Cheap and easy rubble terrain

 

Easy and cheap rubble

I had some MDF bases floating around and some unused sponge and so I decided to give a go at making rubble terrain pieces for use on the tabletop for both wargaming and role-playing games. The first of the finished pieces can be seen above and below.

The process was very simple. So simple, in fact, that a numpty like me was able to do it. I cut the foam into blocks to represent worked stone blocks. Then I added to that some small river stones I had floating around somewhere. You could use thick cardboard for the base but make sure it won't warp first. MDF is better in my opinion. I then smothered the stones and foam in White/PVA glue.

After a few minutes, I then added river sand across the base to add to the rubble effect.

Below, the foam blocks were arranged to make the base of a ruined tower. In this manner, you could make a larger structure stone by stone. However, I wanted this to block partial line of sight whilst permitting ranged attacks over the ruined wall, so I kept it to a low profile.

Below is a fake stone that I bought from a $2 Dollar store. The stone has a hole in the base so you can hide a spare key in it. I wanted it for a large boulder. Once again, the river stones add to the rubble effect, and I'll add sand later to the base.

I mixed some White/PVA glue with water and brushed it over the foam in order to harden it. This took about 24hrs to dry. I did this a few times to get all the foam blocks hardened.

Painting the finished result was simple. A basecoat of black spray followed by a grey spray lightly over that black undercoat whilst it was still wet to blend the colours. I then followed this up with a drybrush of lighter grey and added some straw from an old doormat to make it look like some grass had grown between the rubble then died.

And there you have it. Cheap, easy, simple.

Pulp Alley cards for Animated Ornaments and a Cranky Chrissy Tree

 You better watch out. You better not cry...but you can run in fear though.

Animated Ornaments powered by PKE

And a VERY cranky Christmas Tree. This one is a Construct that must have its Christmas Star atop the tree wrangled from it in a Ghost Wrangling Challenge (more on that when I finish the campaign rules) in order to take it Out.

I've almost finished the campaign rules. I'll post those when they are done and that will clear up some of the weird things on the creature cards.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum...

"O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, how faithful are your leaves!" Wow, watch out for this one. He doesn't look too happy.

This cranky bugger is another one of the War in Christmas Village miniatures. Now that Christmas is over for another year :( I can understand why he may be a little upset.

Anyway, I hope you had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas Day.

Merry Christmas and thanks for stopping by in 2025

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Micah 5:2 & 4 (NIV)

² “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,

    though you are small among the clans^[a] of Judah,

out of you will come for me

    one who will be ruler over Israel,

whose origins are from of old,

    from ancient times.”

⁴ He will stand and shepherd his flock

    in the strength of the Lord,

    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

And they will live securely, for then his greatness

    will reach to the ends of the earth.

Footnotes

^aMicah 5:2 Or rulers

This year has flown by so quickly. I can't believe that its Christmas Eve here and the year is closing out. I feel very blessed to be able to enjoy our hobby and take time to paint fantastic miniatures, play games, and game master a great role-playing group for five (including myself) nerds from churches across the city, with occasional drop-ins to bolster their numbers.

My long-suffering wife tolerates our antics (and the money I spend on the hobby). The stories that the lads make when we dive into an adventure surprise me in how they literally stumble through failure into success on every adventure. Its nuts. And occasionally maddening. Especially when that take out the Boss in one or two rounds of combat.

So, from my family to yours. May you have a wonderful, safe, blessed, peaceful, and joyful Christmas. God bless us, one and all!

Pulp Alley cards for Gingerbread Men and Snowmen goons

I've been working on a campaign for Pulp Alley set around Christmas time and based on a famous franchise. As such I needed some Gingerbread Men and Snowmen goons. That meant that I also needed some cards for the miniature's profiles. So, here is my take on them for the campaign.

Gingerbread Goons

A Gingerbread Brute

Snowmen Goons

I've added one too many Abilities to the Snowmen than is officially allowed but it just feels right for snowmen to be able to hide in the snow. I've also made them able to reanimate as they can draw from the snow around them to repair minor damage.

You will notice that there are also a bunch of Abilities that don't match up with the Pulp Alley core rulebook. These abilities have been made for a campaign I've been drafting of late. So, you will just have to wait for me to post those Abilities as part of the actual campaign rules when I've finished them.

But if you want to try these out for yourself you can just ignore the strange Abilities for now.

