Easy Vegetation Terrain for wargaming

 

I'm sure others have discussed this before. But I wanted to highlight a really simple way of making thick vegetation terrain for your tabletop. I'm going to use these for our current Pirate Borg roleplaying campaign.

The church is from Sarissa Precision and is a 28mm scale Mediterranean Church

Aquarium and table setting plants pulled apart and ready for use

I started with finding a suitable sized base and, using PVA glue, sanded it. Once dry, I undercoated it in a light brown spray.

I then took cheap aquarium plastic plants and plastic table setting plants and pulled them apart. I then hot glued a random assortment of plant types and colours onto the base. Being hot glue, I had to hold each plant in place as I waited for the glue to dry. I also pulled off the strings of dried glue as I went.

I then used PVA glue to add small gravel stones to the base. Once those were dry, I then added some small grass flock around the base to hide some of the more obvious areas of the dried hot glue.

Just added the grass flock to the base of this one

So pretty cheap and pretty versatile. You can make whatever you want from such plants. You could even use the tiny fern like plants, which come from an aquarium plastic plant, to make corral polyps for underwater terrain.

So, there you go. I'm not the first to come up with this idea. But hope this gives you some inspiration for making cheap vegetation for your own tabletop.

Stay Puft for Ghostbusters

 

The Mr Stay Puft's that I have bought over the last few years, from Zombicide, to the Ghostbusters Boardgame, haven't really been of the size one would expect from good 'ol Stay Puft. In the original Ghostbusters, Stay Puft was described as being over 30 feet tall, so at least 10 metres. Zombicide's one was tiny and the ones that came with the Ghostbusters Boardgames was still shy of what I would expect when compared to a 28-32mm figure.

Enter Playmobil's Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Amazon. He looks more the part and is reasonably priced. So, I took the plunge and purchased one. Here he is next to the Crooked Dice paranormal exterminators, which are 28mm miniatures.

The arms and hands twist on Mr Stay Puft and he feels more the right size for the work of being a Destructor. So if you want a bigger Stay Puft, Playmobils got you covered.

Conan finds himself in a spot of bother

 

Conan has finally arrived! And I've painted him.

I recently bought from Noble Knight Games the Kings kickstarter pledge for the Conan Boardgame, by Monolith Games. I have wanted to get his for years now, having never been aware of the kickstarter until well after it finishes. I have no intention of playing the boardgame but wanted the miniatures for skirmish wargaming. I'm thinking that Conan would be a great setting using the Pulp Alley rules set.

These are just a photo shoot with the big lad himself and some nasty centipedes from Pathfinder. The Monoliths are aquarium items I bought off Amazon. The campsite comes from a Wizkids box set.

So, Conan is ready. I just need to paint up two or three of his companions now and stat them up for Pulp Alley.

Vyvyan and SPG ready for PopulationZ

 

"SPG, get off the car now you silly hamster!"

Vyvyan Bastard of Scumbag College, a medical student, with his pet hamster SPG (short of Special Patrol Group). They are pictured here with Vyv's Ford Anglia that is still awaiting on getting some flame decals added to it.

Vyv and SPG will be taking part in my first game of PopulationZ soon as I finish painting a bazillion Zombies. I've completed about 21 done from the most recent batch done now. Still have about 7 to go from that batch plus some other zombies elsewhere.

"Laddie, it could do with some flame stripes."

"That's a completely brilliant idea, SPG. Why didn't I think of that?"

Vyv comes as part of The Bristol Crew from Hayland Wargaming Terrain and you can find Rick, Neil and Mike together with Vyv. SPG is a Hamster miniature I got somewhere else.

"You know. I think I'm going to get a leg and stick it on the bonnet of my car."

As for the Ford Anglia, it's a 1/43 scale model from Vanguards that I purchased off eBay. I just need to get some flame decals added and it will look just like Vyv's. I might see if I can get a leg to go on the bonnet of Vyv's car too. Maybe.

The Pirate Borg Adventure Continues

 

Once again, the lads got together Sunday night for another role-playing session in the Pirate Borg universe using our homebrew D20 ruleset dusted with a liberal lashing of the excellent Pirate Borg charts and tables.

The lads found themselves at a small trading port on an isolated island whilst they searched for their ship that had inadvertently been commandeered by an NPC whilst they were off adventuring somewhere. They claim stolen, I claim "appropriated inadvertently." Tomato, tomatoes, you know the drill.

Anyway, as they follow the trail of their lost/stolen ship, they encountered the trading port right as it was under siege by some feral goblins. The port itself was run by a more "civilised" group of Pirate Orcs. They quickly sprang to the aid of the Pirate Orcs and helped to see off the invaders and shore up the defences.

You can see a snapshot from shortly after their arrival at the trading port. Whenever a feral goblin was killed, another came barging through the broken main gate. The lads had to cleave through enough of the blighters to render the "spawn point inactive", as they jokingly phrased it afterwards. But they had some clear fun with it all.

