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Thursday, March 10, 2011

More 15mm X-Com

Hi, folks. A little update on the 15mm X-Com project. I finished the barn. It now has the interior stairs, hay bales, a corrugated roof, and I painted and stained the exterior wood on the second floor. The floors of all of the buildings are print-outs from "X-Com: Tactical", a very nice free download from BoardGame Geek. X-Com: Tactical not only has the rules for playing X-Com on the tabletop, it also has some very nice 2-d graphics of the terrain, tokens, and ships. If the authors, Paul Pounds and Evan Leybourn, see this, thank you very much for making this excellent resource available.








The farmhouse is mostly finished. I need to finish the interior walls dividing the rooms, then it is done. The interior walls are mat board (I took a page from Vampifan's book). I will glue on some wood print-outs from the Fat Dragon Rio Draco set to simulate wooden interior walls and doors. The windows used for the farmhouse are 15mm resin from GameCraft Miniatures.


The stable is the last building for the farm board. I made it from craft sticks and gave it a corrugated metal roof. The roof is cereal card run through a crimper and glued to thin plasticard (that's how I did all of the rooves).


Also did a small UFO based on print-outs from "X-COM: Tactical" and pics from the interweb. The hull was made from a mixture of 1/2 inch quarter round wooden molding from a home improvement store and some Hirst Arts sci-fi bits. The interior bits are from Hirst Arts Sci-Fi bits, also.

I just received a couple of packs of Critical Mass Games excellent Astragar Fighters to use as Snakemen. That's an idea I stole from ThorLongus when he posted his a while back. If mine come out half as nice as his I'll be happy. So far I've got them primed and based. A few of them have been included in some of the pics for size comparison.

Hay bales. I made these from green pot scrubber pads. Painted them yellow, washed with Golden Brown craft paint, used a rubber coated black wire for the bale straps. They're a little larger than the ones in the X-Com: Tactical print-outs, but they'll work.

Stairs. The stairs were made using Dis's excellent tutorial here.
This tutorial was a big help and I made 3 pretty nice stairways for the barn and farmhouse very quickly. Differences between mine and his are I needed to make my stairs much smaller to fit the template of the buildings. I used a 1/2 inch Hirst Arts brick between the stringers and only 1 thickness of thin plastic card for the stringers. Also, the scissors I used were an old pair of pinking shears my wife gave me, and I think the zig zag pattern is a little smaller than his. Otherwise, pretty much the same except his are much nicer.

I like the way you can fit the miniature's base between the steps to hold it in place. When I saw that pic of this feature on his blog I knew I had to try it. So, Thanks, Dis, for the excellent tutorial.

Well, that's all for now. I was able to pick up some extra shifts at the part-time job so I won't be blogging much for the next few days. Upcoming projects list just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Upcoming Projects:
X-COM
Post pics of Mutons
Cyberdisks
Chrysalids
Chrysalid-Zombies (These last three are gonna be from 15mm.co.uk)
Floaters
Ethereals

Thanks for looking.

14 comments:

  1. This is turning into a very cool project Brother!
    Yow!
    Wow!
    ...and how!
    :)

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  2. I really like the way you've done the hay bales, they look really cool. And having humped enough of them around on my father's farm, they look like the darn itchy, scratchy, dusty things I used to help stack as a kid.

    LOL - word verification: gessit - the noise you make after getting a nose-full of hay dust.

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  3. I really like how you're staying true to the style of X-Com in all your terrain building. Everything from the different cladding on each story of the barn to the design of the alien saucer is the game faithfully rendered on the table top! Great stuff!

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  4. You've been very busy, excellent work I applaud anybody who makes their owm stuff, the hay bales will be something I will try and the link to the stairs aswell (will just have to upscale them a bit), really good to see this project expanding.

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  5. Once again, this is highly impressing! Fabulous work!

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  6. LJ, this is all excellent stuff! I'm very impressed with all of your builds in this post, but what I really like are your hay bales - simple but effective!

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  7. VERY cool. Love the hay bales, the use of Hirts Arts bits (I didn't think they would fit 15mm so nicely), the stable... keep it up!
    Also, I'm glad that you found the stairway tutorial useful - and thanks for linking:)

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  8. @Brother Joseph: Thanks, man. I get a lot of inspiration from your "The Dead Road" project.

    @Kobold: Thanks, "Gessit" LOL. I've been there, too. They actually look better than the picture. There was too much light on the pics, IRL you can see some of the green showing through in spots.

    @Matt: Thanks. I'm trying to get as close as I can. Fortunately for me, the buildings are pretty simple designs.

    @Angry Lurker: Thanks. The hay bales are pretty quick and easy, and the stairs were too. You've been turning out some pretty cool stuff, yourself.

    @Omer Golan: Thanks, I appreciate the encouragement. This is a fun project.

    @Vampifan: Thanks. I'm pleased with the hay bales. That was something I'd never done before. I was going to try to paint and flock some balsa wood blocks or small Hirst Arts block to represent the hay, then I noticed some pot-scrubber off-cuts from when I made the small hedges for the farm. Bingo.

    @Dis: Thanks. Many of the HA sci-fi bits can work for 15mm. Let me know if you'd like to check them out and I can send you some. Thanks very much for that tutorial, it was more than useful. I'm sure many people will benefit from it.

    Have a good day, folks. Thanks, for the comments.

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  9. Same for you man. I love looking at other peoples terrain work. As for The Dead Road it is just getting started...I have a lot to do yet.

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  10. @Brother Joseph: Thanks, I'm really looking forward to seeing more of The Dead Road. Great name by the way.

    @JBR: Thanks very much. I appreciate the encouragement.

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  11. Just found a link to your x-com table, must say i love it. Played alot of warhammer myself as a teen now i just do Mods for Openxcom.

    Keep up the good work!

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  12. @Lucas: Thanks very much. I haven't done much with X-Com lately, other than the occasional game on the computer.

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