Trees for Battletech

Being a cheap gamer, I am always looking for ways to get nice looking terrain and scenery for little money.  I've seen pipe cleaner trees many times, and made some in the past from bump chenille.  I didn't like how these turned out, so I'm tackling them in a different way.

I prefer my trees to be based individually and be placed on a template, as I will use them for Battletech and other 6mm gaming.

Unfortunately these pictures turned out terribly, but they will still convey the basic process.

Start off with two regular pipe cleaners.  Brown or black is the best to use, but I've picked up all kinds of colors for very little money, so I will be using a variety.  An advantage to building these trees is that I can grind through TV shows on the DVR with my girlfriend and still get some projects done.

Twist the pipe cleaners together to form the trunk of the tree.  A bit will also be needed to attach the tree to a base.

Loop the long ends back to the trunk.  These loops will form the bulk of the trees branches and foliage.  When I do this I use it to create 4 "branches."  

Loosely twist the loops together to create branches.  

Roll the branches up towards the trunk.  

Use a lighter or other controlled flame to melt the chenille fibers on the trunk.  It stinks and is probably toxic (I'm guessing they are made of polyester), so do what you feel you need to do to protect yourself.  Don't apply too much heat or the fibres will liquify and drip off, leaving just twisted wire.  You want just enough heat to melt the fibers.  If you're really tough you can roll the trunk in your fingers immediately after melting the fibers to smooth it out.  It is hot though and may burn you, so touch at your own risk!

This completes the basic construction of a tree armature.  The steps below will lay out painting and flocking trees.  I am using a red tree as a test because I want to see if I need to dye the odd- colored trees before flocking and painting.  This tree is also a bit bulkier than the one in the example above because an extra pipe cleaner was used in bulking out the branches and foliage.

Start off by painting the trunk.  Use whatever tree colors you prefer.  I am using Delta acrylic paint, Burnt Umber.  This is cheap craft paint readily available at Wal Mart or any craft store (Michaels, Jo Anne Ect., Hobby Lobby, etc.)  I went pretty heavy to soak up and cover the red colors.  Coverage was adequate.

Insert the tree into your preferred base.  In my case I am reusing the bases from my previous tree project.  They are made from 40mm poker chips.  In Minnesota thrift stores always have poker chips, and they go for $1- $3 for 100 of them.  They make great bases for models and terrain.  These chips were primed black and based with my standard mix.  A hole the size of the tree trunk was drilled in the center.  The tree was then super- glued into place.  As you see in the picture the trunk pokes through the base a good amount.  When the glue is dry, clip this off flush with the bottom of the base.

The top of the tree is then coated in a liberal amount of white glue.  I made sure to completely saturate the fibers.  I then rolled it in Woodland Scenics Course Turf, then squished it in.  I then tapped off the excess.  Despite the heavy coverage, the red underneath still shows true.  The fibers will have to be colored ahead of time.  Spray paint might work.  Dyeing it black with watered down paint might work too.  I am going to mix black paint in with the white glue and see if I can dye and glue the turn down at the same time.

A picture of the tree on one of my typical woods templates with a Dragon and Jenner from the Introductory Box Set.  I will post more pictures as the experiments continue.

Easy Roads

For some time I've been trying to come up with a simple, easy and cheap method for creating roads for my games.  I wanted them to be flexible to conform to terrain, as well as be easy to transport.

A friend of mine had come up with a great idea using some offcut rubber strip he got from a customer a long time ago.  I wanted to have roads like these, but the material he used was not readily available.

I finally figured out a good way to do what I like to call "Dan roads".

The roads are made from Con- Tact Premium Grip Liner.  I picked this up at the local DIY store.  I would imagine this could be found pretty much anywhere.  It is a textured, rubber mat about 1/8" thick and comes in a 4' roll.  The roll is 18" wide.

I simply slid back the outer wrapper to expose as much liner as I needed for the width of my road and started slicing through with a sharp utility knife.  I then learned there is a cardboard spool in the center, and a layer of clear plastic as well.  The spool slid out easy enough, and cutting continued. 

I measured the width of my roads based on the size of a 15mm infantry base.  I also didn't use a straight edge, so the road edge came out uneven.  For me this is OK because it will look more like a dirt road.  For city streets I would use more care to make sure the edge was true.

Once cutting was done I unrolled the pieces and gave them a generous coat of dark brown acrylic paint.  I then hung them to dry.  The pictures shows them drying.  I painted them one half at a time for ease of handling.  It is a rubber material, so the paint didn't cover that well.  I used cheap craft paint, so I was not worried about using too much and slathered it on.

A light brown/ tan was then streaked and drybrushed over the brown.  The liner has just enough texture to pick up from some drybrushing, which looks OK for a dirt road in 6- 15mm, and would look pretty good for asphalt in larger scales.  A bit of off white was then lightly drybrushed  onto the roads, and they were finished.

