Some pics of the WIP Combat Zone Table

Here's a few pics of our Combat Zone table.
Pic below shows the board from the Ganger's side. The black fence in the foreground still needs to be painted. It's based on mdf and made from cereal card run through a crimper. The frame of the fence is basswood. The gate is hinged with some Dollhouse Butt Hinges. Across the table are the Troopers. The concrete barriers were cast in plaster from an ice tray from IKEA.




Pic below is a detail view of a small guard tower I made from the small Platformer set. I still need to base it.

Thanks for looking,

Luckyjoe

28mm Terrain for Combat Zone

I was inspired a while back by Germy's Combat Zone Project posts on his site, here. If you haven't seen these, you should check them out. I also got back into visiting the Combat Zone Chronicles site. This is a great site with articles on terrain, minis & conversions, scenarios and many other useful features. Once again, if you haven't been there, you should check it out, here. I am really loving the EM4 plastic minis. They're very well made, with very good detail, easy to convert, and very reasonably priced. Here's the EM4 site.
Anyway, I've been working on making some terrain for Combat Zone and here's pics. The first group of pics below are of a mostly demolished ruin made mostly from the Hirst Arts Small Brick mold, and based on a 6" round piece of craft wood. I chose the small brick mold because I think it resembles cinder block. Most of the rubble on the piece was made from putting miscast Hirst Arts bricks from various molds in a plastic bag and whacking it with a hammer. I then glued that debris on to the base. Tried something new with painting these pieces. I filled a spray bottle with magic wash and tinted it black with some craft paint, and used that to spray the ruins, instead of priming and then painting. I was hoping the magic wash would not only paint the ruins and rubble, but also seal it and help hold the rubble onto the base. I think it came out pretty good, and the rubble is holding on to the base pretty well.



The next group of pics is of another ruin. Same construction and painting method. For this one I made a partially destroyed corrugated iron roof. The roof has a frame made from matchsticks. Onto that frame I laid sections of corrugated iron made from cereal card which I ran through a crimping tool. One of the reasons I wanted a roof on this piece was to provide a platform for extra elevation for snipers.





The two pics above show a mattress made from Sculpie polymer clay. I got the idea from an article on the Combat Zone Chronicles called "Putty Rubbish". I made a mattress, a chair and some trash bags a while back. This is the first time they'll see use.
The next group of pics below is of another ruin, this one with a stairway and a little bit of the second floor left.


The pic below shows the sculpie chair I made a while back.


This was a fun little series of builds. I'm really pleased with the way the "black magic wash" worked. It brought out the detail of the unpainted bricks very nicely and helped seal the rubble to the bases. I'll probably continue to use it for the rest of the ruins, though I may make it darker. Thanks for looking and comments are welcome.

Luckyjoe

Dipped Some EM4 Plastic Troopers

I dipped some EM4 Plastic Troopers in Minwax "Red Oak". When dry they were sprayed with a matte acrylic sealer. Here's some pics:
Pic below shows them pre-dip.

All of the below pics are after dipping.




Overall, I'm pleased with the results. I think the dip was an improvement. This should save me some time as I ramp up getting ready for our first Combat Zone game. Thanks for looking.

Combat Zone Troopers and Clix Gangers

Hi, everybody. I did a little more work on my Combat Zone project. Painted up my first squad for Combat Zone and finished some Clix Gangers. Here's some pics:


Pic above shows my plastic Troopers. 2 were basic without conversions. The 1st and 3rd from the left are conversions.

The pic above shows a side view the same squad. It shows that I actually removed the mold lines this time. :) Thanks to OrdinaryBass from TMP for the tip that I could remove the mold lines even though I had already base-coated them. I went back and removed mold lines from 25 Troopers. They do look a lot better and it didn't even take that long.

Pic above shows the Clix Gangers with 1 Last Night on Earth Mini (the Nurse). This is prior to a MinWax dip for the HC minis.

The pic above shows the HC minis post dip. I think this is one of the best results I ever got with the dip. I'm tempted to try the dip on the Troopers.

Thanks for looking.

Luckyjoe

Imex M113 Not Chaos Rhino Conversion

Hi, folks. A little update on the Imex M113 to not-Rhino conversion. Here's a link to the previous thread if you hadn't seen it before.

I showed my 13 year old son Mark what I had been doing and he got really interested. He asked if we could get another Imex M113 so he could make a not Chaos Space Marine Rhino. We went to Hobby Lobby where I had gotten the first one but they were all out of the playsets with the M113s. Long story short Mark took over the conversion job. :) I had only completed one side, Mark finished off the rest, turning a not-Space Marine Rhino over to Chaos in the process.


Same pic below but I wanted to point out some of Mark's ideas. He added some Khorne emblems. He printed them out after googling, glued the print-out to a piece of cereal card, cut it out with an exacto blade and attached it to the build. He added a WFB Chaos standard bearer emblem onto the front hatch, then added the spiky bits made from cocktail skewers I had picked up a couple of years ago from our local Outback. No, I didn't have that many cocktails, :) the waitress hooked me up. Then he added other chaos bits and a bolter near the hatch.




