and pieces for this conflict over the course of the Quarantine Challenge, as well as finishing off a few of the things started during the Painting Challenge.

All the best - stay safe and stay healthy.