Zone Mortalis - 2 (Scatter Terrain)

Bit of a small update tonight.

In the previous post on the ZM terrain I am knocking together to try the rules out I showed the cast barrels and crates I was going to use to do some scatter terrain which we will add to the rooms and corridors giving extra cover.

I did start to add tarps to three of the barrel groups but they looked horrible so I am going to try a different technique with them. I also decided the stores needed to be on pallets as you just can't add tarps without the pieces being on something as you need the tarps to go below the things being covered. The pallets will raise them slightly so that the tarps can be added so they do not reach the floor.

So I made a quick master for a pallet which I then did a mould for, I couldn't be bothered making all the pallets i need from scratch. This pallet has turned out to be just a temporary one. I now plan to do a much more detailed version as a 3D model which I will have printed. But for now these do the job nicely.

I have just done the four for now, I'll end up with another four I think.

In the pic above you can see the cast top section and the four lower panels added afterwards - for obvious reasons I wouldn't be able to cast it as one single piece.

Someone asked to see the crates in more detail. They were one of the first things I tried casting, here are the masters in styrene:

And some cast pieces in resin:

Next up will be doing the remaining four pallets and then adding all the tarps...

Zone Mortalis - 1

As mentioned in the last 'monthly blog update post thing' I will be giving the Zone Mortalis rules a try shortly and for it we need some appropriate terrain.

Now to try the game out there was no way I was going to buy a load of the FW boards or spend many hours scratch building something. What we needed was something cheap, quick and easily transportable/storable.

So I came up with the idea of casting some 'pillars' which could be used as corners and ends of walls, the walls themselves could be made from card and slotted into position, similarly the doors would be finnboard which can be slotted home.

For a 3 by 3 foot gaming area I needed to cast 29 pillars, which was something of a pain but thankfully i've now got all of them done.

Finnboard door slotted into the central groove.

The pillars are heavy and solid which was intentional, last thing you want is the walls moving with the slightest touch during a game. Hopefully these have enough weight to them that they stay put. Quality of casts wasn't important as if I really go for ZM and decide to do some proper terrain the pillars will be scrapped for something much better.

The walls will be slotted into the outer grooves giving us thick walls without the cost of making walls which were actually substantial.

Some walls slotted into place.

I had a grid printed out onto some A0 sheets, two of them together will give us a 3x3 gaming area. Only £6 to get printed which was well worth paying as I really didn't face drawing all those lines by hand.

My friend will be cutting some more walls out of card so that by the time we play we will be able to do several layouts to try.

In the meantime I aim to put together some scatter terrain to go in the 'rooms', such as barrels and crates. For this I cast a lot of pieces when I was doing the pillars.

The resin barrels are better casts and they will be the ones which you will
be partially able to see under a tarp.

A shed load of crates and even more barrels.

I need to build some pallets of some kind for the barrels and crates to sit on then add tarps to them all.

Looted Wagons 25

FINISHED (I think).

Yep, tonight I finished the third Looted Wagon I got commissioned to build. The reason for the 'i think' is that I will give all three a once over tomorrow to make sure I haven't missed anything.

But anyway, to the pictures...

And to recap the first two wagons...

The three of them together...

The aim was to build three tanks which had lots of individualism yet were obviously related, I think the end result made it.

Defensive Walls 11 and more on Moulds for Sale

Moulds On Sale

 

I modified the defensive wall masters to remove the mounting plates so people won't have to spend hours removing them from the casts (as I had to do...). I did the new mould...

 

Modified masters on the left, casts from them on the right.

However after using the new mould and comparing it to my original moulds I think I will actually be selling the separate moulds as shown below. They just seem easier to handle and use. It also means if people only want to use the walls without the plinths then I can sort them out with what they want easier.

 

So the prices as previously shown will be...

 

Mould Set 1 – two moulds covering the straight wall, corner wall, straight plinth and corner plinth. £22 + postage

Mould Set 2 – Two of Set 1. £40 + postage

Mould Set 3 – As Set 1 + mounting plate mould & 4 pieces of rebar (each just shy of 100mm long). £25 + postage.

Mould Set 4 – Two of Set 3. £45 + postage.

 

If people are after some drop me an email... rictusrd-blog at yahoo dot co dot uk

 

The weight of the box for Set 1 will be in the region of 450-550g. As such keep this in mind when deciding what you want. As before I do reccommend you get more than one set as with the amount of casting you will need to do having more than one mould of each piece will make life a lot more easier.

 

I have ordered a second print of the straight and corner wall pieces which should be here in a couple of weeks. This will allow me to do more moulds quicker and also larger moulds for those who may want a mould for say two straight wall pieces and one corner wall piece.

 

I have had a couple of people asking about the Gun Emplacement curved walls (see below) and I will be offering the mould for these for sale as well. However I have just placed an order to get some prints for the base parts which I hope will turn out well so I am going to hold off making it 'official' till I got hold of these.

 

 

But for those who are only interested in buying the emplacement wall mould rather than a complete gun emplacement set please drop me an email and i'll let you know a price.

 

 

Defensive Walls.

 

Sunday I was able to get all the wall pieces so far cast and along with a few bastions I did a set up...

 

 

I think now I have enough cast, I will continue to do the odd few as I do test casts for any moulds I sell but otherwise I will stop the bulk casting I have been doing (bit of a relief, I need a break from casting).

 

I did get some pics regarding the Planetstrike guns as well:

 

 

As you can see only with the box base can the guns fire over the walls with the plinths, however the other base isn't far off. I think I will be doing a new base from scratch, similar to the small base (as shown on the left) but tall enough to be used behind the taller wall set up.

 

Along with building some sub assemblies I'll be casting some mounting plates and adding them to the walls - I need a shed load of these so i'm not really looking forward to it.

Looted Wagons 24

Not too long to go now...

Track guards are done:

And the turret is taking shape:

Big and chunky as requested but I gave it a curved back so it wasn't just a simple box. Fair amount to get done but the hardest part was just getting this far - deciding on size and shape and getting the basic shape built is always the biggest obstacle to get over.

Underneath is done, putting the step in raises it a bit off the hull allowing rivets to be added without risk of hitting anything on the hull.

Might try and get the turret finished tomorrow, but I need to spend a bit of time on the defensive walls/moulds etc so i'm not sure yet what tomorrows update will be.