Waste not, want not, terrain and a Starfighter

In my last post I made some alien-looking plants using seed pods from a Banksia tree which I found on a walk on Christmas day. While making the terrain (see previous post for details), I cut the bottom off each of the seed pods. These offcuts still looked interesting, so I decided not to throw them away.

More alien plants added as scatter terrain.

A day or so later, while sorting through my stash of various plastic plants I have collected over the years, but never fully used. I found some sprouting flower pieces that looked like they could be attached to the Banksia offcuts to create a few more alien-looking plants. With that in mind, I drilled holes to attach the flowers and then painted the pieces.

The following is a quick overview of the steps involved in making the plants.

The off cuts of the Banksia seed pods.

Some unused plastic pieces of plant not used with sprouting flowers.

Holes were drilled into the off cuts to hold the flowers.

The off cuts were given a green wash, dry-brushed with a light green, and finally dabs of yellow added. 

The finished plants on the tabletop.

I think I have now done my dash with creating alien-looking plants for the moment. Keeping with the Sci-Fi theme, a recent addition to my Star Wars Legion collection is a 1/72 scale X-Wing Starfighter for the Rebel forces. I already have a TIE Fighter for the Imperial forces. Although the 1/72 scale models are smaller than Star Wars Legion figures, which stand at around 30 mm tall, the fighters do not look out of place and appear suitably proportioned when mounted on sticks so they stand about 12 inches above the tabletop. With this addition, both forces now have access to air support, and the X-Wing will be used in the same way as the TIE Fighter, providing scenario-driven air support.

The latest addition to my Star Wars collection.

The X-Wing and TIE fighter.

That’s all for 2025…

A find on a walk adds to the sci-fi terrain collection

Christmas Day and Boxing Day have turned out to be quite productive on the hobby front. While out walking on Christmas Day, I came across a Banksia tree and was able to collect a few of its seed pods with the idea of turning them into sci-fi terrain. The pods have a wonderful alien look. I decided to paint them with a yellow and dark pink colour scheme and added them to the other seed pods I have already been using to create colourful and interesting looking terrain features.

In addition, I painted up two Imperial officers that were a small Christmas present to myself.

The latest alien terrain additions.

Two imperial officers.

Here are a series of photos showing the steps I used to create the terrain features:

One end of the seed pod is sawn off so they can stand freely (avoiding the need to base them and saving both time and effort).

Once cleaned up and given a flat base, the seed pods were covered with a yellow wash.

After the yellow wash had dried, the seed pods were dry-brushed with yellow to help highlight the texture.

Finally, a dark pink wash was applied to the openings in the seed pods to add contrast to their alien look.

With these new terrain pieces finished, they will soon find their way onto the tabletop for a Star Wars game.

Gaul Warband, Robots, and Sci-Fi Terrain

Most of my available wargaming time this past week was spent getting some painting done and scratch-building simple Sci-Fi terrain. I had prepared and undercoated a 48-figure 20mm plastic Gaul Warband at the start of the week, but in an effort to delay tackling them I decided to first painted a couple of Spider Robots for my Star Wars Legion forces. One was the official kit, which came with some spare legs and guns. This gave me the opportunity to build a second robot using a scratch-built body assembled from whatever suitable parts I could find in the spares box (mostly unused bits from old Warhammer 40K kits).

The completed Spider Robots. The closest one uses the spare legs with a scratch-built body.

The Spider Robots from the front. Official kit on the left.

With the Spider Robots finished, there was no avoiding the Gauls. Once I got started painting them, I quickly found my rhythm and completed the unit over a couple of days. My approach to painting Ancient armies is deliberately simple. Basic block colours over a mid-brown base coat, which helps hide any missed areas. A final coat of PVA glue gives the figures a durable and glossy finish which I like.

The complete Gaul Warband made of 4 bases.

A view from the front. The figures are mainly 20mm HAT miniatures with a few Italeri Gauls added in.

Finally, while tidying up the storage in my wargames room, I came across some plumbing items picked up at the hardware store that I must have bought with scenery in mind. These were quickly mounted onto some MDF offcuts left over from last week's container construction to create a set of vents for my Star Wars terrain. I will use them either as scatter terrain, or added to the roofs of block buildings to make them look like a factory (and a suitable scenario objective to be destroyed). 

The vents used as scatter terrain.

The vents on a factory building roof. They add a bit of colour to the buildings.

