No news...

... is good news, right?

Well, perhaps not, but rest assured despite the blog living up to its name lately, things has been progressing in the background, although the hobby:real-life ratio has been lower than normal.

However, inspired by my highly productive blogging neighbour Kraggi I've decided to start actually writing all articles I've been mulling over for the past few weeks, starting with my recently finished terrain piece...




I've always been on the lookout for interesting terrain for Planetfall, the lack of previous 10mm games at my local club has meant that most early game tables consisted of re-used 6mm Gothic ruins (don't get me wrong, they are wonderfully sturdy pieces, but not really fitting in with the more modern SciFi of the Firestorm universe). The Spartan Scenery pack was an early purchase, as was the Hawk Wargames Ruinscape Pack, but they are both a bit limited in theme (one being FoB or other military outpost, the other being ruined 20th century urban zone).

Blotz.co.uk has been my first foray into the 10mm laser cut MDF scene, providing both some office complexes (more on those later) and some more SciFi pieces, the first of which I've recently completed.

Initially I was a bit daunted: After unpacking what the label assured me was, in fact, my Dual Power Generator I was left with the following:
4 sprues of assorted MDF pieces, many of them with a clear theme.

Thanks to the very nice instructions that Blotz provides on their homepage, it didn't take too long to get all the parts assembled into something very much like I imagined, a nice, chunky structure, which should provide infantry and lights with plenty of cover.



Now, I'm OK with using office complexes without bases, it makes it easier to fit them in to an streetscape, but for this I wanted a little bit more rural feel, so a base of hardboard got constructed.
After gluing the model down and adding some filler I dug out a can of Army Painters Grey** spray paint to give it a nice coat, and then went after it with some metallics, khaki and finally some AP Strong Tone Dip (the canned one, not the bottled water-based one). The end result can be seen to the right, a fairly nice piece if I say so myself (Imzani for scale). The white among the flock is PVA glue, not really dry.

After the traditional matt varnish, the entire piece is surprisingly sturdy. The combination of paint, dip and varnish really creates a solid finish on MDF, almost giving the impression of plastic, in the end.

It's not seen table time yet, but I've got a feeling that it will, the next time I can steal some time away... And it might get to shelter the Imzani in the picture (the white paint job designates it as part of my El-Shami Leviathan Helix...).

But more about that at a later point...

**A quick note on basecoating MDF: I've tried several different spray primers on MDF, and I can really recommend something with a lot of pigment, like Army Painters. Many of the thinner variants ends up absorbed by the MDF, leaving a splotchy finish, or with a lot of the MDF showing through.
Terrain projects & sources