The spooky tree stump

 Hello and welcome back.

Some new terrain in this post - the spooky tree stump.

This is a handy model as I can use it for both Post Apocalyptic and Fantasy games. It may even feature in a seasonal game or two. 

This started life as a pumpkin stalk. It caught my eye as it had a twist to it and reminded me of something you would find in a Tim Burton film. A couple of days later I ripped it out of the Halloween pumpkin and left it to dry out.

The base was sanded flat and hot glued to a plastic gift card. Milliput was used to fill around the base. The base was flocked and once dry the model was primed grey. The base is usual mixes of dark browns and drybushed with lighter colours. The pumpkin stalk was washed several times with thinned cheap brown acrylic paint. 

Some plant tufts and static grass was then added to the base to finish it off.

Thanks for looking. Stay safe out there. 

The Pumpking

Hello and welcome back, 

And now for something completely different.....and just a bit of fun.

Back in the first release of Ramshackle Game’s Nuclear Renaissance game, there was some background fluff about a character called “The Pumpking”. This bit of fluff amused me no end. Eventually he migrated to Matt Black God’s world. So let me introduce The Pumpking. 

The Pumpking started life as a Last City scavenger. While wandering the wastelands he discovered these strange orange vegetables. He hadn’t eaten for days and decided to risk eating one of the strange looking things.  Thankfully the pumpkin didn’t kill him and to his surprise wasn’t back to eat. He collected the seeds and other pumpkins and returned to Last City.

The Pumpking started a farm and found that the veggies grew very well. They also proved popular with the other residents of the Last City. The Pumpking grew wealthy and was even able to afford a pieced together ramshackle suit of power armour, complete with a stylised pumpkin helmet. He needed the armour to protect his farm and wealth. 

The Pumpking is a EM4 Space Ranger (yes, those again). I was after a bitza looking set of armour, looking like it had been built from different patterns of armour. It had the arms removed and some 40K Space Wolf arms & backpack added. The pumpkin head is a resin head but I cannot recall which company supplied it. Some GW skulls were also added to it, just to Halloween the figure up a bit. 

I have noticed a couple of errors I made during painting. I missed them, maybe I need new glasses. 

In the future, when Curtis has the Ramshackle Games site back up to speed I may convert  one of his figures to make an alternate Pumpking. I should maybe think about creating some cronies for him. 

Stay safe out there and beware the Pumpking! 

Black Guard reinforcements

Hello and welcome back, 

This week I have been adding more bodies to the (Matt) Black Guard. 

These are also Space Rangers figures by EM4. They are a cheap way to build a power armoured force. It is a shame that they are so limited in poses. For the new additions I decided some lighter weaponry would be in order.

The full force so far. 

The Black Guard’s armour is made up from many different sources the Fortress City looted, raided, captured or salvaged in the years before the forming of the Last City. There are many different patterns of powered armour in use and many suits of power armour cobbled together from many places and parts. 

These figures are Space Marines (and a old terminator bitza) from Games Workshop from over the decades. While the Black Guard wear predominantly (matt) black coloured power armour they are allowed to customise their own suits somewhat. Stylised Matt Black God symbols are popular along with other decorations. 

The whole force. 

I will leave this force like this for now. There is enough firepower here to deal with most mutant invasions, future guard revolts or last city uprisings. These things tend to happen more than you would think. 

I still have a few old 40K beakie marines to paint. They will possibly be added to my Brittannia Queen’s Company who wear the same pattern power armour. The force needs beefing up a little and painting them in a stylised colonial British style is fun. 

Thanks for looking. Stay safe out there.

The Last City Market Place

Hello and welcome back, it’s time to visit the Last City market place.

I have had this little lot sat on my worktable half finished for too long. So I tried to get them finished.  These sets are by Ramshackle Games. They are made from resin and make great scenic scatter. There are some beer barrels some place too. I should get them finished for the Glowing Lamb Bar. 

Here we see the produce section of the market. Much of it is brought in by gatherers. There are crates of Sprouts (strange tough green vegetables that causes extreme gas), Mooty Froot (a nutritious mutant fruit that grows in clusters across the wastelands), Spice (a narcotic brewed one a secret location by the Spice Girls gang), Spudz (a well known root vegetable), Shrooms (mushrooms are grown by many wastelands and the excess is often traded) and Old Spice (a stronger version of the drug spice). 

Moving on there are loads of barrels. Behind is a wall of ore containers. These can be used in a single level for cover or stacked to make a impromptu wall. They stack really well. 

Then there is the cases. There are Guns, tools, junk, ammo and cases that belong to people called Dunk and Moxie. 

Thinking about it I may use more of these painted brightly as objective markers or suspicious activity of hotspot markers for various games. 

Thanks for reading, take care out there.

Pizza! Pizza! Even more Pizza.

“Pizza! Come and get your Pizza, hot tasty pizza!”

I support Curtis’ (from Ramshackle Games) pateron. In exchange for the price of a cup of coffee a month I get a annual limited edition exclusive figure set. 

