GateKeeper's Models and Terrain

[GateKeeper]

I had promised the other day that I’d get some better pictures of the terrain pieces I have since the first batch of photos didn’t turn out so good. I got more pictures, the quality isn’t really that much better, but I tried to get some shots that could show off some of the size differences and such along with some better images of some of the earlier shots.

Since everyone else is making their own threads for models, I thought it made sense for me to do the same, as such, I’ve opted to set this topic up for the sake of setting the stage for future work.

Lets start with what I am working with. For the moment, this is just my paints and those kinds of things:

Almost all of my paints are the Apple Barrel brand. Not expensive at all and I’ve always been happy with the results. The exceptions are the big jar of black paint (Only got it because they were out of the black Apple Barrel brand, and lets face it, black is black.), then at the bottom is a bottle of glow in the dark paint and a silver metallic paint (Going to try out some simple glow effects with the cheap glow paint first, then if I’m happy with it I’ll get some of the high end stuff. The silver is going to be for guns and similar where I need a bit of shine, and Apple Barrel doesn’t have any metallics as far as I know.) To the left are my brushes. That’s the new ones I just picked up since it’s been a couple of years since I’ve done any painting, and I’m just going to give my kids the old ones. Top right is actually a little desk organizer, I use the pencil holder to hold brushes as it keeps them up out of the way and also gives a good place for them to dry after washing. You can see my old brushes in the organizer. Under that are some empty bottles I’ll be using to make washes. Already made some brown, but will also be making green, black, and likely red to get started then I have a couple of extra bottles for the sake of making more later as needed.

Next up, a better picture of the Gnomes. I picked up five of the males, two of the females.

The gnomes all are on a short hard wire. I plan to snip them off so there’s maybe a 1/16 of an inch left, then I can drill a small hole into a round base to slide that in. Dot of super glue and they aren’t going anywhere.

[GateKeeper]

Next up, some of the TTCombat resins:

You will notice that some of the pieces I have started to paint. These are a simple red with yellow for the exposed interior. There are two chairs that are the same, one just has the main cholors, the other has a brown wash. Was really happy with how it turned out. May need to get some better pictures of it. The brown took the brightness right out of the yellow while dirtying up the rest of it nicely. Keep in mind, these are just some test pieces to see how they’re going to look with certain colors.

Another lot of terrain, showing off a bunch of the little stuff like traffic cones, boxes, mail box, trash cans, etc.

Slightly better version of the first image.

[GateKeeper]

A better image of the soda machines:

Something worth noting here is that the doors in front of the soda should be able to snap in place and you can open them or close them as you see fit. Mine didn’t have that good of fit and wont stay in place if I tip them upright. Even so, they’re beautiful pieces. There’s also two options for a rear panel of the machine.

Couple of better images of the train boxcars. One image with the doors closed, one with them open. The door on the far side opens as well, but I only opened the near door for these images.

[GateKeeper]

Next up, I wanted some better images of the truck. I still need to figure out how best to tarnish the paint to age it since it’s got a shine to it. The truck scales well and looks really nice. I want to take the shine off the paint, add some rust effect, and I think a brown wash will age the bed really well.

[GateKeeper]

And finally some of the Battle Systems stuff. I’ve got more than this, but I wanted to show off the size of some of the items. I think the only real discrepancy in scaling among ANY of the terrain I have is the shipping containers at the top. I put one of the TTCombat shipping crates beside the Battle System one to show the size difference.

And that’s what I have pictures for at the moment. If anyone wants to see a specific item better, say something and I’ll try to get a better image.

In the meantime, I’m just sitting here, anxious to get my models so I can actually play the game!

[crowly30]

Very nice collection gatekeeper, I am curious as I also ordered some battle systems stuff. Entire urban city block plus some extra item packs, how long did it take them to process your order?

