This is my first “Show and Tell” here on LO, I’d love to hear feedback. Now that my friends and I have played a few games with the new CoD rules, I figured it was time for some new scenery to represent the various stratagems. Personally, I think GW’s premade set looks like garbage, and also contains nothing but Space Marine-esque stuff. So I set about making my own.

The first thing I did was hit the local shop that sells GW stuff, but instead of checking out the GW brand items, I made a beeline to the plastic model kit area. Tamiya and a few other companys make tons of WWII era model kits ranging from Paratroopers to Tanks. They also make several kits designed to spruce up dioramas. Ammo boxes, Gun encampments, Medic Pits, Command Bunkers, Oil and Gas cans, Barbed wire, etc. Gosh… sure sounds like stuff that would work for Stratagem counters too! 1/35 scale seems to be a good size when paired with GW’s 25mm models.

I decided to start with some Tank traps.

Assembly was quick and easy, but there is literally one picture for “instructions”. And you though GW assembly instructions were sparse. Still, it’s not difficult to glue 3 poles together.

I’m using masonite for a base. It’s cheap (a few bucks for a 4′ x 2′ piece at hardware store), doesn’t warp with glue, is not flexible, and isn’t very thick (1/8″). The group I play with owns a nice assortment of buildings and roads for our City fights, and the roads are 6″ wide, so I started with some 6″x5″ squares. I then cut the squares into slightly more interesting shapes, and finished by sanding all the edges, including along the top and bottom lip to “round” all the sides.

Just having the tank traps glued onto a flat base will be really boing to look at, and since all our building are bombed out, it makes sense that there will be rubble in the street. Or perhaps the traps are in the courtyard of a blown up building. Either way, I need some rubble. GW’s idea of cutting old sprues into pieces is a good idea and looks well enough, but I don’t have a bunch of sprues at the moment, so I needed to find something else.

One of the other side projects I’ve got taking up space on my desk is interior building for a 40K Space Hulk-esque board. I have some mold from the fantastic Hirst Arts sci-fi collection. Before I bothered to read about proper plaster mold making, I ran out to Wal-Mart and bought some cheap-o plaster of paris. The stuff is absolute trash for making a quality cast. The pieces take forever to set, break as they leave the mold, disintegrate into powder if you rub it, and crack and chip like no tomorrow. Wait…. they break easily? Hmmm…. I made a few casts and when they were “dry” popped em out and lined them up. I took the bottom end of my fat exacto knife and smacked a piece hard. To my amusment, the piece cracked clean through right in the middle. Waalaa! Insta-rubble! I made a whole bunch of various sizes, ranging from very large, almost whole chunks, down to pretty much dust.

Just to get a rough feel, I put some traps and large rubble on the masonite. I’ve also got some cardboard squares, a GW idea that I like the look of.

Next I remove all the piece, and squirt a whole ton of wood glue onto the masonite. I’m sure white glue would work as well. Then, remembering roughly where I want the tank traps to sit, I fill in the other areas with the larger rubble pieces, and then sprinkle some the biggest chunks of rubble “bricks” on.

Before the glue begins to dry, I start sprinkling (over a trashcan!) some GW chunky sand basing over the whole base. I love the way this stuff looks!

In order to cover the entire base, you’ll need to dump on waaay more than will actual stick to the glue. Since I don’t want to waste a bunch of my $8 dirt, here’s my solution: take a piece of paper and roll it into a cone-like funnel, then hold it back over the GW tub and tip the masonite until the loose sand falls back into the tub. Depending on how long you wait, or how fast you work, Be Careful… the glue is not dry, and the larger chunks may come loose if you tip the thing completely upside down!

At this point things look ok, but I’d like to build up more debris around the bases of the larger rubble. This time I squirt glue into specific, concetrated areas. I sprinkle on some of the smallest plaster chunks, including the stuff that’s pretty much just plaster dust. Then more sand. Then dump the excess back into the tub.

It’s looking better now, but I’ve got one last idea I’d like to try. I went and found our office pencil sharpener…. yeah, you know where I’m going with this! The pencil shavings are very interestingly shaped, and really seem like the urban version of static grass!

I use some thin super glue on a few areas and then sprinkle on the pencil shavings. I don’t care nearly as much about the shavings as I did the dirt, so the excess goes into the garbage.

After the glue has had a little time to dry, it’s outside for a blast from the rough texture spray paint. (at this point the multicolored texture paint kills the shape definition in my pictures, so it’s a little harder to see.)

We’re not done yet, but I’m letting the dry overnight while I work on other things. Here’s a few more pics, including one with a Land Raider for some size comparison.

Tomorrow I’ll be adding some machinery debris, the tank traps, and painting the whole thing! Stick around!

Ok, I didn’t get as much done today as I wanted to. Spent alot of time helping my wife assemble her first army… Tyranids!

I started today off by scrounging around the house for suitable junk to use as broken bitz. I came up with some straws, toothpicks, wire, small gauge tube, some resistors and transistors, stuff from my bitz box, and a big empty sprue from my wife’s first unit of Genestealers :yes:

GW had the idea to use trash sprues as structural beams and bricks, the straws made good pipes, and the wire and tubing stick out of the courigation in the carboard and out from under a transistor box I broke off an old (I mean OLD) 14.4 baud modem :w00t: Glued em all on in interesting places. I also glued the tank traps at this point.

Next came another layer of glue and sand, this time much more controlled. Just select areas to help bury objects like the new bits, and some of the tank trap “feet”. Yesterday’s layers of dirt and rubble made great foundations and I think the texture spray worked ok on it. However, I think it “muddied” the overall base a little. My hope is that with this new fresh layer of untextured sand, and some paint that’s different shades than the texture spray, things will pop out a little more.

After the glue and sand dried I started the first bit of painting by hitting all the newly added bitz with Boltgun Metal. The straw pipes, sprue beams, and tank bitz. All the tubing and wires were painted Chaos Black. Of course these things won’t stay just one color. These are just bottom coats to prepare for rust like colors with hints of metal showing through. The tank traps themselves are still unpainted as I decide what to do with them. I was thinking about trying one of those Insta-Rust kits… dunno.

And that’s about as far as I made it today. Once again, I’m not real impressed with the pics my camera is taking, but as you can see in the first picture, I was actually one step ahead of you Dizzy. The base with only two tank traps has some GW barbed wire running across it. I didn’t want to use a ton of it because I’d like these to accurately reflect the CoD rules… I’ll be making dedicated Barbed Wire bases after these tank traps are finished. One thing I am proud of that doesn’t show up in the pics: One of the Tamiya kits I bought has little stakes that look like wood. They’re part of the barbed wire fencing posts. So thats what I used them for! I took some 30 gauge :ninja: wire, and made it look like the barbed wire is tied to the stakes. Then the stakes are jammed into the rubble from yesterday. I think it looks nice… but I really doubt anyone will see it without being told It’s the little things that make it fun.