This pizza place is this year’s set. It is resin and card stock. There is 2 pizza ovens (which have the option of being open or closed), the pizza making chief (with a choice of 2 heads), the stand, the salesman, pizzas, a bunch of card stock pizza boxes and a sign.

Not a bad collection and handy for any marketplace or gathering scene. I had to paint them up as soon as I got them. I can see this pair working in Rad Pizza. 

Thanks for looking, stay safe out there. 

New additions to the Last City.

Hello and welcome back to my blog. 

Let me introduce to some new additions to the Last City. 

First up - the (matt) Black Guard - the elite power armoured troops of the Matt Black Authority. Thanks to their power armour they can easily soak up small arms fire while wielding heavy weapons as if they weighed nothing. These warriors can raise a compound in minutes. 

These figures are Space Rangers supplied by EM4. They are the only figures I have painted so far. There are more figures to add to the Black Guard force in the pipeline. 

All the rest of the figures in this post are other people’s reworks, although only one of them was painted by me.

Late last year I got a lot of well painted old Necromunda figures cheaply from evil bay. This lot has given me the chance to quickly create new gangs and characters for the Last City. As I bonus all I had to do was base them. 

Oggie’s crew: 

Oggie was exploring around Last City’s green zone, a wild jungle of strange plants. The tales say a bio weapon hit the zone and it caused the plant life to grow in strange and rapid ways. Even humble house plants have become huge and twisted. Stories tell of he plants acting in a intelligent manner. 

In the distance he spotted a hill covered in lush green plants. Forcing his way up the hill through the plants Oggie discovered an overgrown warehouse and factory. The plants seemed to be growing from these partial ruins. Pushing his way into the factory Oggie discovered that the plants were stored and processed there before the wars. They had mutated into a faster growing and more robust plant. After some experimentation he found that these “Baccy” plants were still good to smoke. Oggie and his crew set up base in what is now known as Baccy Hill and are now the Last City’s only supplier of cigs, cigars and pipe weed. The baccy has proven popular as it is something else to take the edge off life on Mattblackgod’s World. Oggie and his crew have grown wealthy on their trade. 

Iron Lord: 

Iron Lord is a successful pit fighter appearing in the Mars arena regularly and is regarded as a sports hero across the city. He specialises in fighting ghouls and beasts but will happily take on the criminals who end up in the Mars Arena. Iron Lord wears heavy armour (which is mainly the exterior of a scavenged power armoured suit) as he likes to take on large numbers of beasts/criminals or the larger nastier critters. He dreams of glory in the arena and he hopes one day to face a Ambull in the pit. 

The Machinists cult: 

The Machinists cult is obsessed with cyber argumentation and improvement. They think that mankind can only survive if they merge with machines. The less human and more machine, the closer to holiness and higher the rank within the cult. Many cult members are a strange mix of human, scavenged power armour parts, robot parts and everyday post apocalyptic machines. Their “temple” is a old argumentation hospital a few days walk from the last city. The cult is considered too weird for the Last City and are banned from the city. That doesn’t stop new recruits trying to find converts on the roads to the city. 

This group is a mid level machinist cultist and low level cultists are typically found on the roads near the city. Another job of these teams is to find old robots, androids, power armour, machines and bring them back to the temple. These machines are then cannibalised for future argumentation. 

I have extra figures to add to this cult, mainly from Ramshackle Games. 

Colin Robinson:

“Hey, you can’t park THAT there!” 

Introducing Colin Robinson, the Last City’s only Traffic Warden. The Authority do not like vehicles blocking roads vital to defence of the outer junk walls. They needed someone to to help keep the roads clear and something to keep Colin Robinson busy. 

Colin Robinson carries a autopistol because the Last City isn’t a real civilisation like the old days. Things turn ugly quickly and in the blink of a eye you are in a fire fight with a group of psychos angry at the ticket you just slapped on their old jalopy. Old Colin isn’t stupid though, he only slaps tickets when there is a squad of Future Guard or Black Guard nearby to back him up. 

The figure is a old repaint of mine. I just changed the hat band colour to yellow (a traditional colour for U.K. traffic wardens up to the millennium). The figure is a soviet commissar from a WWW2 line (Westwind?). I named him after the energy vampire character in the “What we do in the shadows” TV show. If there was ever a job suited to a energy vampire, a traffic warden is it. 

Thanks for looking. Stay safe out there.

Rad Pizza’s Grand reopening.

Today after a massive refurbishment Rad Pizza is open again for business. The first twenty customers not only get their Pizza half price but they get a free rat on a stick too. Come on folks, eat out to help out!

This is a terrain refresh of a old favourite of mine. The model originally looked like this:

It was constructed from a card pen holder cum desk tidy thing my wife was throwing out. It had just the right shape. 

The roof had warped a little in one corner, a after effect of its return trip from the 2018 BYOL event (see Rad Pizza in the background of the Helsreach great jet bike race). So I added a new roof brace. 

The windows got some bars made from a biro inner.  Another was added from a strip of gift card. The new brackets and rivets were made from greenstuff putty. 

A vent and a ventilation fan was added. It gets pretty hot in there when the pizza ovens are burning. These came from GZG 15mm resin building bits. They work just as well for 28mm scale. 