[GateKeeper]

I live in the United States and Battle Systems is in Europe. My experience with overseas shipping is that it usually takes between 2 and 3 weeks for orders from Europe to arrive. In the case of Battle System, it was right about weeks.

I picked up the Shanty Town set from them. I love the game mat and have built all of the small stuff (Most of my order was the smaller kits with tables, chairs, and those kinds of things). Have been holding off on building the buildings until I’m ready to play with them though,

Most of their stuff went together without much trouble. Be careful when punching items out of the card stock so you don’t tear anything, that was something I ran into a couple of times (Nothing serious, I was watching for it from the start so I was able to prevent it for the most part.) and be careful when building the pieces that require you to fold something because the card stock liked to spread if you weren’t careful, If you look at the couch in the last set of images, you’ll see what I mean. The top left corner spread a little when I put the piece together.

Overall though, I was really happy with everything I got. At some point in the future, I’d like to pick up the Urban City Block as well.

[Steiney]

That’s a great collection of scatter terrain!

[GateKeeper]

Got a little more stuff to share with everyone today, some of it is WIP.

First, I mentioned the other day that I was ordering up some coke bottle terrain pieces. I ordered a couple of other things at the same time.

The Milk Jugs: They actually came as part of a bundle with the barrels. These would be the big ones designed to carry a lot of milk, not just a little bottle.

The Barrels: Overall I’m happy with the barrels, the bundle I got had a total of 10 of them. From the side and the top they look perfect, but if you look at the one furthest left you’ll see that it’s flat on that end, all of them are flat like that on the bottom. Still pretty happy with them though.

Coca Cola: Was really happy with these. My original thinking was that I was going to try my hand at painting the “Coca” to look like “Nuka” but they’re just so small I don’t even want to risk it. I was also hoping to pull some of the bottles out of some of the crates in order to make some of them look partially empty but the bottles don’t look like you can remove them without damaging the whole item.

Overall was happy with all of them in varying degrees.

Now, on to the TTCombat terrain that arrived a couple of days ago. I just today got around to working on this a little bit. I started with the Gas Station. I only had a few minutes to work on it, but hope to finish it up in the coming days.

A couple of things worth noting here:
-The pins on the various boards, some of them go in REALLY hard, I ended up using a knife to trim just a little to it so they would slide in a bit easier. I know it’s good to get a snug fit but I was actually just a little concerned I was going to break something and I figured a spot of glue would ensure everything was solid when done.
-You’ll also notice I have rubber bands around a few things. For the main building it was just to ensure everything was held together tight. For the gas pumps and the dinosaur they were two pieces thick and they wanted to spread a bit. I figured the rubber bands would hold them tightly together until the glue could dry.

Not sure if it will be tonight or some time over the weekend, but I hope to finish up the gas station soon then start in on some of the other stuff I picked up.

The other stuff I picked up:
-MSV Ironsides
-Billboard set (They actually shorted me this item, but I’m going to see if I can get that corrected. If not, it’s not so expensive I feel the need to make a huge fuss. I’ll be picking up more regardless.)
-Security Office (Comes with two barricades in spite of the image on their site only showing one.)
-Gray Harbor House A
-Gray Harbor House B
-Abandoned Apartment
-Arcade Cabinets and Pinball Machines

On a side note:
The Gnomes I picked up, if anyone else plans to get them: I was going to snip the wires from them but discovered that for most of the gnomes they simply slid out with a little pull. That said, I DID break one of the male gnomes. However the way it broke was alright, kind of took part of a leg off, and I decided it was fine just like that for terrain. It’s even a beautiful white that’s going to be really easy to dirty up like it was damaged long ago.

[gallowsCalibrator]

Man wish I thought of using rubber bands, smart thinking

[GateKeeper]

That was a trick I learned pretty early on. Doesn’t work for everything, but you’d be surprised how often they are useful like that. Best part is that you can buy a bag of them for almost nothing. (We’ve got a dollar store around here where I bought a bag of 500 for $1 a while back. That’s what I’m using here.)

