Rats!

I'm hosting a game one the holidays and needed to add a few swarms of rats to the table. These are some 3-D rings I found and represent some pretty giant rats!

I also took the opportunity to repaint the bases on my horror figures. These are some of the ones I re-did.

Above is Doc Frankenstein and friends; below are various baddies. I think all of these are Bob Murch figures.

Up next: Good question. Hopefully some gaming!

Forest terrain for smaller scales

Most of my gaming is on hexes these days and I needed some indicators for forested areas that were suitable for 3mm to 15mm figures. I looked at some commercial options but didn't want to pay the high price so I decided to just make some using stuff I mostly had laying around.

I cut some floor tiles into hexagons and then bisected them. I wanted a mixed of conifers and deciduous. The conifers are made from wavy pipe cleaners (in eye-searing Christmas green) that I glued to the base.

I then spray primed it black and hit it with some matt sage green. This dulled the pipe cleaners (mostly!) and matched the base to the rest of my terrain.

I then filled in the spaces with train foliage.

The result, seen from above and three feet away, looks fine and is hazy enough it can work in multiple scales. I didn't want to haul out a hex mat so I just pulled a single hex to photo-illustrate the finished effect. The hex can be fully filled with trees.

If there are units, they mostly fit with half of the hex open. A green felt hex laid underneath would allow removal of all the trees but still have the space marked as forest. So now I'm off to look through the bins for some dark green felt.

I have a small number of hex bases left that I didn't turn into forest. I'l; have to have a look through the rule book to see if there are other kinds of terrain I need to model.

Random painting

I have a pile of random figures on my paint table and this week I finished a few batches.

First up were five 28mm zombies that Chen gave me. These look better in person--the lighting is washing out the highlights on them.

I also bought some Star Wars Risk Clone Wars figures to see what the size was like (20mm maybe). The clone troopers aren't useful but the battle droids will supplement my 15mm army, which includes some other Star Wars droids plus some dog-like humanoid troopers and a bunch of mechs (also on the painting table).

In addition to the mechs, I have a bunch of fantasy figures and some terrain on the painting table.