Volcanic crater - tutorial

Thanks for all the kind comments on the making of my shell craters. I've now adapted the design to produce two volcanic caldera suitable for Pulp/SF/VSF gaming.

Follow the first steps given in the previous post to produce the basic crater. This time place the craters on a level surface, mix a small batch of watery plaster and pour it into the depression. It should form a smooth surface as shown below.

Next, add blobs of hot glue to the surface, giving the glue-gun trigger a half-pull to get smaller droplets. You'll find the glue doesn't stick to the plaster and comes away. This is perfectly fine. Remove any strands of glue from the droplets and replace them on the surface in a random pattern.

Next, mix yellow acrylic ink and watered-down PVA adhesive and pour slowly and carefully into the crater. The pour shouldn't disturb the glue blobs if you're careful. Don't worry if the ink mix runs over the side. Any spills will be covered later. You'll need to repeat this step once.

Glue discs of card to the bottom of the caldera, leaving a rim of about a quarter-inch wide. Wait until the glue has dried then mix yellow and red ink with Pledge floor polish to make a suitably fiery orange shade and pour onto the yellow glue surface. Add a few drops of water and work it around with a brush to get an even spread. You'll find the polish and water will dry to leave a crackle effect, revealing more of the yellow beneath the orange and the glue blob "bubbles" giving the effect of hotter lava welling up from below the cooling orange crust.

Once this is dry, add ground effect around the caldera by smearing 'Liquid Nails' construction adhesive onto the card surface and pressing dry coffee grounds into it. This'll create rough terrain that looks like it's cinder-covered. At this stage I also made the sides of the crater more uneven by applying smears of spackle.

Two intrepid explorers get uncomfortably close to the lava wells.

Once all that is dry, paint using ordinary craft paints to get the desired color scheme. I chose a dark gray, and added streaks of dull yellow and brown to represent sulfur out-gassing.

Sci-Fi Find

Not a lot to report this week. I hoped my cold would amount to no more than a sniffle, but it turned vicious for a couple days, with full-on streaming eyes and bursting sinuses. Thankfully I feel better now, but I'm still under the weather. 

In between times I found more of my SF collection, including some terrain pieces. The figures are Ground Zero Games 25mm "Kra'Vak," with a Predator from another maker (the name of which escapes me at the moment). My take on this larger figure is it's a Kra'Vak which was fed an equivalent of royal jelly to make it bigger and meaner than the average grunt. 

The Sub-Leader points the way to his patrol in their search for nice, crunchy humans. 

An Over-Warrior brings up the rear to maintain march discipline. 

The blue conical terrain pieces were made by filling a cake-piping syringe with a gloopy mix of spackle and PVA, squeezing it out into a kind of "Walnut Whip" shape. With a coat or two of paint and ink for shading, they become strange rock formations, or alien growths, or weird mud vents from a volcanic fault line.

These figures will go toward my Keynes County game world, which I've slowly developed over the years. I have a set of home-grown rules for SF gaming in this scale, which work well enough. Exposure to the Too Fat Lardies way of doing things has made me rethink them, though. The card activation system used in Sharp Practice appeals to me, as it's useful for solo gaming. When I get time to think things through, I'll post some ideas here.

Another touch of sci-fi

The building model featured earlier on this blog had been sitting around unpainted for four months. After posting photos of it I decided it was high time I finished it!

The satellite dish was made from the plastic cap off a soy milk carton, with a pin forming the receptor stalk. A length of plastic tube made the support strut, with the pin bent at a slight angle and threaded through the tube to pierce the foamcore. I added a drop of craft glue to anchor the whole thing to the building.

Most of the paints I used were Craft Smart acrylics, found in Michael's and similar hobby outlets. First coat was a mix of 23620 Terracotta and 23631 Mustard Yellow. Once dry, I highlighted the texture with a dry brushing of mustard yellow followed by another of 23608 Ivory. Lastly I gave the whole building a wash of sepia brown mixed with a very little Indian ink.

Before I began the groundwork I coated the whole area around the building with a thinned coat of craft glue which I then sprinkled with sand. Foamcoare is smooth and the sand gives the lightweight spackle a keyed surface to grip on. The spackle was also thinned with water and spread into place with an old brush before more sand was sprinkled on top. Once dry, I painted the whole with a solid coat of 23630 Espresso brown, followed by a dry brushing of 23608 Ivory and a final, very light dry brushing of Vallejo 70918 Ivory.

On to two citizens of Keynes County, the prospector Not-So-Lonesome Charlie Reynolds and his girlfriend, Deputy Tina Ozamba. Charlie's prospecting vehicle is a mish-mash of parts and components built on what was once a civilian air-cushion design. Rugged and (usually) reliable, it's a useful means of exploring the Outback regions of Fomor.