I also have a set of small clamps for use for things like this that are sometimes useful too.

[Decanus]

Nice work gatekeeper looking good the train car has real potential just a case of weathering the bombshell decals on the side look like they fit the fallout theme very well

[GateKeeper]

Thanks!

Yeah, the train cars, especially the military themed ones I thought fit the setting very well. I just need to figure out how to weather things without ruining anything.

My only regret with the train cars is that the tops don’t come off, if they could open that would open up a lot of possibilities.

Been working on the TTCombat MSV Ironsides today. Hoping to finish that up this evening. Will share that as well as the completely assembled Dinogas when I get a chance.

[Polito96]

WIP.

[GateKeeper]

Very nice. Where’d you come across the resin stuff?

[Decanus]

they look like 3d prints, the barrels and junk pile are from here

[GateKeeper]

I like it, and it looks like there are other things available that would work well too. Wish I had a 3D printer now.

[GateKeeper]

Got another round of images for everyone this evening:

First, since I’ve been showing off the WIP images of the Dinogas, I figured it would be nice to show the completed item.

I opted to have the model in three pieces. One is the core chunk, one is the roof of the main building, and the other is the gas pump area. The main building and the gas area attach very nicely, the main roof is a bit quirky to get in place though. I’ll be trimming the pegs where everything slides together just a little bit so they fit better at some point.

And with everything together.

Overall, I like the model. Once there’s some paint on it, it’s going to look pretty good I think.

The only thing I’m not real sure about is if you look, you can see some gray trim? That’s a form of card stock paper. It’s got grooves to aid with painting, but I wasn’t really impressed by the quality of those. Even so, at the price I can’t really complain.

Now, on to the shipping containers:

To be clear, I ordered a batch of shipping crates with my first order through this company a month or so ago. With the exception of the doors, they come out of the boards very easily.

The thing that impressed me the most about these though was that I was expecting three different patterns like what I received in the shipping container bundle I bought a while back. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this bundle actually had five different patterns, two of them were not part of the shipping container bundle. Was incredibly happy about this.

First image is with everything out of the boards, the second is assembled and includes the radioactive materials container as well as the two ammo crates.

NOTE: When I built the shipping crates, I have the base and three walls glued together. The top is loose. The doors actually have pegs that sit in holes and you can swing the doors open or closed as you please. By leaving the top unglued, I can place terrain inside if I want, and it also gives me the option to remove one or both of the doors if I ever want to present them that way on the table.

Now, on to the big boat itself:
I actually ordered the big boat instead of the smaller one for a couple of reasons. 1. You gain six shipping containers, a radioactive materials container, two ammo crates, and the extension to make the ship bigger for about the price of the six shipping containers that come with it (The shorter boat appears to only be the boat, no shipping crates/) and 2. It gives me more options for how to field it on the table. (I’ll show that off a little bit below.)

The front end of the boat is surprisingly sturdy and it went together really easily. Each slab stacked on the next and they were all numbered. The whole front end took less than a minute to build once the wood was out of the boards. The control terminals for the bridge were a little bit of a pain, but once I got a rubber band around them to hold it all together it wasn’t so bad.

[GateKeeper]

And continuing where the last post left off:
The middle picture shows each component for how it all comes apart. The first image shows the “Short” boat that you could buy alone. And the final image shows the long version.

The nice thing about having the main boat in three bits )Nose middle and back half) is that I can mix and match as I see fit when putting it on the table for more options. Break it up for a wrecked ship. Put it all together for a big ship. Leave the middle out for a shorter ship. I could have glued it all together, but I figured this made for easier storage, and it’s not like it will be knocked about the table so much that it’s going to come apart during play.

Started building the Gray Harbor House A tonight, but I’ll show that off another day.

[Decanus]

the boat and gas station look good gatekeeper i am with you on the boat idea terrain modularity is alway good gives you more options on how your going to lay your board out