Let's Paint Fallout: the Board Game

Several unidentified aircraft were spotted flying over the REPCONN Test Site by a local crackpot. He spoke to a toy bear near one of our microphones. "It's ghouls, I tell you. Religious ghouls in rockets, looking for a land to call their own. Don't you laugh at me! I know a spell that'll make you show your true form! A cave rat taught it to me."
- Radio New Vegas

Even though our board gaming has mostlt been on hold because of the pandemic, we did really enjoy Fantasy Flight's Fallout board game, and I got to thinking that I really should paint the miniatures. So here we go!

**

Super Mutant

I've gone for the Fallout 3 super mutant look instead of the classic green, because it's so much more interesting and will, I hope, make the model stand out a bit. The skin was done in Flat Yellow, the rags in (I think) Saddle Brown, and the metal bits are Gunmetal Grey and Brass. I then gave the whole thing a wash with watered-down Black Glaze, Skin Wash and Smoke to make the dude look appropriately grimy, and I think it worked pretty nicely!

This model was fun enough to paint that I'm seriously considering getting some Mödiphius Super Mutants.

**

Vault Dude

Of course the Vault guy had to be among the first models I painted as well!

His skin is Burnt Umber, and the hair is Black Grey. The vault suit is Dark Blue, with Saddle Brown, Gunmetal Grey and Copper accessories, with a little Smoke wash.

**

Mister Handy

I'm skipping ahead to the New California expansion here, but Mr. Handy had such a memorable debut in our first attempt at the co-operative New California scenario as a drug-dealing murder robot that I felt I had to paint him.

Of course, a robot is also kinda easy to paint! The upper body is Natural Steel and the lower Gunmetal Gray, and the eyes are Silver; the body got a wash of Black Glaze and a little Smokey Ink, and there's some Light Green to represent the drugs, and some Scarlet for the murder.

**

Ghoul

The ghoul was the MVP of our first co-op attempt and a past winner as well, so he was definitely next.

His shoes are black, the pants are London Grey and the vest is Light Grey; the shirt is Ivory. I painted the skin Tan Earth, gave it a light drybrush with Green Sky and a sort of wash with Sunny Skin Tone, followed by some watered-down Smokey Ink. I'm very happy with the result!

**

So here's the first batch of Fallout characters; there'll be more.

Let's Build Modiphius Terrain

Earlier, I had ordered a couple of Fallout figures from Mōdiphiüs for my Renegades and Heretics, and I found them to be good quality, but the range as a whole was kind of uninspiring. However, I did order some Nuka-Cola machines for my Imperial Knight's base:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila)

I thought it made for a fun addition to the model, and the resin terrain pieces were all fairly good quality. This made me take the plunge and order their Skyrim Word Wall.

The whole thing came in one piece, and the cast quality is really excellent. It's even got all the little Nord runes on it and everything, and I'm delighted to report it's the Unrelenting Force wall: the best shout in Skyrim because it has by far the greatest comedy potential.

I covered the whole thing in Basalt Grey, and gave the words and the darker bits a Black Ink wash.

The non-dark stone then got light drybrushes in Neutral Grey and Medium Sea Grey, and I did the FUS runes in Deep Sky Blue and Fluorescent Blue.

I was lazy and did the same greys on the back.

Here it is! Armiger and Arch-Militant for scale.

It's a simple paintjob, but I'm very happy with it.

**

Soon after I finished my word wall, Modiphius dropped the price of their Red Rocket station, and I felt like I had to get it. I'd looked at it earlier, but frankly it was way too expensive.

It's a very hefty box! Most of the weight is the 3'×3' neoprene mat, which is all right, I guess. Not really something I was interested in. It doesn't look bad, and although it's quite creased from being folded in the box, I'm pretty sure it'll even out.

What we're really here for is the Red Rocket building. It's made out of fairly strong, good quality card, with plastic connectors holding it together. There are also two resin coolant pumps and a resin Red Rocket.

You start by building the ground floor of the station. Two things struck me. First, there's no assembly instructions in the box: you have to get them off the Modiphius website. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying scrolling around a PDF on your phone. The instructions are also shoddy. You have to squint quite a bit to make out what goes where, and ludicrously, all the card pieces are named on the sheet you punch them out of - but the instructions don't use the names. This is just silly.

Secondly, there doesn't seem to be any way to attach the building to its base. With the card as light as it is, it'll never stay put, and I could see this becoming very annoying.

The card is quite nice, though, and I'm almost surprised how good it looks despite the plastic connectors. I actually googled to check if there really was no way to mount the building, and finding none, I grabbed my trusty Finnish equivalent of PVA glue and stuck the walls on the base.

This worked quite nicely, and I decided to reinforce my building by supergluing in a couple of scenery items, like this GW barrel:

And an appropriate Fallout container.

With that done, I moved on to the next phase: the canopy. 