Around the back we have added a new water boiler. This came from a mantic industrial terrain set. Some hanging electrical cables near the roof were added from left over greenstuff putty. I always mix too much of the stuff. 

The main work was fresh paint and dry brushing making the tone a little more realistic. This was followed by some dark brown, light brown and orange washes and runs to weather it a bit. Finally fresh graffiti and posters finish it off. 

Thanks for looking - pass a slice of pizza.

Anisty Bus wreck and cat “helpers”

Hello and welcome back. 

One of the reasons I don’t get as much hobby progress as I would like is due to this “helper” and his brothers. 

After laying about making a nuisance of himself he then decided to help a bit more. 

Thankfully I had secured the paint pot lids before he decided to “help”. Once he grew bored with playing with my brush he wandered off. Thankfully they weren’t running the tag team system last night to stop me painting. 

Back to hobby time. When I returned to the hobby over 15 years ago, I drooled over the pictures of Ainsty Castings’ School bus. I was playing a lot of Gang related games such as Babylons Burning and Combat Zone. Last year I had some spare bottle caps and finally treated myself to this model.

It is a huge lump of resin and comes with the planks/walkways as separate pieces. 

In most of the internet pictures the bus is painted like a new vehicle. Not really fitting into my post apocalyptic vibe. So I gave it a more rusty old wreck vibe. 

The graffiti was added with Posca paint markers. It took a while but it was worth it. 

Hmm, I think that front grill needs a few more dark washes. Possibly more rust too. 

In addition to the bus I picked up some bits that I don’t already own, suited to the post apocalyptic world. Wrecked girders. 

In addition I picked up some of the Warehouse Girders.
They are pretty vertical. Looking at the bases I think I may have to go back and add some dirt. They are too clean even by a pre apocalyptic standard! 

That’s all for now, thanks for looking. 

Stay safe out there and beware Moggies helping. 

Aerocity & Overpass

Hello and welcome back. 

Aerocity is a district of the Last City. It was once the airport that served the city long ago. Today it’s own township within the Last City. Manned by a guard wearing a mix of kit and equipment outsiders are treated with mistrust. Inside the perimeter of old scrap walls lies many surviving old hangars, terminals and store buildings. What was once old aircraft pads and run ways there is a sprawling township of shacks. The grass areas are too poisoned to provide healthy food. They are instead used to grow fuel crops. This is refined and sold across the last city. Aerocity also provides scrap materials and parts to the other factions in the Last City. 

Aerocity is an older MBW faction which has been tweaked and moved into the city. 

This guy is a new recruit to the Aerocity guards. He is a early Rogue Trader era Imperial Army figure (even before they called them Guards). As he fits the style I have adopted for Aerocity I decided that’s where he belongs. The figure was a eBay find I intended to clean and repaint, but I found I liked the paint job when he arrived. So all I did was make his base fit the other figures in this force.

As we are looking at districts of the Last City, let me introduce you to Overpass. Overpass is as the name suggests built on what remains of an old city Overpass. It is a selection of ramshackle huts protected by two junk walls at the ground level end of the Overpass. The township has a population of around 120. They are protected by the Overpass Lords, a small band of seasoned warriors wearing urban camouflage and sporting a mixture of equipment. Stories say that the Overpass Lords were once a band of Stalkers. The denizens of Overpass make their living from a mixture of scavenging and working in factories or foundries of other Last City factions. 

These are old Warzone figures. They will be joined by my old Monolith Stalker faction figures which should make them strong enough to keep Overpass safe from Last City ne’er do wells. 

Thanks for looking, take care out there. 

 

Last City Stalkers

Hello and welcome back. 

A lone Stalker and his dog approaches the Last City’s Junk gate. Where is he going alone in the Wastelands? To retrieve a hidden loot stash, a bit of scouting or perhaps he is a loner? Who knows but going into the wastelands alone is a risky move.

The figure is a Infinity Yu Jing  Zhanshi HMG figure with a Iron Pig head swap. The hood is made from greenstuff putty. A backpack was added from the bits box. The dog came is a plastic figure from a fantasy line. I just finished the base off. 

Stalkers provide a vital service to the Last City. They bring salvage and old world items back to the city. Stalkers also bring information, news and warnings about the things they see in the wastelands. Stalker billets and camps are located around the main gates. This is due to the nature of their work. Another reason is that when they are in the city the Stalker bands are expected to join in defence. Many Stalkers are experienced fighters (a side effect of the job) and well equipped making themselves a force to be reckoned with. 

The Scientists 

The scientists are a small Stalker team descended from a remote research bunker. Pretty soon food began run out and they were forced to cobble together armoured hazmat suits from anything laying about. Hungry they wandered out to scavenge anything they could to survive. Eventually the few surviving members became good at the job and ended up working for a distant settlement. Like many others they travelled to the Last City, hoping their skills will make them a fortune. 

These figures are repainted old clix frogmen. One has had his SMG removed and replaced with a mini gun from a EM4 Combat Zone military heavy weapons set. 

Thanks for looking. Stay safe out there Stalker.