Here are a few shots of the finished roads in use. 

The roads are stored rolled up.  The end in the center of the roll curls very hard, causing it to bow up from the table.  I think alternating the direction the roads are rolled up will help them lay flat in the future.

 A detail shot of the road.

Overall I like the way they turned out.  There is a good cost/ time/ detail ratio with these roads.  I'm just curious now as to how well the paint will hold up to the rigors of gaming.

Cheap Wood Houses

I picked this up this past Saturday when checking out Michaels for craft projects for my daughter.

It is a Creatology Ranch House Wooden Puzzle.  It cost me $1.00 US.

It looks like it's scaled OK for 1/72.  It took about 10 minutes to assemble; no glue required.

The pieces come on two wooden sheets.  You simple punch them out and slide the tabs together.  They may make a nice framework from which to create your own house.  The shingles, windows and doors are printed on in black.  There isn't a whole lot of detail.

The chimney is the worst part.  Not bad for $1, but is it worth the effort to detail up and repaint?  We'll see one day...

Miss Trude's

I've included this piece for completeness only. I'm not particularily proud of this piece anymore, and I will be turning it into a ruined structure when time permits.

The first piece I decided to build for my city gaming board was a base of operations for my gang of street girls and doms. I wanted to give them a fortified building, but a simple apartment building would have been too dull. I decided to go with a seedy gentlemen's club theme instead. Miss Trude's Live Nude Girls is a plain building with loud signs that attracts loud and unruly clientelle.

Miss Trude's is simply two foamcore boxes stacked on top of each other. The second floor and roof are removable to allow access to the inside.

The first and second floor walls were constructed by cutting a 1/4" notch off of the end of the foamcore, removing one layer of card and the foam inside. The outside layer of card was left intact and was glued to the edge of the next piece of foamcore. This allowed the exposed foamcore edge to be covered up.

A doorway was cut into the front and back of the first floor. Doors were built and installed, and then the first floor was glued directly to the 12" x 12" double- corrugated cardboard base (with edges covered with masking tape to cover the corrugations, as usual.) A floor was made of foamcore for the second floor, with a notch cut out for the stairway and a hole cut for the pole to the first floor. The roof was also made of foamcore with a notch cut out for the roof hatch.

The sidewalk was added my cutting into the cardboard base, then using a blunt pencil to push in the cuts to give the impression of concrete pavers.

Once the floors were assembled and dry the carpeting was put in place. The carpeting is a type of felt with an adhesive backing on it. I bought it at craft store for $1.00 a piece and the building required 2 pieces.

Thin card was used to trim the building. It also helped hide the seams between the stackable floors and keeps the roof and second story from moving around while the building floors are stacked on each other.

The doors were made by folding a piece of card in half and glueing a length of wire in the crease. The folded card was then glued to itself and the ends of the wire were inserted into holes in the base and in the top of the door opening.

The stairs were built by stacking varying lengths of foamcore and glueing them together. The interior walls are simply foamcore.

The stages are thick plastic card mounted on foamcore. Holes were drilled to accomodate the poles, which are just bamboo skewers. The stages were painted outside of the building and glued into place after the interior was painted.

Some other odd bits were added here and there; a hatch was added to the roof, a piece of model railroad track acts as the ladder to the roof. The vent- thing on the roof is just an old T.V tuner knob.

The sign on the roof was made of corrugated plastic and bamboo skewers for supports.

The exterior of the building was hand painted with textured paint. Two coats were applied for best coverage. The outside was then drybrushed a dark grey, then light gray and finally white.

The interior walls were painted pink. The paint was slopped on, giving the impression of worn, patched and repainted walls. The doors were painted grey on the outside, and the sign and vent on the roof were drybrushed silver.

The stages were painted with gold poles and red tops. The surface of the stages were then given a clear gloss coat.

The carpeting was drybrushed in browns and blacks to give the impression of lots of dirty feet tracking through the club.

The signs were created using Microsoft Word and the posters on the walls are scans of callgirl cards I picked up in Las Vegas (I KNEW those things would come in handy.) They were given a light gray drybrush to tone the colors down.

Underhive Buildings

Here are a couple of old terrain pieces that don't seem to have a home yet.  It's been a long time since I built them so let me try to walk though the process, if I can remember.

The Egg Room

This is a survivor from my original underhive set.  The walls and floor are all metal panels from inside computers; fan covers, power supply cases, etc.  They were arranged in a manner that let them look most like a room and actually hot glued together.  Suprisingly the hot glue has held up all these years!  Cross stitch fabric was glued over some some of the openings, and distressed to allow egress through them during gameplay. 