Sukiyaki Corp.

Over now to one group that often drops in on Fomor, to "further the company's interests" there. Sukiyaki Heavy Industries has fingers in a lot of pies across human space. Sometimes those fingers probe where they're neither popular nor wanted, which is where these boys (and one gal) come in. Lightly armed and armored, they act in a variety of roles, usually recon or security for company special agents and assets on the ground. Backed by a potent Wakizashi-class recon/support robot, they're usually a match for most opponents.

But that hasn't stopped the Keynes County Militia handing them their heads on a plate on the two occasions they clashed...

Figures again by Ground Zero Games. The robot is a Battlemech (TM etc.) from an unknown manufacturer.

The Keynes County Militia

Here we have the boys and girls of the Keynes County Militia, a stalwart band of citizen-soldiers, sworn to defend their community against all comers. They're very much tech-light, relying on sound tactics and tried-and-true weaponry over exotic gizmos and battle armor. Led by Captain Jason Stone, they've had a few brushes with trouble, both human and otherwise, and lived to tell the tale.

Their most sophisticated weapons are the laser sniper rifle and a multi-shot bazooka. All platoon rifles are license-built Stellar Arms ACR 227s, a simple and rugged projectile weapon design that fills a similar slot to the modern AK47. It follows the principle that few hostile things in this universe can't be dealt with by a direct, concentrated application of kinetic energy. Largely made of ceramics and pressed metals, the ACR 227 is an easy weapon for frontier world industries to make.

Transport consists of Shank's pony, a couple of horses, and a wheeled APC as armored back-up.


Group photo. Capt. Stone is in the middle of the pic, with cigar-chewing Sgt. Andy Klugman to his left and unit sniper Corporal Lindsey Brooke to his right. All figures are by Ground Zero Games, who seem to have a penchant for females in low-cut open necked shirts. I play using my home-grown Blood Among the Stars rules, a semi role-playing set designed for small-scale actions.

A touch of Sci-fi

Over now to another of my wargaming interests - sci-fi.

I'm not one for Warhamster 40K/AT-43 style games with hordes of mutant armor-clad soldiers and overblown war machines set against a background of eons of constant warfare. My taste is toward skirmish level games, where warfare gets downright personal. The kind of game with a scenario or plot, requiring thought more than brute force. The kind of small-scale action where the ground-pounder has to figure out what's over that next hill, or in that building - and whether he/she will get the chance to kill it before it kills them.

With this premise in mind I built up a modest collection of 25mm figures, mostly from Ground Zero Games in the UK with a sprinkling of other makes.

The action in my games takes place on the planet Fomor, an inhabitable Earth-size world with a warm-to-hot overall climate, a few, small oceans and quite a lot of land much like the Australian Outback. Fomor's star-system is located out on the Human Frontier, where folks learn to fend for themselves and make the best of what they have - or perish. That's not to say the planet is ignored. Quite a number of polities and organizations have vested interests in the quadrant, and Fomor is a handy-dandy place for those interests to clash...

In the middle of it all is the Keynes County Militia. A platoon-size outfit with an average of thirty or so personnel, it's charged with defending their neighbors in the nascent colony against all comers. When the alarm sounds, Militia members are expected and required to drop everything and pick up their rifle. Sometimes they face human foes: sometimes not.

* * *

My buildings and some vehicles are mostly scratch-built, with a leavening of the excellent vehicles produced by Old Crow Models in the UK.

For now I'll turn my attention to a building constructed from Hirst Arts blocks, mostly from their Gothic range. Just because it's the future doesn't mean to say there aren't retro touches in architecture to be found here and there.

The building shown in the photos below is intended to be a focal point for games. It could be the access point for an underground complex, or a bunker, or even a civilian dwelling. In time I intend to get the starship component molds from Hirst Arts so I can build starship modules and underground complexes to skirmish through.

We know you're in there, ET! Come out with your appendages up!

Three members of the Keynes County Militia aid a local cop.

*

The model was built from Hirst blocks and foamcore and took only a couple of days. It's not finished - I have to add a few components like air-con/filtration system boxes and uplink antennae. The gray panel on top was made using that molded packing material cookies are stacked in inside tins. I decided not to have it so the roof lifts off, although it's entirely possible to make it this way. Now, what color to paint it? I'm leaning toward a sandstone/limestone effect. None of the gray gritty grimy oily color schemes to buildings on this world unless they're industrial premises.

Anyone home?

Nope, he ain't back here either.