Quick and Easy 28mm Warehouses from Ertl Building Kits

It was four days before our annual zombie extravaganza that I came across a bag of Ertl farm building parts at my local resale shop. I got home started assembling them, ending up with two nearly complete buildings. Great -- but I needed more for our zombie game.

The wider of the two appeared to be a red version of the white building. The set is currently available on Amazon.

The smaller building in the bag was similar, but it has a steeper roof and no sliding doors.

These buildings were all too big to be used for 28mm wargaming, so I decided to split each into two separate buildings. I added enough greebles from my bits boxes to make buildings that would be suitable for modern, post-apocalyptic, or sci-fi settings. In the photos below you'll see faux LEGO parts, contact lens soaking-case pieces (round grills) and some chicken fence sections from a cheap toy. I also used some long plastic rod on the roofs of the smaller buildings to make it possible for figures to stand on their steeper roofs.

The doors are one-sided corrugated cardboard. The two buildings below are constructed mainly from stock Ertl building sections. They are based on pieces of vinyl floor tile and attached with a hot glue gun. Vinyl tile sections are about $1 each and are really easy to score and break. If you aren't going to do anything special with the adhesive on the bottom, just peel off the backing and stick on a sheet of paper to cover it up.

Note that except for the three-sided shed, I did not glue on any of the roofs.

For the next two buildings, I used more vinyl floor tiles to build side walls, since I had used up all the Ertl walls. The adhesive sides came in handy, as I used positioned them facing out, then peeled off the backing and pressed on sections of single-sided corrugated cardboard. The first was done up as a two-stall repair building.

For the second I only made one extra wall and left one side open for the three-sided shed you often see in industrial outbuildings.

I had originally intended to paint them all black and drybrush the rest of the colors, but I needed to get them done quickly, so I used lots spray paint instead. Krylon Camouflage sprays are great for this. Interior walls and roofs got sprayed with dark or light grey. I did some very light weathering on the roofs with black washes on the roofs, as well as some red, brown, gray and tan drybrushing here and there.

The green building was sprayed with camo green then drybrushed with light green. I used the same camo green spray to add some grime to the floors.

The large brown warehouse was sprayed with dark brown then drybrushed with tan. After painting, the sliding doors were added. They open and close!

The large warehouse with corrugated sides was sprayed black and drybrushed.

The three-sided machine shed was sprayed gray and drybrushed lighter grey and red.

Here's a Group shot of all of them next to the Walthers HO-scale engine shed that I converted to 28mm last year.

They were all finished in time for our Zombie apocalypse game last week, though a few players remarked on the smell of spray paint that lingered on the  newly finished terrain pieces.

Overall, I'm super happy with these buildings. If purchased new, Ertl buildings are significantly more expensive than resale, but still cheaper than O-scale buildings. Also, they have a nice industrial look that the popular Plasticville O-scale kits do not. With a bit of work, the set I linked to at the top of the post could provide you with three or four complete buildings! As always, don't hesitate to post questions or comments at the end of this post.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Carnage in New Chicago: Our 2nd Annual Halloween Zombie Game

This week we hosted the second installment in our annual Halloween zombies game. For our initial effort last year, Tim (our zombie gamemaster) set the bar pretty high, with a walk-right-up-and-play urban horror game featuring desperate survivors and mindless zombies. This year, we turned the dial up to 11 with more terrain, more players -- and of course, more zombies. Here's the zombie pool that Tim used to populate our map.

For last year's game, we used All Things Zombie with a few modifications. This year, we used Blasters & Bulkheads, which did an excellent job simulating a small group of heavily armed heroes blasting their way through hordes of walking dead. B&B has a "henchmen" mechanic that was well-suited to running the zombies -- keeping them dangerous in big groups but also giving survivors a chance to escape.

We set up a tabletop with all sorts of urban terrain, including office buildings, abandoned military checkpoints and an industrial area with fences and warehouses. Here are a couple of the little vignettes that helped tell the story of the last days of New Chicago.

