More Heavy Gear Terrain

2024-08-01 heavy gear / terrain /

Project Heavy Metal (replacing all my plastic Heavy Gear jagers and iguanas with metal versions) is progressing slowly, stuck on the need to edge detail more than a dozen models, so I've been procrastinating by working on terrain instead.

Shanty Hangars and More Houses

More from Lazy Forger. The hangars are a departure from my usual 180% scaling, because at that size they exceed the dimensions of my build plate. So they're actually about 165% but there's only one part of the model where you could possibly tell and mostly it looks fine.

Painting wise I went much lighter on the drybrushing and washing, which gives it the same effect of normalization but also lets some of the colors come through better.

All together, it's a sizable pile of buildings to work with

Alien Desert Flora

So the board's getting denser, but what about all the space between the buildings? We need scatter terrain. I found some free STLs of prehistoric plants that I thought looked properly alien, but I like that no one can call them implausible because they'd just be plain wrong. Scaling is mostly gut feel.

I did some test pieces and was immediately happy with the bush cactus things, but the trees just weren't working. They just kept reading too artificial to me.

I finally found a look I liked with a blended gradient that made them feel properly floral.

A plates worth of them all, mostly knocked out in two nights. Probably not quite enough for a whole table, but I want to get a game in with them before I invest more time.

Civilian Vehicles

Only gotten as far as color blocking a few of them. A mix of free files found around, Ilada studios civilian cars, and a jeep looking thing from Game Mini Garage and probably somewhere else I'm forgetting. The board without any trucks and things was just still looking too empty and I think they'll help.

Terrain Test Run

I bought a few yards of fleece from a fabric store as well. They had a 'khaki tonal tie dye fleece' that looked like variegated desert terrain and it only cost me $7 due to sales and coupons. I chopped up some XPS into hill forms and laid over top for some smoother elevation.

The terrain I have done looks too sparse for a full con-ready 6x4, but...

I think fits quite nicely on our usual HGB 4x4.

So nice, that DocTree and I gave it a run through. 125TV, Black Talons vs Nucoal.

I mostly forgot to take pics later in the game because it was one of the closest most intense games of Heavy Gear Blitz I can remember playing. Also some rain rolled in and the lack of natural light made what few pics I took look terrible. But what a game! The terrain worked out beautifully. I wound up losing on VP and only had one unit left, but until the final action of the game it would have been possible to at least tie it up and was not at all a forgone conclusion.

Work-in-Least-Progress: Jungle

When I picked up the desert fabric I grabbed a sheet of what I thought would look good as jungle ground, and raided the clearance floral section for whatever had the smallest leaves. Which are still ginormous for 12mm, but I loathe every other thing I've tried so what the hell.

I took some of the spare hardboard I had and cut some lozenge shapes. I figure long with rounded ends would work for either end-to-end lengths of impassibly dense foliage or reasonable copses and thickets. Still trying to work out what material best fills in the bottom.