After I moved from the canopy to the roof, I realized that the assembly instructions were even worse than I thought. You use the same piece for both the roof and the floor of the building - or so I thought. In fact, the two pieces are mirrored, and if you pick the wrong one for the floor, you can't mount the Red Rocket signs on the roof. The instructions don't tell you this, of course. Guess which piece I already glued.

So that's annoying, but I can work with it: I just need to glue the signs onto the roof edge the old-fashioned way. That's not the end of it, though. The roof isn't really attached to anything either, but I get that, because then you can lift it off and use the building interior. However, this does mean that the roof will shift around a lot, which isn't great. What's worse is that the whole canopy is only attached to the building with a single plastic connector. It's just hopelessly flimsy: even assuming the resin rocket, the whole thing shudders and shifts if you so much as look at it.

If this was for a diorama or something, it wouldn't be ideal; for a piece of miniature wargaming terrain, it's inexcusable. People are going to be placing models and templates around it, poking about with tape measures, bumping the table and so on. Terrain can't be this flimsy. In my opinion, this whole thing is going to need a proper base, and it should have come with one. Since it doesn't, I'll build one.

Before I do, I really have to say that I'm a bit disappointed with this kit. The instructions are garbage and the end result is flimsy. If I'd paid the frankly outrageous original price for this thing, I'd be pissed.

**

Sadly, adding the resin rocket doesn't help much. The four pylons are meant to fit into slots in the rocket's base. They don't.

While I had the rocket on there, the pylons did stay more or less still, but I'm still really uneasy about the whole canopy resting on just one plastic connector. Especially since the rocket won't actually stay on, as the slots are just too small for the card pylons.

So, it was basing time. I optimistically started with some thick card.

Then I cut down the tabs on the pylons to a size that actually fits the rocket, and after a lot of frustrating wrangling, managed to superglue the rocket on.

If you ask me, there's no way that thing stays up there without glue. But with superglue for the rocket and to make the pylons stick to the base, it sticks together and makes the whole canopy much less wobbly. I then painted the resin coolant pumps, cut a little base for them out of some of the leftover card, and stuck them on.

Next up, a Nuka-Cola machine.

At this point, I decided the walls looked a little bare, and got my flatmate to print me a selection of tiny weathered posters.

I mean is it really a garage without an explicit calendar in the office area?

I also added a poster to the garage area, and I have to say, I think it looks great.

In the public-facing area: Torquemada is watching! Behave!

Finally, I added a poster for a lecture course I taught last fall:

And my favorite touch: wanted posters from my Rogue Trader tabletop campaign.

I have to say, these little posters made me very happy indeed. All that was left to do after this was glue sand to the base.

And paint it Neutral Grey to go with the rest of my scenery.

**

So, this was a mixed experience. The word wall is lovely, and the Red Rocket station was a disappointment. To sum up: if you buy the Red Rocket kit thinking you're getting an easy to assemble, ready to go piece of wargaming terrain, well, you're not. If you buy it as a starting point for a terrain piece you're going to spend a bit of time and effort building, then I think it's not a bad purchase. But that is to say that it doesn't exactly do what it's sold as.

Having said that, I might well be persuaded to buy more card terrain, as long as the price is right. The resin word wall, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic, and I'm delighted I bought it. In general, Modiphius's resin terrain pieces have been really good, from the small bits to the big stuff.

Anyway, now I have some terrain, for better photo backdrops if nothing else!

Warhammer 40,000: Let's Build Munitorum Containers

I've been on a terrain-building kick lately, and now it's time to continue it with some containers.

**

A while ago, I found some money on the street. Literally, there was a wad of banknotes. I turned it in to the proper authorities, but when no-one showed up to claim it, the amount was deposited into my account. It wasn't a huge sum, but since it was almost literally a windfall, I decided to spend it on something stupid that I couldn't possibly justify buying otherwise. Because I'd been looking at Kill Team terrain at the time, that stupid thing ended up being this Munitorum Munitions Hub box.

This is just a wonderful, huge box of terrain, with ten armored containers, piles of crates and barrels, and even cranes and vehicles. My second full-time job ever was at the Helsinki harbor, specifically at the now-vanished container terminal in the Western Harbor, and I suppose as a legacy of that, I kind of have a thing for containers? So I sort of really wanted this terrain box, but I could never have justified spending this much money. But it came down to either this box or the Armada Super Star Destroyer, and I'm pretty sure this will spark more joy.

Then, of course, the pandemic happened, and we never did get to play any Kill Team, or, indeed, anything else that couldn't be done over email, so terrain dropped pretty far down my list of priorities, and the munitions hub gathered dust on a high shelf.

Now that we're playing 40k again, though, it's time to get started. Here's my first new piece of terrain: a container.

Bearing the livery of an obscure trading house, this container was an absolutely lovely model to assemble. Each sprue in the box has one container as well as several crates and barrels, and it's been a joy to tinker with them. On that note, here's another container.