I'm really proud of the job he did. Not bad for a first conversion.
Well that's all for now. I'll post another update when he paints it. Thanks for looking.

Luckyjoe

Some 15K Not Space Marine Conversions

Hi, folks. Finally got around to making a few conversions for my 15K Not Space Marine army. These guys are Blue Moon 15mm Orion Republic Heavy Infantry. I had been planning to add a powerfist to one of the helmet-less figures. I had bought some of the GZG Alien Mercs, initially to raid for the powerfist I wanted, but after getting them and seeing them IRL, I couldn't bring myself to mess them up that way. So now I've got another 20 Not-Space Orks, which coupled with my 50 Shia Khan from 15mm.co.uk, is growing into a respectable little force. Anyway, here's some more pics of the 15K Not-Space Marine command types.







Pic on the left is the mini type I used for the other conversions. I chose him because he has a free left hand, and is not wearing a helmet.




Pic below shows a not-Chaplain, not-Captain, and not-Librarian













These conversions were very basic. I simply drilled through the left hands and inserted a short piece of wire for the Chaplain's "crozius", a longer wire for the Librarian's staff, and a sword for the Captain.





Thanks for looking,

Luckyjoe

EM4 Plastic Troopers Conversions

Hi, folks. I've been working on converting my remaining EM4 Troopers. These have been simple conversions, but I think they're effective. They were certainly fun and easy. I got a lot of my ideas from reading articles on the COmbat Zone Chronicles.
http://combatzonechronicles.net/
The first one was a hand swap with a Hero Clix mini to give a different pistol.


The next one is another HC pistol hand swap.

This one had the left arm & hand holding the knife replaced with one of the left hands from the dual gripped pistol. Shaved away everything but the hand, leaving a pointing pose. Looks a little too stiff, though.

The next one is one of my favorites. It's a sniper. Made the sniper rifle by trimming down the standard autorifle, drilling a hole for a new long barrel made from a small gauge rubber-coated wire. Barrel inserted and glued in place. Then added a small bead at the end of the barrel and a longer bead for a scope. Pretty crude but I like the way it came out. Barrel may be a little too long though.



Same mini, different angle. I like the way this pic came out. "Say hello to my little frien'." :)

The following are a few more conversions where I replaced the EM4 autorifles with some rifles from GW Catachan Jungle Fighter sprues. They're a little large but I think they're okay.




Well that's all for now. All I need to do now is paint these guys. Thanks for looking.

Luckyjoe

Some SF Terrain bitz

I've been working on some small Sci Fi terrain bitz for 15mm or 28mm, primarily using Hirst Arts components.

The pic below shows a little Command Post made from Hirst Arts Sci Molds, Starship Wall Mold and 1" floor tiles. To the right is a robo gunmount made from a couple of the gun pieces from the HA machinery mold mounted on a chair base from the same mold. That was then glued to an upright pylon piece from a CD stack. There are a couple of Blue Moon 15mm (18mm) Orion Republic Heavy Infantry troopers for scale.



Another shot of the Robo Gunmount. I'd had that CD pylon piece sitting around for a while and finally found a use for it. The pic below shows that this piece could also work for 28mm.




The pic above shows that bunker pictured earlier after a quick spray with Krylon Italian Sage.

The below pic shows some weapons crates and futuristic crates from the Hirst Arts Sci Fi Machinery mold with a couple of GW minis for scale. These can be used in our 28mm Hirst Arts Space Dungeon or for


Below are some weapon mounts for a guard platform. Two were made with parts of a Tamiya 50 cal. machine gun which were then pinned and mounted onto another Hirst Arts chair base. The other two were made with the same chair bases and with guns from the same HA molds. The 50 cal. based guns can swivel.


Next comes a couple of shots of a WIP 15mm guard platform. It was made using the door topper pieces from the HA Starship wall molds set back to back for pillars. The platform itself came from a plastic insert from a box containing a 1/72 scale tank. It was part of the packaging and was intended to keep the thin cardboard box from collapsing. Fortunately, I never throw anything anyway, but what scratchbuilder does? :) The 15mm Blue Moon Orion Republic Heavy Infantry minis are standing on a piece of 7 mesh black granny grate which was drybrushed with gunmetal, and then silver. As you can see there is ample room for parking their not-Rhino under the platform. I need a few more details and touch up the paint job. Why I went with the black and white paint job, I don't know now :).





Here's a couple more WIP pics of the Guard Platform. Pic below shows the granny grate flooring of the platform and some of the detail bitz added to the sides of the platform walls.

Pic below shows a couple of 28mm EM4 plastic troopers with the platform. I've been trying to make terrain pieces that can be used for both scales.



I'll probably make another one of these platforms in the Italian Sage color. Here's an initial look with some more pillars.


Thanks for looking,

Luckyjoe