About ten, maybe eleven years ago I attended the (now defunct) Triples wargames show in Sheffield. This was years before I was there as a trader and so I was purely there to have a nosey and spend some hobby coin.
One of the things I picked up at the time was some plastic vac-formed hex terrain from Kallistra . This is part of their Hexon terrain system and I fancied using it at the time for…. Well to be honest it is so long ago now I have no idea why I picked it up, other than I liked the look of it and its was (and remains) good value.
I then spent some time painting this up. As far as I remember I went with a black primer and then used some brown acrylicto basecoat (the sort of stuff you get in tubes from the cheapo shops). This was followed by a drybrush of ochre. I then liberally brushed on some Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone dip. Once dry I matt coated it and then there it sat for about a decade unfinished in my pile of shame.
Re-invigorated however by amongst other things the imminent release of the new version of Kill Team (and the trench loving Death Korps of Krieg contained therein) I decided now was the time to finally get this done. While I had done a the majority of the graft, I still needed to paint the insides of the trenches and add some flock and other terrain ‘dressing’ to spruce it up a bit.
In deciding on the general scheme I have left it open so these trenches could be used in historical, fantasy or sci-fi games. I went with a grey green for the trench inards and avoided painting any details like sandbags to keep it generic.
I went with Quickshade again for the shading on the trench interiors (although this time using the Dark tone).
I went with liberal use of flock and clump foliage / lichen to give some interest to the expanses of brown concentrating in particular in placing this to hide the ‘hex lines’. For extra effect I also used Citadel Nurgle’s Rot to add slime/toxic waste/stagnant water to the small craters and holes molded into the parts.
Once complete and dry everything was given a very liberal matt varnish spray.
I’ve not had chance to use these in a game yet, but have set them up on a table for some photos and to test out some layouts. In general they look pretty good but they don’t fit together very flush so I may have to play around with a knife removing some of the plastic ‘lip’ from the edges of the pieces which I think will help a little.
I managed to get this finished in a couple of evenings, which brings to the end a story that started many many hobby years ago. A small dent in the backlog, but very satisfying all the same.
Twisted Pinnacle 