Fallschirmjager HMG's

I picked up some Platoon20 German Airborne HMG's and crews. The nice little pack came with an officer as well. Here you can see the result...

This should just about finish my Fallschirmjager force. At some point in the future I'll pick up some light arty. crews and maybe a recoilless rifle crew, but for now I will move on to other armies(maybe, just maybe, the Brits will get some love from me one of these days!).

Warhammer 40K Terrain Part II: Crashed Pod

Straying from my GW terrain for a second, I wanted to post a couple of pics of a simple, little side project I did recently. When you get into making terrain, you quickly adapt to having an eye for turning household junk into scenery gold!; I consider it the "alchemy" of the miniatures hobby world! I was looking at an old Gatorade bottle and a thought formed...
That's right- an escape pod. It was a simple idea that involved cuttin off the top of the bottle at a 45 degree angle, attaching it to some cardboard, and using a "baby bottle pop" lid as an exhaust nozzle(that one of the kids had discarded after his tasty treat). A little spackle to build up the earth around impact, a little static grass and some painting later- boom, a crashed escape pod.

There are many variations one could perform on this concept. I thought of an exposed interior compartment having been vacated by the survivors...or even some non-survivors in the capsule. In the end, I opted for a simple interior electronic section being visible through an exposed hatch. The narrative here is that the crew never made it out, the capsule being too deeply embedded in the ground...but scavengers came along and sought to see what they could salvage from the craft.

Warhammer 40K Terrain Part I: Manufactorum

I have been busy the last few weeks working on urban terrain for the Warhammer 40K universe. I got started by purchasing the excellent Imperial Sector set that is the heaviest box of hobby material I've ever received in the mail!

First up is the Manufactorum- the hot forges of the Imperium that churn out the wares of war in a restless galaxy. It was a fun kit to assemble, but even more fun to paint! I decided on a gun metal basecoat for the structure, which I thought was fitting for its purpose. I added some detail by concocting a custom "rust" wash from deep reed, steel and brown colored paints(which I thinned with water before applying).

Here is a close-up of one of the wall panels. The pipes, wires, rivets and valves detailing that GW put into the kit is beautiful!

I decided on a pretty standard "corner building" construction for the piece, as can be seen in this side view.

Here is a look at the interior with a Space Marine Scout for size reference. I "rubbled up" some of the edges of the surviving walkways with kitty-litter and sand.

Here is a close-up of part of the base. I mounted the entire structure on 1/8" hardboard. Spackle was used to build up rubble piles. I added debris into these piles consisting of extra pieces from the kit, some plastic sprue and even a jewely chain(now a large industrial chain!). The base was textured with the aforementioned mix of kitty litter and sand; I painted all ground areas in a black basecoat and drybrushed three different shades of grade to highlight them.