**

For my first slightly bigger project, I'm going to stick some containers together. But first, I want to build an interior for one of them. Any Imperial settlement is going to have innumerable places for people to hide away, either for a little nap during their work shift, or as a whole illicit residence of their own. So I made this little bedroll out of green stuff:

Here's the whole thing painted, with a Fallout crate and some boxes from the container sprue added.

I then seem to have entirely neglected to take any pictures of the rest of the build! Anyway, now it's done:

I know grimdark is very much the thing, but I've found I have a certain nostalgia for the bright corporate colors of the 1980's, and wanted to bring some of that into my 40k as well. The top container follows my Epic terrain theme. Next, I gave my containers a cardboard base.

Then I glued on some sand, painted and varnished it, and it was time for the next components.

Meanwhile, a whole bunch of Necromunda terrain got released, including the lovely Underhive Market set. The large market stall was simply perfect for what I had in mind, so I built one and painted it orange.

I also have some Fallout workbenches from Mōdiphiüs, and I thought the armorer's workbench would look cute here.

I glued in the workbench and one of the Munitorum crates, and added sand.

And then it's time for the market stall.

Obviously I couldn't resist adding a Nuka-Cola machine and a crate or two, and then it was just a question of more PVA glue and sand until the whole thing was done!

**

This was a fun little project. I'm very happy I got the Munitorum box, and I've barely gotten started: there's still all kinds of stuff in there...

Warhammer 40,000: Questor Mechanicus

Earlier, I made some Machine Cult robots. It was fun, so it got me thinking about making more robots. Bigger robots.

 - Divine Metaphysics

**

Ages ago, when I taught my first proper lecture course at the Helsinki Adult Education Center, I wanted to use part of my salary to buy something really stupid to remember the occasion by. That something was the Imperial Knights: Renegade second edition box, which comes with two Knights and a big old terrain piece. Because building Knights is something of an undertaking, the box sat on my shelf for quite a while. But lately I've enjoyed building detachments of fairly elite Imperial forces, like the Adeptus Custodes and the Deathwatch. Elite troops are few in number, so they're vulnerable to enemy fire, and the Deathwatch especially suffer from a lack of anti-tank firepower. So they could really use an ally that will attract a lot of fire, and that can wreck enemy armor.

Like, say, a Knight.

Oddly, what gave me the spark to start building my first Knight was a Nuka-Cola machine. I ordered some to use in my new terrain project, and they're great little resin models.

Ordinarily, I don't like putting a lot of scenery on bases; I build wargaming models, not moving dioramas. Knight bases are so big, though, that they're going to be a bit boring if I don't put anything on them. So it occurred to me to put a Nuka-Cola machine on my Mechanicus Knight's base. That seemed like fun, so I sawed one in half. But in order to figure out exactly where to put it, I needed to assemble the Knight's legs. So before I knew it, I had half a Knight; I added some Perry Miniatures casualties, a Victoria Miniatures Bren gun and some Imperial Guard equipment to create a little diorama I call "archeotech secured".

I went with Carmine Red and Ivory for the Nuka-Cola machine, and it seemed to work all right.

Usually, I assemble my models and then paint them as a whole. The Knight is obviously big enough to be an exception; it would make no sense to stick on the leg armor plates, for instance, and then try to paint behind them. So I was painting the armor plates separately, with a base color of Burnt Cadmium Red to match my machine cultists. Since I happened to be working on them on the Transgender Day of Visibility, and I was a little bit inspired by Belzébée, I decided that my Mechanicus Knight says trans rights.

Since this is my first Knight, this is also my first attempt at magnetizing weapons. The carapace weapons seem very magnet-friendly: both the Icarus autocannon and the rocket pod have handy spaces inside where you can superglue a magnet, and it was very easy to fit one on the inside of the carapace as well. I secured it in place with a piece of sprue.

I used a pair of 1/8" × 1/16" magnets from Primal Horizons, and the Icarus autocannon is a bit wobbly but stays fast, and so does the missile pod.

I obviously also wanted to magnetize the arm weapons, and I kept it simple: I sawed off the projecting bit on the bottom of the arm, and stuck on a 1/4" × 1/16" magnet from Primal Horizon.

Meanwhile, the body was coming along nicely. I wanted to continue the hazard stripe motif onto the carapace as it feels nostalgically Oldhammer to me, so I decided to also paint the other side of the carapace in the trans colors, and I'm delighted by the result.

I also finished the base.

And painted up the shoulder pads.

So with that, I'm calling this done except for the weapons!

Since the idea of this Knight is to blow up tanks and other very armored things, obviously it needs a thermal cannon. As I've read many rhapsodies to twin thermal cannons on Chaos Knights, I wanted to make mine potentially fit both a loyalist and traitor Knight, so I painted the shield with hazard stripes.

The other job of the Knight will be to draw fire, so it needs to be going at the enemy rather than hanging back and shooting: to combine both these roles, I feel that the Thunderstrike Gauntlet is strongly indicated.

So here it is: my first Knight! By far the biggest model I've ever made, and just a lot of fun to work on.

I need to get more chonky boys!