A Visit to the Doctor

The medics of Tin City play a vital role in patching up the desperate fighters of the wasteland. Whether it's reattaching a limb or sticking on an entirely new one, you can count on your local doctor to fix you up and not to charge an arm and a leg (at least, not unless you wanted them removed). Most medical practitioners also can dispose of unwanted problems, like grunting fever, squatcrotch or the bodies of slain enemies. That said, many doctors have side businesses too, for when trade is slow, such as Honest Bob's combined surgery, undertaker's and kebab stand.

The clinic was looking rather dull at the start of the week, so I started adding details to the exterior to make it more interesting. The sign was a pain, and I ended up redoing the lettering. I broke up the white exterior with some graffiti and some unspecified tech bits, whilst trying to keep the Japanese shop front style.

I'd like to do some more detailing at the back: perhaps I'll add a little awning over the doorway, or a bike propped up against the wall.

Also, I made a bin out of plasticard and painted it a jolly, if filthy, yellow, to make the shape more interesting and provide a bit more colour. I've not stuck this in place, so it can be put against a range of buildings for instant waste-disposal excitement. I'm waiting for some bits to make the interior.

I also got the chance at last to paint a model I picked up for £1 at last year's Colours event. It's a Privateer Press model called Grim Angus, and has quite a steampunk feel. He came holding a rifle in his right hand, which didn't look quite right, so I replaced it with a knife from a GW ogre. This was surprisingly tricky, and I had to partially rebuild his hand with green stuff. I think he's come out well.

Nothing to see

Here are a few more inhabitants of the wastes, going about their daily business.

These two gentlemen have gone for a stroll in the desert in their hazmat suits, as you do, in a set of events completely unrelated to recovering crashed UFOs or producing methamphetamine. They are made by Full Borer Games (I think) and while they're not extremely detailed the folds in the cloth were good to paint. Sometimes you can have too much detail (says the man with a heap of unpainted Carnivale models on his desk).

Here is Hasslefree's version of Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road. Her gun is incredibly delicate so I thought I'd take a picture before the barrel inevitably snaps off. It's a really great model. I didn't try to paint the eyes because the risk of me slipping and covering the side of her face in white paint is too high. Of course that's the sort of thing people do in Mad Max, but still.

A Ninja and a Shed

While I'm never going to have the vast towers and murky streets of Blade Runner, the setting I've been gradually putting together does have a vaguely cyberpunk feel, like a border town in the future, where high technology sits alongside waste and junk.

There's always been a strong Japanese element to cyberpunk, probably because the genre was invented around 1980, when Tokyo looked to be the city of the future: Blade Runner has blimps advertising sushi, and Neuromancer has a replicant ninja. In keeping with this, I converted a ninja-type assassin from various bits I had lying around.

The head and torso come from a 40k Vindicare assassin, which I got cheaply with a load of broken parts (someone else had already hacked the legs off). The right arm and gun originally were part of an Infinity model, and the left arm is from a genestealer hybrid. The legs were based on the legs of a plastic Eldar guardian, although I had to cut them down because they were incredibly long. I sculpted some appropriate shoes instead of the pointy boot things that Eldar seem to wear.

Here he is with a bit of paint. As ever, he's slightly washed out, so the colour looks more extreme than it actually is. Strangely, the contrast on the base has hardly come out at all.

The other current project is a clinic for the Necromunda town, based on a TT Combat model. At present, it looks like a big white shed.

It will look better once I've stuck some more bits on. I'm thinking of getting hold of the recent objectives set to make some medical gear for the interior, and perhaps building a more technological extension on the side. It's got plenty of potential - which means that it's a long way from being finished.

Nurgle Champion

So great was the corruption of the governor that folk did not argue about whether he would fall to Chaos, but which of the ruinous powers would claim his soul. The governor's crazed ranting had inspired many a Khornate militia to go on the rampage. His subterfuge and treason were worthy of a devotee of Tzeentch. And his depraved, insatiable lusts would have made a priest of Slaanesh wince.

But ultimately he belonged to Nurgle, the god of corruption and decay. Now his name is lost, and he is known only as Threebellies, a monster as bloated as he is stupid, whose ruins everything he touches.


