I've been slowly painting this Warmaster cottage up over the past month. It's done enough to show off at this point and just needs a clear coat and some flocking.

I think I started these Romans two weeks ago. They take a bit more time and effort than the WW2 Americans, I think it's the red and metalics. I have their shields yet to do, but I wanted to clear coat them first as the shield covers so much of the figure.

Seven years ago I started on some snow terrain (16 bases of trees) that never really saw the light of day nor a finished table. I couldn't keep the tree mats from curling up and just gave up and moved on. Last year I picked up some more trees after Christmas for cheap and this week I finally started trying to finish a table, this is the result.

The tree bases are canvas, with DAP Alex caulk spread thin and stipped with a wet brush to texture it. Once that dried I coated them in gesso and covered them in Woodland Scenics snow and a sprinkling of their green blended flock. After that, I sprayed watered down white glue and then a matte spray. So the flock is locked in there pretty good now. The hills are from War Torn Worlds and pretty much got the same treatment. For the rocks I used warm grays and tans with washes and drybrushes.

I think I also want to do some larger hills as well, maybe I can finish them up before NEAT next month.

Here's what I manage to finish up for TiRoBEx before CaptainCon. The ruins were fun, when I finally get around to the loads that I have for Epic I think I'll have a good process.

I finished up the hills and a quick repaint of the desert and waste boards at my local store last Friday. The scatter terrain pieces got their base coats last night.

I also finished up the Firestorms, they got their last three orange highlights and their bases touched-up.

I was going to start in on my aircraft but I realized a painted army is within striking distance for Fall In, so I switched gears and got most of the way through my Farseer character upgrades. I need to add a highlight to the rune armor and bases, then highlight the black and do the gems. Any thoughts on what I should do for their topknots? Right now I'm leaning towards the same blue as their weapons.

I made two sets of eight hills for a local store, all they need at this point is some paint to help them match their tables (desert and grey wastes). They're made out of 1" insulation foam glued to tempered hardboard bases with some construction adhesive. I used a foam cutter to put some surface detail on their faces and covered everything with scenic dope (qt of latex paint, 2 latex caulk tubs and a cup of joint compound) for durability before pressing in the sand and spraying them with glue.

There's four bigger (18x12"-ish) and four smaller (12x6"-ish) pieces per set. They were cut out of 2x2' panels, I used the right angle corners so they join up easy and made them geomorphic. By that I mean the bigger pieces can be joined together and the same with the smaller. Also, the short edge on the bigger pieces match up with the longer edges on the smaller pieces. They can also be stacked, so there's lots of ways that you can put them together.

I was also able to cut six bases of scatter terrain per set out of the left over hardboard. No pics of those yet, I'll likely put a few rocks and some brush on them and make trees or something on smaller bases that can be moved around the area and not get in the way of the miniatures.

They were pretty cheap, price-wise. You can make four sets (32 hills, 24 scatter terrain pieces) for some $50, not including paint. They just take some time to put together.

I finished up eight bases of trees for the snow terrain, just four more to go. I picked up three bags of 21 trees for something like $12 at a Home Depot right after Christmas. They're normally $6 a bag, which is still pretty cheap at $0.30 a tree. I'm still combating the mats curling, I've got two getting the rubber spray on their undersides at the moment to see if that helps.

I also puttied one of the Heirodules this week. His arms are done as well, I just need to glue them on. I'm hoping to get the other one to the same point next week and magnetize the weapon arms as well.

So I came across a can of flexible rubber coating while in Home Depot last weekend. It's different from those that I seen before in that it's white, and it's not meant to be peeled off. I used to get my mats from theterrainguy.com, but he's since closed up shop and even before that he stopped making a snow mat before I could pick one up. Given that, I decided to try and use this stuff out to make my own. Here's the result:

I pretty much spray a piece of vinyl with it, let it dry, sprayed it again, sprinkled some tan flock on there, covered it with snow flock, and placed a book over it while it dried.

I think it came out alright. There's some warping, so it's currently sitting under a book to see if it will flatten out. I'm also going to try and hit it with a coat or two of dullcote. The tan flocking stuck alright (I brushed a lot off) but the snow flocking stuck very well I think.

A quick 6mm tangent/review before I head back to 28mm land. I asked Allen of GameCraft Miniatures to make some laser cut/etched building bases for all the E40k ruins I have. There were three sizes overall: 12x12, 12x30 and 30x30cm. I went with those sizes for a couple of reasons. For one, they all fit together nicely on a 4x6' board if you assume 6cm spaces (roads) between them. You effectively get a 7x10 placement grid for the 12x12cm pieces, and the bigger pieces can replace 2 or 4 adjacent 12x12 pieces.

Also, the 12x12 pieces allows for the bigger square ruins on them with enough room for E40k strip bases all around. That's what the etched sidewalk pattern is for. The ruins fit snuggly in the big center square and the sidewalk that goes around can hold a strip base (it's about 1/2" or 13mm wide). All in all I'm pretty happy with how they came out.

Turkey day played a bit of havoc on my schedule but here's what I managed to get done last week.

Most of the bug reinforcements have been been based and primed. Behold them in all there primered splendor.

I saw these trees at Home Depot over the week. 21 trees in total for $6. From left to right you get thirteen, four, two and two. I ended up picking up three packs in hopes of doing a snow setup for NEAT IV.

Harriot the Harridan also go her base done and a coat of primer. I also started working on her five sisters.

Finally, these little guys are for a gag gift. They're about 8mm tall. They'd make good LatD mutant proxies. :P

This week was War Engine Week (and some trees). I started painting my Landing Craft. The dry brushes are done, next week I'm hoping to do the black, gunmetal and washing.

The trees are finally flocked and done. Behold them in all their foliaged glory!

My plan is to use them with some bases I made last year, like so. The bases by themselves represent scrub, with the tree bases on them they're forests. I left room on all the bases for the trees, so they fit snugly between the bushes and rocks already on them.

And finally, here's my Warlord I started building. The Volcano Cannon and Gatling blaster are from a FW Reaver, I need to plasticard them up some longer arms. The TLDs I've modified so they aren't firing off into the sky. Once the weapons are glued on all I have to do is putty up some gaps (and paint it :P).

Didn't quite get this stuff done for HAVOC, and I also grabbed the wrong underbrush color from my local store last night. Once I get the right color for the trees these will be good to go.

I used wooden bases that I got at Michaels for cheap, Woodland Scenics tree armatures (which were primed brown, dry brushed light brown, gray, and then washed with green and brown) and WS underbrush and course flock.