Comrade's Wargames

A couple years ago (gah, has it been that long?) I picked up a couple packs of plastic Quonset huts from the defunct Dust Tactics game line. At 6 huts per pack, that’s a lot of terrain to paint up. They languished (as many projects often do) until this month, when I pulled them out of my cabinet and set about kitbashing some ramshackle shacks and shanties to go along with my existing post-apocalyptic/sci-fi terrain collection.

I started with the huts themselves — a 3-piece kit consisting of a half-cylinder hut and two semicircular front and back door pieces. I attached those to an MDF base, then began the arduous (and creatively freeing) process of adding on extra bits, bobs, greebles and junk to create a multi-layered junkyard look. Sometimes it’s nice to just start gluing stuff with rhyme or reason. To put it another way: it’s hard to screw up a junkyard shack.

Here’s an example of what I came up with. It’s a true mishmash of details and accessory pieces. The tall locker piece is from Thunderchild Miniatures; the tire is a resin piece I picked up from a DIY vendor at Gen Con; the barrel is from Dwarven Forge. On the back there’s a mechanical-looking piece from a hacked-up Mechwarrior figure, along with a handful of Games Workshop bits from countless kits.

Using successive layers of cork board, cardboard, plastic card and corrugated card is a great way to give the illusion of layers of junk and detritus that tends to build up in shantytowns. Sprinkle on some sand here and there for texture, and then you’re ready for paint!

As you can see, I went for a dusty, rusty paintjob that should fit in well with my existing shantytown terrain.

I made two huts during this little mini-project. Here’s the second one:

This one features accessories from Ramshackle Games, Thunderchild Miniatures, Mechwarrior, Deadzone and a few other games. I’m afraid I have no idea where that mattress/bed piece on the lower right comes from. (It’s awesome though!)

Now, time for a confession. Shortly after I took these photos, I received a birthday present: a set of rust pigments from Secret Weapon Miniatures! What fun! I immediately ripped the package open and started flinging pigment onto one of these huts with reckless abandon.

No photos yet, but in retrospect, I overdid it just a little bit. What can I say? I was just a little pigment-happy. So the final version of the terrain piece above looks a little different now, but not terribly so. And I learned a lot about how to use pigments, so I’ll have a more precise touch next time.

Anyway, what matters is that these two terrain pieces are DONE and have already taken their place on my terrain shelf. They’ll hit the table soon enough as part of Outpost Omicron, the dusty frontier settlement on Caluphel Prime…