CNC Sci-Fi Admin Block

CNC miniatures are an Australia based company that are now one of many who produce MDF based 28mm terrain. They have a wide range of products on their shelves now and I have been buying from them since I lived Down Under a long while ago. UK based analogues can readily be had from companies such as TTCombat, but I still have a soft spot for CNC to say the least.

One of their recent products that I picked up were the Science-Fiction building range. I have a small bunch of these and this is just one of the range -- the administration block. 

The product comes in a sealed A4 set of three sheets. Fresh out of the wrapping, they have a characteristic "burnt" smell to them thanks to the MDF cutting process. (Fair warning to those of you out there with partners who don't like such odd smells around the house … just saying!).

The parts are very finely lasered out of the MDF sheet. There are a few tags still attached to the sheets to keep them in the frame, but these are trivial to break and get the bits out. This is significantly different to the technology that they were using ten (or so) years ago where the tabs were very significant and required a hobby knife to set them free (much like modern GW plastics). These ones are literally push out style for the main part. The remaining tabs can be sanded down to be perfectly flat if required, but for the most part, I don't find that necessary. 

The final photo shows the reverse angle compared to the one at the top. All of the MDF has been glued together very easily with PVA glue and there are plenty of extras left over for any extra bits that one might like to add to this model or any other. The product is very sturdy overall and I'm very pleased. I'm uncertain if I'll actually paint them just yet (MDF notoriously absorbs paint readily and I don't really want to coat it in more PVA to provide a layer for it to stick to better) … I feel their current colour is actually well suited to the kind of terrain that I want -- a sandy based frontier world. But more on that particular terrain board at a later date once I've created more buildings for it. 

Dinosaur Bones

A long time ago, I owned one of those "dig it up yourself" fossil boxes. If that means nothing to you, then consider this product: a plastic dinosaur that you have to assemble, that has been encased in a large blob of sandstone (or some kind of hard filler at any rate!) and you are given a scraping tool to "reveal" the skeleton of.

It takes a serious amount of time and effort to get the skeleton out. I guess that is the point at some level though!

And I've had this dinosaur model knocking around my bits box for literally years since I excavated it from its original confines. I then found that the bones sat nicely on some of the MDF cut outs that I owned from CNC miniatures.

So, what is a guy like me to do with this? Well, the answer was simple. Re-encase in some limited amount of filler, paint it up, decorate with flock and add a couple of small, space marine sized trees around the edge. 

Hey presto and its done! A bunch of dinosaur bones scatter terrain that would look good on many grassy themed gaming boards!

Scenery: Creating Crystal Growths and Stacks

You're down to your last few drops of superglue and you know that if you re-seal the tube, it probably won't open again.  And if somehow it does re-open, the precious few drops you have left will have mysteriously evaporated.

To combat this, I have a stash of odds-and-ends kind of projects that use up the last few drips.  One of more more innovative ideas was to purchase a bag of plastic "crystals" from the local hardware / garden store.  These items are sometimes used in fishtanks, or to create a garden feature / pathway.

What I've done here is to glue four of these crystals together in to a small stack and base them on some CNC mdf board.  The height of the crystal growth is just slightly taller than a standard space marine model.  Therefore these little stacks create an unusal kind of terrain and scenery for miniature wargames. 

In Warhammer 40,000, they're perfect to represent some of the "mysterious forest" results in the scenery tables provided in the 6th edition rulebook. 

I have a few more of these made up, and in the works, that I'll post at a later date. 

Scatter Terrain with Crystals

This is the result of combining a set of Gale Force 9's crystals together with scatter terrain MDF cut / made by CNC.  For scale purposes a necron and chaos space marine are standing in front and behind the crystals.  The base has been painted in red to deep brown colours with some goblin green around the base of the crystals to suggest light coming through them.

Wargames Gallery: Scorpion Stings

A small squad of eldar striking scorpion aspect warriors have evaded crossfire and approached the entrentched position of my obliterators. 

The resultant melee was not plesant for my obliterators who seemed determined to fail as many saving throws as they could.

The scenery for this shot consists of the comm dish from quantum gothic (acting as an objective), with imperial ruins from CNC.

The eldar won this particular game in the end, setting back Typhus' plans to spread his master's favours to this sector ... but the long war continues.

Imperial Ruins Project - VI. Entrance

Continuing my mini-series on CNC's Imperial Ruins scenery, this is the Entrance fully assembled, but not glued or painted just yet.

Notice the extreme left and right hand sides of the building: they tessellate with each other and can connect up to the other pieces in the series in a modular fashion.
The size of the entry is large: a dreadnought can easily stand guard in the middle of the main gate way. The finished painting will be shown in a future posting.

Imperial Ruins Project - V. Corner

More akin to an Escher drawing, the interior of the Imperial Ruins Corner piece is a great piece of terrain! The building allows for play on multiple levels and can readily intersect with the other pieces of terrain in CNC's Imperial Ruins Range.

