It seems like I’ve been posting a lot of links lately and not too much of my own work, so here’s an update on the 15mm terrain I’m working on.

The 15mm guard tower is coming along nicely and I’ve molded and cast the basic masters for each side. Here’s four sides ‘dry fitted’ together with blue tack. I’m going to add more detail with sandbagging around the outside before producing the final set I’ll be casting in resin. I also need to create a floor piece and a removeable canvas roof. The guard tower is approx. 2.5cm square which is large enough to hold a single small Flames of War Infantry base.

I’ve also finally molded the rough wood floor for my 15mm Trench Kits. I’m casting this piece in resin as well because at most it’s around 3mm thick. I’ve also got to work up a 45 degree angled floor piece to complete the kit. As usual, the motivation to finally finish these pieces is because I need a set myself!

The modelling geek in me lusts after these plastic sci fi terrain kits. I just wish I could find an Australian or New Zealand reseller…

This set is made by the same Russian company ‘Technolog’ that makes the Hexagon and Platformer kits, unfortunately the English portion of their website has a dead link for reseller information!

Tabletop News is a Typepad blog that rounds up tabletop gaming news. In particular it covers new releases from all the major and minor figure producers and makes for some interesting reading if you’re a tabletop wargamer that purchases online regularly.

Here’s some useful online green stuff sculpting lessons. They cover all the basics including creating and sculpting around a wire armature, sculpting faces and hands and ‘dressing’ your sculpture in clothing.

A certain Piritannical Wench on the Pityak forums just directed me to www.zigzag.co.nz, a local supplier of polymer clay products including the ‘Sculpy’ epoxy products I’ve been looking at for a while. Lovely!

I just ordered the Eduard 1:144 resin Stuka kit from Acorn Models. Unfortunately they only had one in stock so my North African air strip is going to be fairly sparsely populated! Ah well, air cover in North Africa was pretty terrible for both sides I believe. It’ll be interesting to see how the kit goes together as I’m a model airplane ‘virgin’.

Erwin Neumayr has started selling foam gaming trays locally in New Zealand. I picked up a couple this weekend and they’re superb. The photo shows Erwin’s blue foam tray compared to a Games Workshop brown foam tray. Erwin’s are exactly the same dimensions with the same number of slots for figures and the blue foam is of a similar quality and density to GW’s trays.

The best thing about Erwin’s product however is the price! He’s selling foam trays directly on his website and on TradeMe for $10nz each. Considering a GW case will set you back $85nz for three trays and a thin plastic shell I feel Erwin’s product represents excellent value for money.

You can also contact him directly via email and I believe he’s willing to ship to Australia as well as locally in New Zealand.

Here’s another shot of the cases side by side. Erwin’s foam trays are also at least as deep as GW’s with a foam backing that is just as thick. I suspect I may have to order a couple more myself!