The alien pods are wooden eggs purchased at a craft store.  They were also glued in place with hot glue.

The entire piece was primed black and painted hunter green.  The structure was drybrushed a few lighter shades of green.  The pods were painted brown and given a green ink wash.  They were then drybrushed a ligher shade of brown.  The slime effect on the pods was achieved simply by stringing hot glue down the eggs. 

Industrial Structure

This piece is a sister piece to the Pumping Station.  This one is also based off of the case from a Battlebots RC car.  All of the techniques used on the first piece were also used here. 

Details were added using wire, straws, N scale railroad tracks, cross stitch fabric, and some numbers off of an old clock.   The biohazard sign was clipped form an industrial supply catalog and glued into place.

1/72 Crates

I'm just finishing up posting everything from my old website and found these pictures of some stowage.  I sold these on Ebay years ago.  The manufacturer is unknown, but they are cast in a hydrostone.  Painting is pretty straightforward base coats, washes and drybrushed highlights. 

The patches of ground cover are my typical mix.

I sure wish I still had these as they would be great objective markers now that I have started collecting 1/72 figures.

Warjack Fueling Station- Painting

The piece was primed black with spraypaint.

The tanks, regulator, pipes and pump were painted with this technique from Brush Thralls. The only difference is I sponged on a light layer of GW Boltgun Metal as the last step.

Pump pistons were painted GW Boltgun Metal, all valve handles were painted red, and the ladder was done in wood colors. I didn't paint the CD before laying down the sand, so you could see the reflective surface even after priming. To remedy this I inked the entire base in brown. The base was then drybrushed a dark brown to a medium brown.

Small lengths of twine were cut and untwisted. They were glued along the edges of the tank with white glue. The ground cover is the standard mix. The bush is a bit of green lichen with course turf glued on. A small amount of watered down white glue was gently brushed to the course turf and some ground tea leaves sprinkled on top. The tea leaves are too much.

Warjack Fueling Station- Construction

I built this as something quick for May-June Terragenesis Terrain Competition. The only requirement was that it had to fit onto a CD. After finishing the tedious and not- too- creative Axis and Allies Miniatures terrain, I needed to build something. This is what I came up with.

I play Warmachine but know little about the background story. I figured warjacks are steam powered and have a boiler, so they would have to lug around water to create steam. Right? So this is a water fueling station. Or it could be the largest keg in the Iron Kingdoms. Either way I'm happy. Click pictures for larger views.

Starting components: CD, Bottle bottom, beads and pumping mechanism.

The core of the project, or "water tank", is the bottom half of a contact lense saline bottle. This was hot glued to the CD. A pumping arm was built from two lengths of drinking straw and two plastic card pieces cut to size. The grommets at the bottom of the pump pistons are donut- shaped beads.

The roof is made from the top, tapered portion of the bottle. The nozzle was cut off and an old hatch from a GW Rhino glued into place. The entire piece was hot glued into place.

The fueling nozzle and regulator are made from the exhaust off of a Ferrari model. This was mounted onto a piece of thin card glued to the tank. Another piece of card was attached next to the pump to accomate an instrument cluster. The three gauges are made from lights from a model car.

The verticle pipes are simply drinking straws. Rivets were punched out of thin plastic with a leather punch and glued into place with super glue. These were used on the mounting plates for the instrument cluster and fueling regulator, as well as on the pump mechanism. Valve handles on the top hatch, verticle pipes and fueling nozzle are nylon snaps for womens clothing.

A bead of hot glue was run down the seams on the top and sides of the tank to simulate a weld. This was also done around where the verticle pipes attach to the tank. The ladder is a modified MegaBloks Dragons toy.

The base is simply covered in sand attached with white glue.

Underhive Terrain- Bridges Part 2

Again, all of the bridges are based on a double layer of foamcore; the top layer about 1/2" longer than the bottom. This gives the bridge a little "lip" to place on a platform and helps keep the bridge from sliding around too much. A short description of each type of bridge is below:

The Post Bridge

This short bridge uses the off- cuts of K'nex pieces for posts along the edges. Decking is done in granny grating. Edges are covered in drinking straws. The decking is drybrushed silver. The posts are yellow.

The Heavy Bridge

This bridge has PC hard drive brackets for railings. Drinking straws cover up any other exposed edges. Decking is granny grating. Painted tan, inked brown and drybrushed again.

Normal Bridges

These bridges are simple in construction. The left bridge simply has cross stitch fabric as the base, and thin card glued over the sides and top. Sections were cut from the card on top and it was simply glued over the decking. The bridge on the right also uses the fabric decking. The walls are thin card, the supports matchsticks cut to length and glued into the holes in the fabric. Punched plastic rivets accect the piece. Painting is green and silver, inked chestnut ink and black, then drybrushed.