Toy-Bashing Urban Terrain

Recently I started work on three projects, comprising a sort of a how-to for using toys and other junk to make industrial terrain. If you geek out over DIY projects and detailed how-to guides, then this is for you. If not, well… just flip through the pictures.

Project 1 - Hot Wheels Launcher Power Station, Or, When Toy Designers Do All the Work For You 
This hot wheels toy launcher was found in a bag of racing stuff for a couple bucks at Salvation Army. The rest of the bag went back to the resale shop, but I kept this part.

I gutted the interior and pulled out lots of nice big gears for future projects, then removed the foam car-propelling wheels. The holes they left behind were covered with cross-stitch mesh, aka "granny grating."

I used a piece of diamond plate plasticard (thanks Josh!) to cover the raceway section, and a couple of odd vent-like bits to conceal where the on/off switch used to be. And that's it -- maybe 30 minutes of effort expended in teardown and construction. Here's what it looks like with a coat of black spray paint.

Project 2 - Building Under Construction, Or, Why You Should Own a Dremel 543 Cutting/Shaping Wheel 

This find from Goodwill began life as a toy car parking garage. I used my handy Dremel 543 Cutting/Shaping Wheel cut away the tabs for attaching track, the signs, edges of car pathways and handles.

I can't recommend this tool highly enough. The disposable cutting wheels included with most rotary tools are useful for fine cuts where you don't want to lose much material, but they aren't made for shaping, and they break easily. The 543, on the other hand, is a piece of steel with rough bits of tungsten embedded in it. Not only does it cut like a champ, but you can push and pull to shape, trim and grind things down to size. It's not cheap, but in the past two years I've cut more things with it than I can count, and even as the tungsten grit wears off it shows no sign of stopping.

By pushing and pulling lightly across the plastic surface, you can nicely roughen up the surface and make it look more like cement or plaster without making gouges. I did this to almost all the smooth areas of the blue support structure. It was much faster than adding texture by smearing a thin layer of concrete patch all over the model.

I did two major operations on this project. The first was to hide the various ramps with bits of single sided corrugated cardboard. Bits of the cardboard were added elsewhere as well.

While doing this I wanted to hide most of the one-sided, hollow support pieces. I filed as much as I could with plastic counting bricks, of course found at a resale shop. I have two different styles of these and they are great for adding a bit of gridded texture. The hinges were hidden with pieces of grey plastic cut from some sort of packaging insert. The second step was to build four HVAC/elevator shaft sections from electrical junction boxes. Notable details include door-type shapes from a toy bumper cars playset, ventilation fans from baby food caps, and rectangular vents from the patriotic house decoration that became this building.

Most bits were superglued in place after sanding down both surfaces, but the baby food caps were epoxied. Epoxy or plumbers PVC solvent are really the best when you have two soft plastic pieces, especially when there isn't much shared surface area.

After gluing them in place, I added some plastic tube connection bits to the top unit.

A bit of fencing and some plasticard rebuilds the car lift into a construction worker elevator.

Here's how it looks after a couple layers of Krylon Fusion flat black, which adheres better to soft plastic, followed by regular flat black spray.

I will be adding a top edge of corrugated cardboard to the elevator shaft boxes to fill the space between the top of the boxes and the ceiling.

This last shot really reminds me of the Necromunda stacks that I used to admire in my early gaming days.

Project 3 - El Train Platform, Or, Fisher Price Rocks!

When I found this "Geo Trax" train station, it was missing a main support and a few other parts, but as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it. The elevated train station is a common sight here in Chicago, so I hope to do well with my own rendition.

I started by adding a random white plastic crossing guard station to provide the missing support. For maximum strength, I superglued it in place and then flipped it over and poured a bunch of epoxy into the joints.

I then had to grind away entire walls of detail depicting a flower stand and candy shop on the bottom of the red tower. Fine for a kids toy, not a good fit for my world-weary cityscape. In their place is single-sided corrugated card and a hole. Here's how it looks primed.

I removed just a bit of detail on the platform, but not much else. With the Dremel cutter still spinning, I tapped the surfaces to add chips and wear. Like Project 2 I used it to add concrete-like texture to the side edges of the platform.

In the painting phase, I'll add more texture there. I don't want to give too much away, but this piece is just the start of a related series of complementary terrain pieces.

And there you have it, three more pieces of terrain ready for paint. The club is having a hobby day at my place on Friday, and painting these will be my project for the night. Hopefully I'll have finished versions to show soon. Feel free to ask any questions about construction and sourcing in the comments section, and I'll do my best to respond!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Nuclear Renaissance Game Report and Review

Last week the post-apocalyptic wargaming bug bit the club pretty hard, so we cleared our schedules to play a game we've been interested in for quite some time: Nuclear Renaissance.