Making some Sci-Fi Terrain

This week’s modelling has focused on scratch-building and kit-bashing additions for my Star Wars collection. Earlier in the week I kit-bashed a dinosaur from the discount shop with a mounted figure from my spare parts box (see previous post).  While I had been rummaging through my spares collection, I came across a collection of old seedpods I had collected years ago on one of my walks. I am always on the lookout for items that could be used as terrain. So it seemed timely to add to my Sci-Fi terrain collection.

Additional terrain made from seedpods.

At first, I planned to simply trim the bases so they would sit flat on the tabletop, but they looked a bit dull and boring. To give them more character, and to better match my retro-style sci-fi terrain, I decided to apply some washes and use some dry brushing to highlight their shapes.

The seedpod brown colour was uninspiring and boring.

I cut the bases off the seedpods to make them sit flat.

For the washes, I used watered-down craft acrylics applied liberally with a brush. Once dry, I then dry brushed them with my regular model paints. There were two types of seedpods to work with. One set was washed in blue, dry brushed in light blue, and finished with touches of dark red around the openings to give them a look of a carnivorous plant. The second set was washed in red and dry brushed with yellow, producing a spiky cactus look.

The blue carnivorous plant life.

The red looking cactus.

These new pieces will add some more colour to the tabletop and can double as dangerous terrain when a scenario calls for it. I will most likely be using the blue, carnivorous-looking plants for that particular role.

I couldn’t resist getting these new additions on to the tabletop and play a few solo Star Wars games using the Squad Hammer Core rules from Nordic Weasel Games.

Kit-bashing a couple of Star Wars Legion models

This week I was rummaging through my Star Wars Legion spares box, filled with all those leftover and unused bits from past kits, to see if I could find enough pieces to kit-bash a couple of new models. I managed to come up with two, the first model was a Mandalorian riding a dinosaur. The model began with a child’s plastic dinosaur that I had picked up from a local discount shop. The rider uses the spare body of a seated Clone Trooper combined with an unused Mandalorian head and jet-pack. The figure fitted neatly on the dinosaur, and I sculpted a saddle and straps using Green Stuff epoxy putty, while the reins were made from thin wire.

A kit-bashed model for my Star Wars Legion collection.

The hardest part of this model turned out to be painting the dinosaur. In my first attempt I used a grey base with a blue wash. It did not look right at all. So, after a bit of research into dinosaur colours and patterns, I tried again with a clay tone and yellow shading. This gave the creature a far more natural and interesting appearance, well suited to a desert environment.

The unpainted model with the plastic toy dinosaur.

The dinosaur colour and. patterning took a while to get right.

 The Mandalorian rider will be able to serve with either Imperial or Rebel forces. 

The reason I decided to make the rider a Mandalorian, was so the model could serve with either Imperial or Rebel forces. The idea of using a dinosaur came from my existing Imperial Dewback Rider, and the scale of the model fits perfectly alongside it.

A comparison to the "Official" Dewback Rider.

The second kit-bashed model I put together was a repair droid. Its body comes from the centre console of another model. I always paint in the windows so I can skip building the interiors. The head and tracks were taken from an unused variant of a different droid kit, while the spare arms came from a more humanoid-style of droid. With all these mismatched parts combined, the finished model definitely has a bit of a Frankenstein vibe to it.

The kit-bashed droid.

he droid seems to be waving his arms around saying "Danger! Danger!"

I plan to use the droid to undertake repairs to any damaged vehicles in my Star Wars games.

Finding a use for stuff in my wargaming stash

One of the benefits of packing up and moving house is I now have a much better sense of all my wargaming stuff, having late last year packed and then unpacked everything. This is especially true for items that I had stashed away a good while ago with the thought, "This might be useful someday," or "It would be a shame to throw this out." As it turns out, I found a use for two such items this week to add to my Star Wars project.

The first item was a piece of plastic foliage, an orange thistle-like plant, that I would have picked up from a local craft store. I often find myself browsing for items that may be useful terrain while my wife shops for fabric for her quilting hobby. I find many of these plastic plants can be pulled apart, with individual pieces repurposed as wargaming scenery. In this case, the orange thistle consisted of clusters of plastic spikes attached to a central ball. I peeled them off, and they turned out to be perfect for creating colourful alien plants. They stand reasonably well on their own, but I plan to hot-glue them to washers for added stability.

A tabletop with the new orange alien plants.