After helping the Orcs, they took a 100sp commission to go and take the fight back to the feral goblins village located about a mile further inland. As they arrived at the village the remaining goblins were engaged in a war ritual around their totem in preparation for another attack on the port. Here they amazingly acted as a party and decided to use tactics rather than "percussive maintenance" like they usually do. Surprisingly, despite many bad rolls, not a few fumbles, and the odd critical role, they walked away fairly unscathed despite being outnumbered nine to four. Impressive. The photos below are just before they use tactics to win the day.

After all that I used the Pirate Borg tables from the rule book and the adventure to determine what they each found. There was a chest located in front of the totem and as three of the players shot into the tents to loot their contents, the fourth player wondered over to the totem and saw the chest.

Upon opening it, I rolled a 99 on the "Buried Treasure" table coming up with 24 stacks of 20 gold pieces, each stack being worth 500 sp! Everyone else only found junk items and 2d6 sp in the tents.

The lucky player, who was also their captain, found in the chest a treasure map and some thieves tools and rope. He then went and examined the fourth unexplored tent, where he found the severed head of a pirate. Yes, that was another random roll on another table.

I said that the severed head was Lucky Jones whom the captain knew from his past. In years previous, Lucky Jones had come upon the treasure map and gone searching for its booty. This accounted for the large sum of money in the chest at the totem along with the treasure map and the thieves' tools and rope. I love it when random roles end up telling a story all on their own. You know you have great tables when that happens.

So, now they are rich. Shame that they are in the middle of nowhere really with only a dinky trading port far from civilisation and only a longboat to go anywhere.

MOAB 2025 - Mother Of All Battles this October long weekend

 MOAB 2025

Once again, this long weekend, MOAB has returned for 2025 thanks to the Sutherland Shire Gamers association. 

Though the numbers may seem a little down from last year, the event is actually spread across a few floors and other buildings. So, numbers are the same in my view. Just spread over a wider space. The Bring and Buy was packed, as usual, and I managed to spend more than I should have. But I did get some nice classics. But that's for another post.

However, here are some of the games and exhibitors present this weekend.

This area was a WW2 skirmish game by TwoFatLardies if I remember correctly. The table here caught my eye for its impact and detail.

This was an Old World Warhammer game. The Shoggothy thing in the middle really caught my eye. Interestingly, Warhammer (AOS / Old World) has been supported heavily in previous games. This year however, it was relegated to the mezzanine level over the main hall and there were probably only twelve tables being played.

Star Wars Shatterpoint / Legion was way more popular as far as I could tell. I also didn't see a single Warhammer 40k table in the main hall. But those tables may have been either on the stage or in one of the other buildings where Marvel Crisis Protocol was being played last year's MOAB. AOS and 40k usually dominate. But they were visible by their clear absence from the main gaming space. That said, the Bring and Buy sections had heaps of Warhammer 40k and AOS / Old World for sale. So maybe there's been a bit of a falling out of love for Games Workshop of late.

This was a massive game of Sword & Spear in the centre of the main hall. There were other historical games being played on the level below the main hall.

Fjord Serpents Vikings at War was up for sale here and being shown off with a demo game. The demo models are eye catching also. You can get it from the web site or from OCKER Games.

Star Wars Shtterpoint and Legion was front and centre in the main hall on Saturday. Very popular. The terrain here is from the excellent Brutal Cities MDF terrain maker.

Bolt Action was also a key game played in the main hall. Bloodbowl had a few games going on as well. The buildings above are from Dark Castle Terrain. I've bought a stack of MDF stuff from their store in the past and its great price and quality. Check them out.

Now THIS seller is top notch. I was tempted to buy some of their orcs, but I have too many orcs already. Can you have too many orcs? But these would fit in easily in any Middle-earth setting and have the feel of the classic Ral Partha style of miniature. They were about $18 for four miniatures and look fantastic. Currently they are doing classic Fantasy, Medieval and Australian Army in WWII. Give Medbury Miniatures a drop by to view their excellent miniatures.

Slave2Gaming was present as well. They were demonstrating their MA.K 15mm game and miniatures. Last MOAB I bought a whole bunch of the 15mm minis for the Grunts15mm ruleset. Again, top notch miniatures and some fun Elvis and Alien Overlords stuff. Their goblins I really like as well.

This independent seller is Ex Manus Studios and is a one-man operation that makes some truly wonderful miniatures that make for fantasy and steampunk style adventurers. I have a few of his miniatures that I use for my Roleplaying group, and I can't praise them enough.

I bought three sets of these little Gembot Work Crew models. You can see two above in the front row. They would work great for 28mm to 10mm, even Epic scale. They come in packs of three with the other sculpt holding a shovel. They make for great automaton miners that can be pesky nuisances for the player characters if they try to steal their gems.

Finally, here are some shots of the painting competition. Apologies for the frosty images as these were all behind glass and it was hard to get a decent shot without some reflections getting in the way.

So, there you go. Got there for Saturday. But it's on all long weekend. And, of course, I spent too much as usual.