This title from Ramshackle Games is a gang-based skirmish game that's particularly well-suited to multiplayer games. That's great for us, as our club nights tend to have an irregular number of players from week to week. For last week's game, we had 5 players, so we decided to bite the bullet and run a post-apoc free-for-all game using Nuclear Renaissance.

We met at Josh's house and put together a fairly epic 4x8 foot tabletop featuring a tumbledown industrial area alongside a wooded settlement. Here's a pic of the setup:

This game marked the first outing for several bits of new terrain, including Karl's tenement high-rise and Josh's atom bomb. Here's a closer look at both halves of the battlefield.

Looks like a great place to battle, right? We played a variation of the classic "Scavenger Hunt" scenario, with 10 little pieces of lost tech hidden all over the battlefield (most inside buildings or atop balconies, to encourage some mobility.

Nuke Ren is a single-figure activation game, where the players roll initiative and then take turns activating individual figures. Typical actions are move, shoot, drive, etc. Unlike games like Warhammer 40,000, vehicles don't come with a crew or pilot ... if you want your truck to move, you have to have a guy behind the wheel! Same with that sweet machinegun on top ... it won't fire unless a member of your warband is in the turret!

What this meant is that my warband (5 guys plus a buggy) was actually three guys once I got the buggy fully staffed with a driver and a gunner. Here's my team -- keep in mind that two of these guys basically weren't on the table for most of the game, since they were aboard the buggy and thus didn't need to be represented on the tabletop.

So anyway, that's something to keep in mind about Nuke Ren.

As the game progressed, each player's gang advanced toward a few of the scavenger tokens on the battlefield. Figures walk 10cm or run 20cm, and with such a large battlefield we found that our guys weren't mobilizing very quickly.

In contrast to the fairly short movement rates of infantry, vehicles proved much more mobile. This seems to be by design, probably to encourage vehicles to race around the battlefield on taxi runs.

As the vehicles moved into the center of the battlefield, we discovered the true potency of ranged firearms in the game. Such weapons are quite expensive in Nuclear Renaissance, accounting for half (or more!) of a typical figure's point value. But they're also quite powerful, and most have extremely long ranges. My assault rifle had a range of 80cm, longer than our fastest vehicle could move in a typical turn!

What this meant is that the few gangs that had assault rifles and sniper rifles were able to really rule the battlefield, despite what we thought was a pretty cluttered tabletop. Mike's troopers climbed a ruined building and took potshots from the upper-story windows...

....while my sniper scaled a warehouse and used his rifle's incredible 200cm range (why not just make it infinite?!) to rain fire down on Josh's squad.

As the game progressed, little mini-battles developed around various buildings as players fought for control of the scavenger tokens. In these two pics, Karl's wastelands raiders skirmished with Mike's troopers around the base of the high-rise. Later you can see Karl's chaingunner atop a ruined building, ready to seize another piece of lost tech.

Toward the end of the game, Josh wanted to try out the vehicle ramming rules, and he picked the only other vehicle nearby as his victim -- alas, it was my buggy! The ramming rules were fairly straightforward, and Josh reduced my buggy to a heavily damaged (but still driveable) wreck.

Conclusion
We agreed that Nuke Ren was a lot of fun. Trying to play a 5-player multiplayer game while also learning a new ruleset was probably a bad idea, as we only got through 5 turns before we had to wrap up for the night.
The size of the battlefield meant that we never even got close enough to try the close combat rules, which is a bummer considering that the game seems heavily slanted in favor of close combat.

The best part of the game is probably the well-developed vehicle section. We have lots of post-apoc vehicles in our collection, so we've been really excited to try Nuke Ren and get them all on the battlefield.

The suggested point size in the rulebook is 650 points, but in practice that gets you maybe 4-6 figures plus a vehicle, so we'll almost certainly bump the gang point total up to 1000 for future games. We'll also shrink the table size down to either 4x6 feet or 4x4 feet for most games. All in all, the game is totally playable and we'll doubtless give it another run-through in the near future. Stay tuned!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Terrain: Post-Apocalyptic Scenery Bits

When we decided to take a break from our summer fantasy campaign to play some post-apocalyptic skirmishes, I knew it was time to crank out some terrain projects I have been thinking about for a long time...

This is an O-scale building by Woodland Scenics. It is a fantastic piece for gaming, with multiple levels, plenty of room for figures, and some fantastic details. Technically, this is still a project for me as I haven't done anything beside remove it from the box -- it prepainted and ready to go as is. But I am going to weather it at some point.

What's that? Electric lights?! Yep, it came with lights installed, ready for a model train setup. I wired them up to batteries and a power switch, and it is a great effect on the table. I want to add lights to some of my other pieces!