What's this? An abandoned medical supply depot? Who knows what's in those barrels...

And over here, it looks like the military fortified this office building against the oncoming horde. But where are they now...?

Prior to the start of the game, each player selected two armed survivor figures from a big pool of maybe 30 figures. Then Tim randomly generated each character's stats. They were assumed to be armed with exactly what the miniature was carrying -- little wonder, then, that the shotgun-wielding figures got selected first!

The players started their figures in a couple different board edges. Here a small group of survivors creeps onto the battlefield. By the end of the game, we had developed a persona for the guy in the tan coat -- his name was Jimmy Jaworsky, a tough-as-nails South Sider wearing a Bears jersey underneath his jacket. Yes, I put on my very best Chicago accent when it was Jimmy's turn to activate.

Across the board, Tom's two survivors found themselves in an abandoned industrial area. A warehouse loomed up ahead, so Tom sent Professor Paulsen -- an aging, tenured scholar from the University of New Chicago who nonetheless knows how to handle a shotgun -- to explore.

Tim came armed with plenty of random charts to aid in our looting efforts. In this case, Professor Paulsen stumbled across a handful of zombies -- and two survivors cowering behind a stack of crates! After Tom's two survivor characters dispatched the zombies, the two newcomers agreed to join the survivors, giving Tom two more figures to control for the remainder of the game.

To the north, a multi-story garage loomed against the darkened skyline. That's where Karl sent his two survivors, who were both clad in bright yellow biohazard suits. Perhaps they were scientists before the outbreak?

Inside the garage was a garbage truck, a formidable mode of transportation with the potential to squish dozens and dozens of zombies -- if only Karl could get the vehicle started! His attempts created a lot of noise, which brought even more moaning, groaning zombies to the scene.

As with last year's scenario, noise played an important role as the game unfolded. Fighting in melee, starting cars, shooting firearms -- all of these things generated noise, which in turn could attract zombies. Sometimes a gunshot or scuffle wouldn't result in any undue attention from the undead, but other times a half dozen zombies might show up, hungering for flesh.

Anyway, back to the game. Across the map, Jimmy Jaworsky was getting himself into a bit of trouble. He spotted a high-end sports car peeking out of a shipping container, and Jimmy decided that this was the ride that was going to get him out of New Chicago once and for all. But as he closed in on the vehicle, two small groups of walking dead stumbled after him...

Meanwhile Mike's two characters -- a grizzled military veteran and a plucky girl sidekick -- commandeered an old pickup truck, got it running, and began zooming across the map, splatting zombies left and right. 

They sideswiped a big mob of zombies that were harassing Jimmy, then skidded around a corner and headed off into the industrial sector to help out Karl's survivors.

And speaking of Karl's survivors -- they finally got the garbage truck up and running, but about a dozen zombies were thronging around the garage, pursuing two different groups of survivors.

By this point Karl's survivors had mobilized the garbage truck, and Mike's survivors were careening around the map in their pickup truck.

Poor Jimmy Jaworsky had gone to the big Polish sausage stand in the sky, though -- he was ripped apart and devoured by eight zombies as he attempted to hotwire an abandoned car. Professor Paulsen, too, went on permanent sabbatical, as he was dismembered by zombies in the industrial sector. Luckily Tom's other survivors proved particularly adept at self-preservation, and they emerged onto the streets to meet the garbage truck saviors.

We called the game there, as Games Plus was about to close. Everyone had plenty of praise for the scenario and for Tim's gamemastering. The game was fun, bloody, exciting and grim, just like any zombie apocalypse game should be! Here's the final photo, showing the garbage truck plowing into a mob of zeds.

Doubtless we'll run a zombie game next Halloween. Until then!


-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Terrain: Office buildings and lamp posts

I have been wanting to make a large office building piece for sci-fi and superhero games, so I bought six white miniature milk crates as a base to make these simple buildings.