The images depicted below are of the corner piece fully assembled, but not glued together yet. They await some glue as well as texturing before they are painted up in a similar style to my straight section of the ruins. These pieces of terrain are awesome -- I really like them and they have the potential to make any gaming board look very cool (not just Warhammer 40,000).

Imperial Ruins Project - IV. Painted Straight

The final step in creating the Imperial Ruins Straight section was to paint it up. In the previous part, I showed how I textured the surface of the ruins with some fine grit. This texturing makes it relatively easy to paint up.

All that was done was to basecoat the entire piece with a reasonably thick and even covering of black paint. Then I proceeded to drybrush the piece with a large and old paint brush in various tones of off white colours all over.
And the final result is illustrated above. You can see that I've toned the lower walkway with some brown dry-brushing -- largely an experiment to be suggestive of muddied boots running across the surface.

I think the final piece looks very much like a post-apocalyptic ruin - all that remains of a one glorious imperial structure. I'm tempted to purchase other bits of the imperial ruins range -- this one was very good! Thanks CNC for producing this range -- they're ideal for warhammer 40,000 games, and very cool looking.

Imperial Ruins Project - III. PVA glue texturing

The next step in getting my CNC Imperial Ruins to a table-top standard was to texture it. Barring some fancy painting scheme, most average painters will need to do this step to make it look good as the MDF kit is pretty featureless on every surface. Hence, I feel this is a 100% necessary step in the process.

To texture my ruins, I used only three ingredients:
(a) PVA Glue;
(b) Water;
(c) Grit.

For the latter, any small or fine type of sand will suffice. I don't think that you'd want to have coarser texturing, but that might also be an option if you wanted a unique looking building. Mix the PVA glue with water to create a diluted glue (about 3 parts glue to 1 part water). To the above mixture, add a generous helping of the fine grit. Depending on the type of finish you're going for, you might like to add more or less grit to the mixture.

Using an old, large paint brush, I then applied my mixture to the surfaces of the Imperial Ruins. Some parts of the ruins got some more grit than other parts in the process as the grit has a tendency to sink to the bottom of whatever container you're mixing them together in. But this isn't a bad thing as most buildings don't have exactly even textures across their length.

It is worth mentioning at this point that my model was not glued together before I did this "painting". Although the parts hold together reasonably well without gluing, the application of the texturing layer will firm up the shape and sturdiness of the scenery.

Various problems may occur at this point, including sticking to the newspaper surface that you're gluing on (the glue can be a little runny!) and figuring out how to paint the underside of the ceilings. You may need a paint brush with a short handle for the latter!

The picture (above) shows the ruins once they've had time to dry off. The grit can be seen scattered across the surface. Perhaps it is not quite as even as I would have liked, but I think it is a good finish. In the next part of this series, I will look at the painting stage of the scenery.

Imperial Ruins Project - II. Assembled Straight

The straight section of my Imperial Ruins from CNC miniatures scenery is now assembled, as pictured. I think that the hardest part was actually getting the bits out of the sprues and sand-papering the nubs and chads that remained on them. The material, although not dissimilar to balsa wood in density, is paper based (its MDF) which means that sand-papering is very effective (but time consuming).
In the picture, I've simply assembled the straight without actually glueing it together in any way. The joins are not so bad and it holds together well without any glueing at all. However, I will be using PVA glue to finish the job off. The building itself is reasonably sized -- the walkways are wide enough to take a 40mm sized based on it comfortably. I feel it is well suited to the gothic warhammer 40k background.

My plan for painting it includes adding some texture to the surface of the building by using some watered-down PVA glue and sand prior to the base-coat. Another update will follow once that stage has been done.

Imperial Ruins Project - I. Straight Sprues

CNC Workshop Miniature Scenery is an Australian company that produce a range of scenery for use with 25 to 28mm games such as Warhammer 40,000, WFB and Lord of the Rings. On a whim, I bought some of their product and am setting about assembling it. I will call this new project my "Imperial Ruins Project" and will update my blog with progress as I get further along.

In this, the first part of the series, I wanted to briefly post the pictures of the particular product that I purchased and am in the process of assembling. It is called Imperial Ruins and it is sold in several different varieties (straights, corners, entry points, and access points). The picture below is of a "straight" segment of the ruins.
As can be seen, the product comes unpainted with detailed assembly instructions and in the form of a thick cardboard sheet. The pieces are held in to place by small tabs on the sprues. Below are pictures the two sprues that come with the straight:
There is much assembly work required here. After cutting the bits from the sprues, it is necessary to ensure that any remaining sprue is cleanly got rid of from the bits. This can be done by either cutting the offending tabs away further, or using sandpaper. Sandpaper seems to work very well on these bits and I'd recommend gentle use of it for most of the parts. More on this project at a later date...