A closer look.

This is the type of plant. I had pulled all the spikes off all the plants and did not take a photograph.

The second item was a crashed sci-fi plane from an old Games Workshop starter set that featured Tyranids and Space Marines. I had picked up two of those sets back in the mid-2000’s, but the second plane never made it to the painting table. Now it has finally been prepared and painted for some scatter terrain.

A old Games Workshop crashed plane added to the Star Wars terrain.

In addition to the alien plants and the crashed plane, I also managed to complete another building and some scatter terrain pieces, which can be used either as sewer covers or rooftop vents. The sewer covers will be used in ambush-style scenarios, where units can emerge from underground tunnels to strike behind enemy lines. The sewer covers were found at the hardware store in the plumbing section. I have no idea what they should be used for.

New building and sewer covers.

The sewer covers can also be used as vents on a building.

And finally, on the gaming front, I have been trying to adapt the Squad Hammer Core rules to work on a 6-inch square grid. The goal is to make it easier to run a remote game. A gridded board simplifies movement compared to freeform movement. In the picture below I use the new repurposed orange plants to mark out the corners of each square.

A test game of Squad Hammer Core using a 6-inch square grid.

It has been a rather productive week for wargaming, helped along by some wet weather that kept me indoors and away from outdoor chores.

Star Wars Legion project update

Since March, when my son and I each bought a Star Wars Legion Core Set (I chose the standard version based on the original films with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, while he went for the Clone Wars set) I have been steadily working through my miniatures. 

“How did we get into this mess?”

I quickly painted up the core set, but soon got sucked into the Star Wars universe and began expanding my collection with additional characters and units. Fortunately, I was able to find most of the extra models at discounted prices which for the most part are now painted. So I only have a few more units left to paint, mainly Rebel forces, and that should be it for now (or until I see the next discount). The next stage in this project is to make some terrain, where the focus will be on buildings and rocky landscapes.

All the models completed so far. Only a couple more units to add.

The Rebel forces

Imperial forces.

I have been keeping my painting style pretty straightforward, mainly just blocking in the colours. Sometimes I will add a bit of dry brushing or a highlight to break up areas that look too flat. For example, the C-3PO model looked like a solid gold blob, so I dry brushed it with a touch of silver to bring out the details. All the models get finished with a gloss coat to make their colours pop. I am definitely not doing a grim-dark future or realistic look and am instead aiming for something that feels more like a comic book look.

Rebel Characters.

A closer view of the Imperial miniatures.

“The Emperor is displeased by your apparent lack of terrain progress.”

Most of the terrain will be built using off-cuts from our recent home extension, along with MDF board and whatever useful bits I can find at the local hardware store.

New game, models, and book purchases

This week, a few purchases arrived. Some were planned, while others were more spontaneous and others opportune. One of the planned purchases came about from a call with my son, who suggested we should both start collecting the Star Wars Legion game and play some wargames. Since he’s not interested in historical gaming, I figured, why not give it a try? The game is new to me, but after watching some YouTube tutorial videos, it seemed like an interesting game. I decided on the original core starter set, as it has miniatures from the Star Wars films the I remember, while my son opted for a Clone Wars starter set.

A planned purchase.

So far, I have painted a couple of test figures. I’m aiming for a clean and crisp look without using washes or dry brushing. A final gloss finish helps to conceal any of my painting mistakes.

A few test miniatures painted.

My impulse purchase was from the local hobby shop. A M7 Priest to add to my WWII collection. The kit includes two models with the option to build one as a Kangaroo. I’ve already assembled and painted one as Priest and hope to get them on the tabletop soon.  

An impulse buy.

One completed Priest

For now, I need to finish a French and Indian War game that is underway as part of a tree campaign I have started. I plan to write it up once things are less busy on the home front.

Early stages of the FIW game.

I finally get to use the Sloop for a landing in the game.

Finally, I picked up two second-hand books from a retailer here in New Zealand, saving on international shipping which seem to add so much to the cost nowadays. I had been searching for a reasonably priced copy of “Renaissance Armies” by George Gush for a while, so when it popped up, I quickly grabbed it (well clicked and added it to the cart). I saw they also had “Featherstone’s Complete Wargaming” at a good price too and decided to get it after reading a review on the Lone Warrior site (here). The book feels like one big magazine, filled with various articles and perfect for picking up, reading a bit, and putting back down.

Latest books to add to the collection.