This crate is from Office Depot (item #785-255) and unfortunately it appears to be discontinued.

The first step is to remove the curved section of plastic at the top that imitates a handle. I found that the easiest method was to use a Dremel to cut through the thicker sections, then I cleaned up the cuts with a utility knife.

Next, I made the pieces that will fill in the windows on the sides of the buildings. I used cardboard from cereal boxes and similar packages, cutting them to fit the inside of the crates. I taped the pieces to a board so they would not warp while drying and used a broad, coarse brush to make the streaked pattern seen on these pieces.

Here are the window pieces glued in to the crate with white glue. One of the windows has been filled with white to match the crate.

Next, I filled the remainder of the middle row of windows with white, making an area that represents the separation between floors of the building. Some touch up on the windows is still needed at this point. To have a flat, dark surface on the roof, I cut a square of black craft foam material, applied some spots of dark gray, and used hot glue to hold it in place.

Here are the six crates finished and stacked together as one building. I am considering making some low walls to surround the roofs and other items like air conditioners and stairwells that might be found on roofs. Ideally, these would be stored with other small items inside the buildings.

Along with new buildings, I made a simple set of street lamps. They are made from mass-produced wooden parts: 2.5" shaker pegs and doll stand bases.

There is not much to the construction of these lamps. The pieces are glued together with wood glue and painted. I chose a streaky verdigris paint scheme and painted the lamp area with splotches of white, orange, and yellow.

-- Tim, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Still More Post-Apocalyptic Terrain

I've cleared a couple more terrain projects off my shelf relating to our forthcoming post-apocalyptic campaign. In a question posted on my previous article, a commenter asked which ruleset we were thinking of using. The answer is, we're not sure yet. It might be Blasters & Bulkheads, but it might also be Neutron York 3000, or Wastelands, or even something like Nuclear Renaissance. We're holding auditions this month and next to see which ruleset clicks for us.

On to the terrain! Up first we have a huge sewer pipe popping out of some shattered concrete. Is it a point of entry to a vast underground tunnel network? Or an exhaust vent for a ramshackle industrial plant? Only the scenario knows...

The idea for this terrain piece was shamelessly borrowed (ripped off?) from Mattblackgod, post-apoc modeler extraordinaire and moderator of the Post-Apoc Wargames Forum, an excellent source for inspiration. To wit: He made a piece of terrain that was a pipe coming out of the ground, and I was like "I can do that!" So I did. I had a length of unused PVC pipe in my basement, so I cut it at an angle, glued it to a CD base, added some foam blocks and filled in the rest with sand, gravel and green flock.

This next item is an urban ruin. It's just a few blocks of blasted concrete, really ... can't even call it a collapsed building. This my first time creating a piece like this, and I tried to create several little areas for figures to find cover. I think it turned out well (needs more little wires for concrete rebar), so I'll probably make a few more like this. It was quick and easy to put together, though it took a while to paint.

 

  

  

And finally we have this little barricade I put together using some spare bits. The main piece is a resin fortification, and I added some barrels, metal walls and a couple sandbags. A quick and dirty paintjob finished this up in no time flat. I've got 5 more little fortification pieces left, so I can make several more of these. It's a bit shiny because I dipped the finished product and it needs a matte spray to take the gleam off.

Here's another urban ruin along the same lines as the one I featured above. It's a bit bigger, with a ledge and more places to hide. I also added a few more detail bits, like the metal grating and the fallout poster.

The figures are Kolony Ferals from Pig Iron Productions -- some of my very favorite post-apocalyptic/sci-fi miniatures. I've got about 30 of 'em painted up, and they always draw comments when they hit the battlefield. Here's a closeup of two guys in this new terrain piece.

And here's a little piece of industrial wreckage. It's made out of the gearbox from inside a wind-up toy car, and the green piece is a bit from a Mechwarrior clix figure. The other debris is just twisted wire and a small snippet of plastic grating. Oh, and the figure is another Kolony Feral dude.

More to come!


-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member