More 6mm Scifi buildings and terrain

Introduction

Once the main Scifi settlement was nearing completion I realised I would require more and different types of terrain to fill the table with. I always liked the imagery of the Terran Trade Authority books by Stewart Cowley and in particular the "Great Space Battles" book. I wanted to try and capture the look of some of the worlds created in those books and go away from the usual earth style worlds or the Gothic style world popular with GW Epic gamers..

None of these pieces were designed to be part of the main settlement but some such as the Military base and Launch Pad were obviously related. The rest of the terrain pieces are hopefully sufficient to provide enough pieces on my gaming tables, so I dont have to use the same terrain every game!

Future plans I am interested in creating are some sort of local fauna such as alien trees and large bushes. I'm also thinking of an adding a port facility to the settlement as its not something you see often on scifi tables and I am a big fan of Old Crows scifi boats. And this willl mean some sort of river or coastline which I can use an interesting water colour being an alien planet.

Click on the thumbnails to see the full sized image

Mine and processing plant

The real reason for the my scifi settlement is the location of a nearby mine. The mine was designed slightly differently as I wanted to keep the footprint small but still have an impressive looking model. I had some cardboard tube and I like the idea of a massive entrance leading down into the into the bowels of the planet. I cut the tube on an angle and built up the rocky cliff with polystrene and glued a piece of MDF onto the back with the intention that the mine would be used against the side of a table (or a larger feature).

Some extra details were added to the entrance with a ramp made from textured plasticard, cross-stitch glued inside the tunnel and some angled plasticard strip on the edge of the tunnel. The rocky wall was textured and a vent was added to the top of the mine.

Mine and processing plant

The processing plant is a Mainly Military Oil refinery which I thought was more suitable for a scifi setting than a contemporary setting. I spent a lot of time cutting off the large thick base with a dremel and hiding the gaps. Various pieces of sprue from model kitsets were used to make a series of pipes along with some AT-AT walker parts, to create a jumbled appearance of the base.

Mine and processing plant

The mine and buildings were painted a yellow-green colour and make a good contrast from the creamy main buildings. I wanted these to be different from the main scifi settlement and I had this spare colour lying around which I needed to use up! The decals are a great addition from i-94 Enterprises and work well on such a large buildings. The vehicles in the photos are from Brigade Models and are trucks from their 6mm South African range and make great scifi trucks I think.

Large launch pad

The launch pad was a spare lid I had kept and so I added a large ramp and some different sized square textured plasticard to the top and sides. The idea is that that would be used for larger ships that would not fit inside the small launch pads inside the city eg freighters, large transporters and so on.

Large launch pad

Additional parts were added to the base including a radar made from some cross stitch mess and a wall fastener. I ended up hammering a nail through from the underneath of the mdf base to make the radar more durable for gaming. The small control building is made from spare packaging with similar pieces of plasticard used for the windows, as on the other buildings.

Crashed spaceship

This was built as part of a forum I belonged to. It was a "make something that fits on a CD" type build and I had the idea of a crashed spaceship (inspired the TTA Spacewrecks book). The main parts were from a Star Wars AT-AT walker and extra bits made from wire and plastic strips/rods and other scraps.

Crashed spaceship

The crashed spaceship was painted in a subdued light grey colour with a few constrasting panels. The interior is a creamy colour and I used a metalic blue for the structural parts.

Rocky outcrops

These were made mostly from large pieces of bark from a Pine (Raidiata) tree. The barks texture is great for rocks and suits a desert style world terrain. I managed to get some large pieces of bark and that helps the rocks look impressive with 1/300th scale models and figures.

Military Outpost

This model was based around a Mainly Military Bunker and again I think is more suitable for Scifi than post WW2. I enlarged the base and added some details to the extension used some packaging and Star wars pieces. I also drilled out the radar and added a pin to is as the contact point on the top of the building was very small and prone to breaking off. Unfortunately I dropped the piece twice (!!) on the garage floor and so the walls and the resin base around the building got broken up quite badly and they were quite difficult to fix up.

Military Outpost

I went with the same colour scheme as the main buildings but perhaps a camoflage scheme would have been better. The roofs of the outlying buildings had a texture (earth I think) on them so painted them in a dirt colour. Overall its a nice model and it would also be suitable model Bunker for a ice/snow setting.

Alien Ruins

Every world needs some ruins to show the existance of mysterious earlier civilisation! The ruins were actually inspired by the Dr Seuss images in his kids books. I wanted to emulate the curvy and a random shapes of his drawings without any obvious purpose or design. The purple colour matched in with the small ruins I used on some of the bases of my infantry and adds some colour to the brown desert terrain.

Alien Ruins - construction information

While there are no work in progress pictures, the steps for making them were quite straightforward. I used a pack of Sculpey and rolled it out onto a piece of greaseproof paper to thicknesss of about 4mm. Then with a sharp knife I cut the shapes out and pressed brass tubing into the clay for the windows and tops of the doorways. Next I baked it all and filed the pieces a bit and then glued it together.

For the base I used similar textured square plasticard as some of my other scifi terrain and painted it purple. Then I glued the ruined pieces onto the base and added the ground texture. This was a bit rushed and it shows as the work is a bit sloppy and messy and I hope to clean these up and improve them. I found the sculpy a needed some additonal work to clean up once it was hardened and it was quite weak with some of the pieces breaking, and I wouldn't use it again to make such thin terrain pieces.