An eclectic mix of everything that fits nowhere else including miniatures, terrain, house rules, comics, lyrics and anything that doesn’t have a home elsewhere.

Ever want your urban terrain to stand apart from everyone else’s?

An easy way is to draw in ballpoint pen in reverse on an eraser. Put as much ink on as you can, then press it onto a wall, piece of ground, etc. It will end up looking like a half worn away piece of graffiti. Excellent for single words or graffiti style writing.

This is the simplest and you can always try metallic ink pens as well.

Another way to spice up your models is to add posters. Don’t have a laser printer? It’s easy. Find a suitable sized image from a magazine. Cut it out. Now using some very fine sandpaper/very fine emery board, lightly sand down the the back of the paper. This is to thin down the paper so it sticks down better and conforms to the shape of the piece you are gluing it to. You can also sand the edges of the front so it looks worn from being out in the weather for a long time. You can use some watered down PVA glue to get the paper to conform to any texture underneath and wipe away any excess glue. As the glue dries shiny, you may want to give it a quick coat of matt varnish after the glue has totally dried.

For repeated designs, a stencil is the easiest option. Just a bit of card with the shape cut out that you can use to mask an area as you use the mask to drybush the area.

If you want to add advertising posters made from boxes (candy chocolate gum and so on) it is the same as for cutting out the magazine images. Simply cut the box to shape, and sand down the back and sides, then you can add that to a wall, or if you want it to be a bit more special, you can add a trim made from mathcsticks or similar. Painted black and highlighted grey. For billboard style posters, cut out your image, fold it up in one way, then in the reverse, so then when you give it am light sand, the edges of the folds are high enough to be sanded as well. (you could probably do this whilst it is still folded). When adding it to a building, you can tear out a section so it looks like it has fallen away from the wall as most large format posters are done in smaller sections placed together to make up a larger poster. This helps the illusion of the billboard surrounding, possibly adding some little pieces that look like lights to illuminate the billboard would help this too.

Other methods of ink stamping or paint stamping involve cutting a design out of a potato, but these are pretty rough and are more suited for stamping things that look like icons and symbols daubed on the ground/building.

Rumour has it that the new space hulk/necromunda box set will be a box to get people into the larger systems. How this is worked into miniature wise it is anyone’s guess. But there was talk of plastic pieces for the terrain/corridors.

If this IS the case, we may see a lot of interesting terrain conversions and ‘themed’ terrain.

Hopefully it will see the light of day sooner rather than later. It may end up using the rumoured special hulk/necro rules in the new 5th edition of the rules. We wait with baited breath.

Many years ago I discovered a boardgame called space hulk, along with its expansions I spent many a weekend locked in strategic games against friends. After that much time spent with it, when the second edition arrived I added it to my collection. The bonus being the vastly improved models for the game.

Now more recently I discovered a version of it for my mobile. I had seen the old computer game version but I didn’t really enjoy the PC game all that much. But playing a version of the original? With just the strategy being what I was wanting, I played through the whole campaign as both sides. Now, sitting on a train to work for 45 mins gives me plenty of time to listen to music, or play solitaire on the iPod. But want something to push my mind a bit further, I went for a game a I knew would get me thinking. The strategic map top down style of the game (and this is the only component that runs on my phone) is very reminiscent of the boardgame. Anyone who has played and enjoyed the game will probably like this version.

It can be quite challenging to beat on some of the maps, even with a background in the boardgame version it can still be difficult to win. I certainly recommend checking out a copy for yourself.

Check out a copy for yourself here 

In the coming weeks and months, all my terrain ideas, crazy conversions and sites that inspire me are going to appear.

But feel free to share your favourites as well!