Many More Ruins

Not been feeling too great over the past week, which means that I've not felt like concentrating on painting figures. On the flip site I quite often end up making a bit of terrain to scratch that hobby itch, and this time with the painting process and colours being the same I did a few pieces at the same time.

First up is a ruined temple. The main structure is from Amera Mouldings and follows the same process as my last Amera pieces.

The pillars are 5" cake pillars (£5 for 4 from Ebay - search for "grecian wedding cake pillars"). They are hollow and made of hard plastic. I took off any mould lines and a square of thin card to one end. I then half filled them with sand to add weight and also lower their centre of gravity. Being so tall and standalone this should help stop them falling over during a game. The open end was then covered with another square of card before being given the same paint procedure are the temple ruin.

This next piece is a bit of a curve ball - a resin statuette I picked up in TK Max for about £13.  The figure was already painted aged bronze, so all I have done is give the base the now usual paint job. Nothing like an imposing piece of public art to add some drama to the landscape.

Up now is another Amera purchase - the ruined Church corner. I quickly glued this together with hot glue, as per a couple of Youtube videos I've seen about constructing these items. Although quite good at filling any gaps I found the bonding to be frustratingly poor on the smooth surface and had to also use superglue. Probably why Amera don't actually mention using hot glue on their site!

I wasn't too keen on the hollow interior walls, so I filled them with cheap wall filler (half a tub used from Poundland costing, funnily enough, £1). Also I didn't like the movement of the higher flooring (although they were in no danger of not supporting a group of figures), so I added a couple of balsa beams. The whole thing was then given the now familiar paint job.

And finally (for now) I repainted my Dark World temple piece. The previous version had a black primed and grey drybrushed covering which was a bit too dark to match all the new structures (as can be see here) so out came the grey primer can and dark wash procedure. This piece has moulded vines trailing  across it which I painted in green, but it looked a bit naff (especially compared to some of the great looking examples I've seen online) so I broke out my underused bag of moss (courtesy of Javis Scenics) and set to work covering the vine trails with a new layer (sprinkled with some loose clump). The splash of colour really helps lift it.

I liked the effect of this extra texture so added some as a climbing plant on the ruined church corner and a temple pillar as well (see earlier in this post). It's blooming frustrating stuff to get (pva) glued down but looks good when done. It'll also adds a nice and over grown look for using in future "Across The Dead Earth" games, which I have been feeling the pull of in recent weeks and hope to get off the ground maybe later in the year once I've taken a quick suitable figure stock count. but I digress...

All this has gotten me on a roll now, and I've already started on the last of my Amera purchases and re-purposing some other suitable bits and pieces, so the terrain tag will be used again in the not too distant future (holidays allowing!).