EXT: Rainforest (Plantation Stage)

Well, I haven't really finished anything new here. But I am a year older, and got some new kit for my birthday that I want to show off!



My very slow plan is to create a table of jungle terrain. Thick forest, clumps of pool and fern, a ruined scientific outpost and the alien remains it was investigating. In previous posts, I've shown what I've made so far, but there's been a long lull while I finished off other stuff.

Now, back to work! And the beginning of some scatter terrain that will eventually be resplendant with jungley overgrowth. Humble beginnings, though, so at the moment it's really just some nice mdf board shapes, ordered on the cheap from East Riding Miniatures.

This is about half of what a tenner's worth of terrain bases look like. Good value set, enough to cover loads of table. They smell of freshly burnt mdf, which is enough like burning hair to be unpleasant. 

My hobby budget is pretty tiny, really, about £20 a month give or take. If I spend more one month, buying a Van Saar box set for example, I spend less the following month. Because I paint more than any other aspect of the hobby, getting paint and brush supplies usually eats up my budget!

So although I've planned out the bits and pieces I need to make all this jungle terrain, it's going to be a slow process of actually amassing it all. Aquarium plants are next on the list, then some basing supplies and water effects. I may as well build it as I go, though, so here you can see that I've already started glueing rocks, stumps, cork and rubber in decorative arrangements.

Also the final bit of my Baleful Realmgates, which is going to form a linking device between this tropical table and the frosty world of my ruined city. Sigh - in time, I will be after a mat to go under this. They're expensive, so that's going to take some saving up for!

Birthdays and Christmases are handy for expensive things, mind you. Greenstuff World do a cracking set of metallic colourshift paints, and I got a box of six for this year's life anniversary. I immediately slapped it on the T'au arch I started doing several months ago. The paint needs a black base, then several thin coats over the top. This is five coats of Red Goblin, which shifts from red through to a greeny yellow. Fantastic stuff, and I'm really pleased with the results!

You can see the more advanced stage of basing that this lot will all go through on the arch. Muddy soil and green flock, to blend into whatever mat I eventually get. But the arch is nowhere near done yet, there's lighting details to paint on and plants to stick all over it in time. For now, I'm bunkering down in my savings basement, and ignoring the bombardment of fabulous GW releases that have just been promised to us. And I'm trying not to whimper as I do it.