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Over the summer I spent some time experimenting with different materials, tools, techniques and ideas and after some slow work at scratchbuilding I created this little hobbit hole. The main hill is made from rigid extruded polystyrene (rigid insulation foam). The front façade was built on a piece of cardstock/chipboard so I could do it separately and then assemble once it looked good. The woodwork is made from balsa wood, with a plastic bead painted brass for the door handle, black construction paper painted metallic for the hinges, clear plastic from some packaging for the window, the stone path in front from egg carton cardboard, and thin card from a food package for the shingles on the little overhang. I sculpted the chimney from polymer clay. The filling between the timbers is Woodland Scenics foam putty. Once everything was assembled and painted I glued some fine sand in the front, added assorted grass tufts and flowers, and then flocked with some static grass and some coarse turf, trying to keep it from being all too uniform.

Cats and Camps

This time, just some simple bits to add to scenes.

Some long-haired cats from Bad Squiddo

And the hunter's camp from Mantic Games

GW 40K Terrain Pieces

These are thermic plasma conduits (2 packs) and regulators (1 pack) from GW. I think they were originally sold for use with Kill Team? But I intend them for use in various generic sci-fi skirmish games.

I started off with a base coat of black gesso, then a heavy drybrush of "rough iron" paint (an Army Painter paint color) for the main overall color which gave it a nice heavy duty industrial look, then various bronzes/coppers, blues, reds and gray, to do a bit of detailing. I was trying to keep things fairly simple, as game pieces rather than focal points for dioramas or the like.

So I set up assorted figures from my collection of sci-fi minis - just randomly, no actual game in progress (so far).

Sci-fi Bits

Just to show that I'm still alive... ha ha

I finally finished these terrain bits for Star Wars Legion - which I plan to use for generic sci-fi skirmish games, since I don't have or play Star Wars Legion. (Reaper sci-fi rogue included for scale)

Seemed like some useful bits to use for objective markers, set dressing, obstacles or things to hide behind, etc.

It took me some time to figure out what colors I wanted to use and where to put those colors - lots of little bits that could have been picked out in various colors. I didn't want to make them too fiddly, but not too monotone either. I think I'm happy with the assorted grays (from Reaper's stone gray triad) and the shiny bronze and blue metallics.

Under Construction

I have been working on some buildings to use with my dwarf musketeers and other figures. They are still under construction, and more are planned, but I wanted to show what I've done so far. I have made them in pieces so they can be arranged in various ways. Here are the pieces that are nearly finished:

And here is a street scene with a dwarf musketeer dueling with a Foundry Casting Room fancy orc.

And a wider shot showing more of the buildings.

I have more of the "fancy orcs" in progress on the painting table. They are fun to paint and I'm going wild with the colors, making them as bright and clashing as I can. More buildings are planned as well, including some with stonework (once I work out how I want to do that), and some with more wood siding and/or a mix of wood siding and half-timbering.

Test Map

Following on from my previous post I tried out the random mapping just to see what I might come up with. I've tried both having the rivers follow the hex edges and flow through the middle. This example is one with them following the edges. I'll post an example of the other type once I get it cleaned up. Since I didn't have any paper with large hexes handy when I did the tests I just drew some really rough "hexes" (and a few pentagons and other shapes) on paper with pencil, scanned the result later when I had access to my scanner, and then cleaned it all up in a drawing program.

Encounter in the Ruins

Heroes fighting assorted orcs and goblins among some old overgrown ruins. I made the ruins a few years ago using the round tower mold from HirstArts.
A female barbarian and female fighter, manufacturers unknown. I've had these a long time time, painted ages ago.

Old GW orcs and gobbos, also painted ages ago.

Orcs and Goblins, part 1

Now we begin to become acquainted with some of the less savory denizens of Mirth.

First an orc shaman and a goblin musician.

A goblin shaman, jester and snotling. (I got these all ages ago, but I think the last 2 are from a WarhammerQuest adventure)

A few wolfriders (with the leaders, command figures and shaman I have a total of 28 wolfriders; my largest single unit. They can be split into smaller units as needed.)

A couple of goblin chariots

"Grom the Paunch" and his chariot (notice the snake scrambling to get out of the way).

The whole mobile horde. Imagine facing this charging at you! (I also have some orc boarriders, to make for an even more fearsome mobile arm of the combined orc and goblin army.)

In some of these pictures you can see some new road pieces I have been working on. I cut them from mdf board and painted them with hobby paints. The green paint is rather translucent and lets the "particles" show through, which gives it some texture. They could work fine as is, but I'm going to experiment with a bit more painting and possibly some flocking, just to see how that might look.

Assorted Dwarves

This post contains assorted dwarves, mostly GW, some Citadel, and maybe 1 or 2 from other manufacturers. Most of these guys have been in my collection for a while (some from the late 70's or early 80's).
First up a couple of adventurers, a Norse dwarf, and a dwarf commander
More Norse dwarves and adventurers

An adventurer, a Freestone dwarf, and a dwarf ranger/woodsman (I think the first one is a Foundry miniature)

The Dwarf with No Name, a crazed old trollslayer, and a dwarf pirate.

A dwarven fort I build quite a while ago when I first started making stuff with HirstArts blocks. The top comes off. The "join" is obvious. If I built this again today I would probably do the top a bit differently to make the join less obvious.