I've never really been very into Chaos in Warhammer, either in fantasy or 40k, although some of the really old stuff has an entertaining Hieronymous Bosch feeling. It's pretty take-it-or-leave-it for me, and most of it I'd leave. In particular, I've never really got Nurgle, whose models always looked a bit jolly and suffered from an excess of tentacles.

Anyway, a friend of mind gave me part of a really old metal Great Unclean One. I had no real use for it, until I discovered that the upper body of one of the riders from the Maggoth kit fitted really well on top of it. By which I mean that it was grossly misproportioned.

I found a tutorial for painting suitably rancid skin and followed it. He does look a bit like a mouldy strawberry up on end, but in the circumstances, that might not be an entirely bad thing.

 Lovely.

Maniacs

Presidential Decree 69784/603/17
Top Secret

Dear science guys,

Listen, I have had the best idea how to solve the prison overcrowding crisis and the recruitment problem at once! We get convicts and fill them with drugs and stuff until they're really big and kind of mutated like that guy in that cartoon. And mad, too. They've got to be mad. Then, we point them at the bad guys and let them loose! Cool, huh?

 Of course, we'd want real crazies to begin with, homicidal maniacs and stuff, otherwise it won't work. And we'd need to give them lots of big weapons. Sometimes, I amaze myself with all the brilliant ideas I have. It's gonna be great, so great. I can't see how this could go wrong.


For a while I've been interested in the "Storm of Sigmar" starter set for Warhammer Age of Sigmar: mainly because for £20 you get a lot of pretty decent models. In particular, I think the armoured Khorne chaps are really well sculpted and would make an excellent replacement for the old and lumpy plastic Chaos Space Marines. I've also been tempted to have a go at converting some Sigmarines, and this seemed to be the easiest way to get some on the cheap.

The box comes with five "bloodreavers". These are low ranking Khorne fighters (Khorne seems to be the chaos god of choice in AoS, and now everything Khorneish has "blood" in the title), and to my mind they're a bit too massive to be entirely convincing as normal humans. I thought it would be good to update them to look like post-apocalyptic maniacs, like the War Boys from Mad Max or the Raiders from Fallout.

That involved cutting off their Viking-style helmets and replacing some of their weapons. I also did some minor converting to make the poses a bit more dynamic. I gave them metal gas mask heads from Pig Iron Productions to make them look more sinister.

Painting-wise, I went for orange convict-type trousers and a lot of dirt. I wanted to use a messy style on the torsos, with a lot of washes over a pale undercoat, but it was too messy and I just ended up painting them in the usual way. Oh well: it's pretty messy as it is.

Now, on a different note, you're clearly people of excellent taste (after all, you're reading this...). So why not pre-order my next novel? The Pincers of Death, an exciting tale of war, giant soldier ants and hovering teapots right: HERE. I can promise that the jokes in it are even better than the ones here. Honest.

Inglorious Technicolor!

While I really enjoy making terrain, I've found that my natural instinct is to colour everything grey. Although most fantastical buildings probably would be made of either stone or concrete, it does make for a rather drab battlefield, especially if you can't paint the neon lights like those in Blade Runner.

So I decided to experiment with some colour. I looked at pictures of the favelas in Rio, where crude buildings are often painted very brightly, and tried to do a colour scheme like that on a model. The building I made was built out of a cheap wooden chest that I bought at an art shop (perhaps for storing jewellery) on top of a lower storey made out of textured plasticard. Additional doors, windows and tech stuff were attached to break up the outline from a variety of old models and basing kits.

I'm really not sure what to make of the result. The green colour bothers me a bit: I tried to mute it down with sponged-on highlights/dirt, but it does feel very lurid. I'm reminded of the sort of "you'd never know it was a shampoo bottle, honest" terrain from the early days of wargaming. That said, the colours do tie in quite nicely with the market stalls and some of the random machinery that I've already made. Here's a back view:

I do like the brickwork (it's a bit washed out here) and the object source lighting. I'll have a think about the green colour. If either of you readers happen to have any thoughts, please do send me a comment below.

Anyway, more terrain. For some reason, since time immemorial, it has been the custom in the UK to sell oranges in a mesh bag. Recently, these bags have had a sort of plastic fishnet panel at the front. I hacked up one of these and used it as wire for a fence. Stuck between bits of sprue, and suitably painted, it looks quite convincing.