Tag: terrain

New Year, New Start

Last year wasn’t a great year for hobbies. Work kept me busy enough through most of the year that when I got home I was often too tired for any hobby activities. Overall, four minis were finished for the whole year – the last of the three miniatures as part of an experiment with colour schemes1, and three more Hell Dorado figures slowly completed over a few nights.2

I’ve also got a terrain project that’s close to completion, but hasn’t made it yet – it has been mostly painted but play-testing has found that the slopes of the hills on it are still a bit too steep despite my best efforts. I have a plan to fix that, but it does mean I’ve got a bit to redo. There’s also a small cairn detail that remains unpainted, but that can wait until the piece is fixed and the rocks also repainted.

A large painted terrain piece, consisting of four ruined columns spaced around a large hill
A large terrain piece sits on a table, clearly showing the slope of a hill that rises up towards the centre of four large monoliths.
This slope proved a little too steep for most minis.

I also managed to conclude a long running Numenera Campaign and the beginning of a new Invisible Sun campaign. That campaign is still very early, but so far is looking good3.

But this year is already off to a better start. I had a few friends over for a hobby day on New Years Day, and it lead to much fun, camaraderie and a productive afternoon of hobby activities. Two more Hell Dorado troops have been finished, as well as one StarGrave crewman (with three more started and in the pipeline).

A figurine of a man in ornate plate armour stands, brandishing a sword.
A figurine of a man in plate armour, shown from the back to show off the shadows and highlighting of his flowing red cape.
A figurine of a man with a musket and a sword, wearing a wide brimmed metal helmet.
A figurine of a man wity a sword and a musket, viewed from the back.
A figurine of a man wearing a red trenchcoat with yellow accents and bracers.
A figurine of a man wearing a yellow t-shirt with a red trenchcloak and pants. He brandishes a pistol and has a medallion of some sort upon his chest
Several figurines, most in various stages of being painted with a red and yellow paint scheme sit on a teal painting mat. One completed figurine painted in the same scheme is also present to act as a reference.
Basecoats down, still working on the rest.

Overall, a pretty good start to 2026. Here’s hoping I can keep the momentum up as the year continues.

  1. A Screenshot, Some Colours and a Scheme ↩︎
  2. See Resuming after a break. You can also see how the two Hell Dorado figures I finished on New Years Day looked at the end of 2025. ↩︎
  3. One of my players maintains an in-character journal, you can read their first post here ↩︎

Building a Bunker

This one is gonna be an older project. I originally posted these photos back when I was still on miniatures.photography (a now defunct pixelfed instance) and it was the first piece of terrain I ever scratch-built. Since that instance is no longer around, I’m posting it here so that it’s still somewhere to be found online.

It was a simple bunker constructed using foam-core and cardboard. The construction was fairly simple and straightforward, consisting of four trapezoidal pieces of foamcore (two for the ends, and two internal ones for rigidity), and three rectangular pieces that formed the top and sides. Hot glue was used to glue the whole structure together.

Details were then applied using some cardboard (2.4mm thick ‘box board’ sourced from an art supplies store, though if I did this again I’d use something slightly thinner because it was a pain to cut). I also used a few bits of plastic mesh to add grates to the top of the bunker, with the area under the grates being pre-painted in black before the grates went in. Some 3d printed greebles I had lying around were added, as well as a few cut up pieces of zip tie. The cardboard was mostly attached using PVA, with superglue used for the greebles.

Lastly, a second pass of detailing was applied using some thinner cardboard salvaged from an old cereal box. This added a bit more depth to many of the panels, with the aim being for that to show up well when dry-brushed later.

After this I coated the piece in modpodge before I undercoated it with some black spray undercoat from the local “Hammerbarn”1. I did this before realizing I really ought to attach it to a base, I went back and cut an MDF base for the piece, which I glued on aLastlynd textured with spackle, pebbles and sand before spraying it again.

Lastly, it was time to give it a simple paint-job. Since this is a terrain piece I used some simple craft paints. For the base coat I used a mixture of Paynes Grey and blue to get a dark, de-saturated blue. This was then overbrushed2 with a brighter de-saturated blue and washed with a simple black wash before being dry-brushed with a light grey-blue.

The grates at the top received a similar treatment with shades of grey, with a metallic silver being used for the dry brush and a little weathering using burnt umber and raw umber to add some rust.

Overall, pretty happy with this – it looks nice on the tabletop – just need to build quite a few more. The dark browns of the dirt make me think of jungles so I may have to see if I can “jungle it up” for whatever I build next for this set and try to aim for a forest moon of Endor kind of a vibe.

  1. Ok, so it’s actually Bunnings. But I couldn’t resist the Bluey reference. ↩︎
  2. Overbrushing is a simple technique is similar to drybrushing, but with much heavier coverage ↩︎