One more thing. Here is an updated Slimer profile card.

Enjoy!

The Ginger's - a Gingerbread Man gang for Pulp Alley

 

These rather nice and gentle looking Gingerbread Men are a vicious gang of thugs from the War in Christmas Village set of miniatures. I'm planning on ganging them up for Pulp Alley and I have a particular scenario in mind for these lads.

So, with Christmas around the corner, and yesterday reaching 37 degrees Celsius, "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow..."

I'll try working up some Pulp Alley Adventurer Cards for these and post them in the future.

Slimer & the Gruesome Twosome Pulp Alley cards

Spud, aka Slimer

Work as once again gone nuts. But in my spare time, I have been experimenting with some campaign rules for Ghostbusters, Pulp Alley style. The campaign has specific rules that permit the Ghostbusters to detect, wrangle and capture ghosts as well as fight animated objects. The rules are still in their draft form, given I haven't had much time to write, paint or craft of late, but I thought I would show the cards for two of the ghosts in the campaign.

Ghosts have PKE rather than Health. PKE functions the same as Health on normal characters in Pulp Alley, however PKE can only be damaged by a proton stream or proton grenade.

Once a ghost's "health" (i.e. its PKE) is reduced to its Down state, the Ghostbuster can undertake the Ghost Wrangle Challenge on the ghost's card to drag the ghost into a ghost trap's capture cone. Failure sees the ghost immediately escape 1d8 inches in a random direction. Ghostbusters must spend an action to drop a ghost trap on the table (or pick it up again). A Ghostbuster can attempt the Ghost Wrangle Challenge in the same turn that he takes the ghost Down. Ghost can regain PKE at the end of the Turn in exactly the same way characters can with their health. A proton packs' stream is 12 inches, so as long as the Ghostbuster is within 12 inches of a trap, he can attempt to wrangle a Down ghost into the trap.

So here is Slimer's and The Gruesome Twosome's cards for Pulp Alley.

A Gruesome Twosome ghost

More mini's for this still to paint, and some more cards to make too. Hopefully work will ease off soon.

Ghostbusters Terror Dogs (from Zombicide)

 

Vinz Clortho and Zuul

Hmm, what do we have here? A couple of Terror Dogs. Vinz Clortho and Zuul. This must be heralding something bad. And just before Christmas too.

These two good little puppies are from Zombicide. I picked them up some years back on eBay. Very nice sculpts and bigger than the ones in The Real Ghostbusters boardgame. Meaner looking too.

They were base coated in a grey primer and then I used a blue ink for the whole model with the exception of the mouths. Once that was dry, I then did a dark grey drybrush, followed by a lighter grey drybrush to bring out their normal skin colour. Their mouths were done in a red ink over the grey primer. It took a couple of washes to get the colour I wanted. The eyes are done in Citadel Scab Reb, if I remember correctly. Very simple and didn't take long to do.

Aww...pretty red eyes. How cute.

Still more minis to paint before this little adventure can go down. Back to the painting table.

Christmas terrain for wargaming - part 2

 

So, on a 32-degree day here in Oz, when the wind is howling and the bushfire threat is ever present, its finally snowed on my Christmas terrain.

That's right. I have managed to finish off my Christmas terrain that I showed off in my last post. Yes, amazed reader. I have finally finished a single project! I know. I'm amazed too.

This terrain will be making its way to my gaming table soon enough. Now there's some painting of miniatures left to do.

Christmas terrain for wargaming

 

The local Christmas World shop opened the other weekend and as I was browsing I came across some nice miniature Christmas trees meant for a Christmas Village display. I had other ideas!

Following the method I posted about the other day (see here), I grabbed some 10cm diameter round MDF bases from Bunnings and created four more vegetation bases for my next foliage efforts.

Yes, that's PVA glue on the base still drying. I didn't sneeze on those bases.

The bases were sprayed with light brown spray as in the previous post's method. But I also did a very light zenith spray of white. This sets the tone of the winter base before I added the trees.

Currently, these are still a work in progress. Once the PVA glue dries with the stones, I'll add dobs of PVA and then sprinkle snow basing material over the base and stones. I want this to look like a dusting of snow rather than heavy snowfall.

These vegetation terrain bases I plan to use for role playing and for a future Pulp Alley scenario I'm working on. But more on that in a future post.