You might recognize this piece of terrain if you've ever played the game Fallout 3. Jon helped out by creating the bomb out of an easter egg and some legos. I mounted it to the base from an old Spawn action figure and painted it. After the weathering was done, I poured some unhealthy looking green water effects to complete the piece.

This piece marks the first time I've used printed details. I simply printed the symbol on regular copy paper, cut it out, and glued it to the bomb before weathering.

This is the first of 2 concrete pipes I made from PVC scraps. I started working on these things over a year ago, and I'm glad I finally finished them!

This first pipe is HUGE, and filled with the same greenish water as the bomb piece. Some of it is spilled out on the base as well.

The second piece is much smaller, but it is just the right diameter for a model to move through it. (Although that water doesn't look very safe!)

The spill on the base was an accident. I tilted the pipe to make sure that the water flowed through the whole thing, but i went a little too far. I am glad, though because I think it adds to the piece.

This last piece was inspired by the show LOST. It's a scratch-built hatch! Where does it lead? Nobody knows!

We got these pieces on the table for a game last week, so stay tuned for a battle report. I think they contributed to a fresh take on our standard post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland.

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

The Tainted Thegn and His Dire Men

We're about halfway through our fantasy campaign, but I've finally put pen to paper about my warband, the Tainted Thegn and His Dire Men. Read on! 

Thus sang the mangled minstrel of the coming of Fulgid Glim during the time of Quaking and of Mourning in Qaarra:

He came upon us from the bruiséd North,

Leading forth a host of brigand knav'ry

Who once were only feuding petty-kings,

born to desp'rate battle and gloried death.

But Fulgid Glim gave to them many gifts

And each their bloody praises did he sing;

and forth they came under a new accord,

'Neath the flag of the Many-eyed, Mumbling Thing.

On Glim's brow the crown of cabbages he bore

And the Dire Men called him their Tainted Thegn;

They rode on us in darkness and unease

To throw down the nacreous towers of yore

Where dwelt the darkly dreaming deities.

Read the rest of the song of the Dire Men here.

-- Mattias, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Tenement High-Rise from Toy Playsets

Recently I've been knocking out a number of projects that have been sitting around for a while: units for my Kings of War army, various industrial terrain pieces, a case for my fantasy miniatures, barbed wire sections, as well as a crashed helicopter for Tim and a graveyard hill for Josh.

Now I've finished off the last of the in-progress stuff that was cluttering up my to-do list: the mammoth near future tenement high-rise.

This piece began life as pieces of two toy playsets from the Pokemon and Toy Story product lines. I picked up each at resale shops for about $3 each.

I'd love to find more of these, as that bridge section would be great, and the Toy Story playset could be used almost as-is.

Construction 
With these two inspiring pieces of plastic on my workbench, I got to work. The front and left side of the building are from the Pokemon building.

The right and rear are mostly cut-up sections of the Toy Story structure. I used superglue and plastic cement when possible, but epoxy was necessary for much of the construction due to the soft plastic of the Toy Story structure.

They are epoxyed to a wood base with cut up card for the cement flooring.

The basic building got covered with lots of other bits including toy pieces and crates, then was topped off with a Happy Meal toy chunk.

Then I rubbed the sides and ground sections with pre-mixed cement to add texture, then spray painted the whole thing black.

At this point, I realized I'd made a mistake. I had bought fireplace cement instead of premixed concrete patch for the painted surface, and the texture began to crumble off! I stuck it on the shelf in disgust, where it stayed for almost a year. Ugh!

Finishing and Finished! 
Recently, I decided to finish this one off. I took a toothbrush to the entire structure and brushed off any loose cement, then painted black gesso over the bare and rough areas to re-prime the piece and stabilize the texture that remained. Then it was simply a matter of drybrushing on the main colors, a couple of heavy brown washes and then a drybrush of tan, and I was done.

There's always more that can be done, but for run-down terrain, I prefer quick and dirty painting. Here's a pic of the finished product. The miniatures in the pictures are a Mad Cat mech (by Joyride), Urban War Gladiators and a Void Junkers buggy.

Front

Right

Back (a bit too much flash, but it shows the two upper floors with room for miniatures)

Left

I'm particularly pleased with the roof. The crates are glued in permanently to allow minis to see over the front.

The street level view has some nice details as well.

I'm very pleased with the way this turned out. This is the largest single piece of terrain I've ever built, and it wasn't terribly difficult to construct, nor was it very time consuming compared to smaller pieces. My collection currently has a lot of small and medium-sized buildings for skirmish games. This, however, is the start of a series of urban structures that will still be well suited to skirmish games, but large enough to be useful for my 28mm Mech Attack games as well. The future is going to be BIG!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member