From the Warp has a lot of links to vehicle and armor modeling articles. Gotta be something useful in there.

From the Warp has a lot of terrain, modeling and painting tutorials.

Olicanalad's Games has some interesting posts on modelling and conversions. He's also a Piquet player, and active on the Piquet list.

DEI GRECI has some pictures of his awesome scratch building of a super heavy 40k tank, along with an example of his resin casting technique.

I really enjoyed browsing through Geektactica. He has lots of really nicely painted figures, but I really like his series on constructing cheap Western buildings detailed here.

This Dome on Terraforming Planet gallery on TerraGenesis is chock full of fascinating scratch built detail. I alse loved the ideas in the Lighted Figure Bases gallery. I'd love to make something half as nice.

Miniaturespace has a ton of really inspirational pictures.

Dampf's modeling page has a wealth of scratch building projects and really inspirational photos.

Craig of the d6 Generation has some really sweet pictures of his Uncharted Seas set up. Everybody seems to like this game. I'm trying to stay away, but the siren call is hard to resist...

Here are pictures of the current state of my December terrain for our Trucidos campaign. It's down to the wire for me, but I have a few more evenings left to finish. I'm glad December has 31 days!

With my original CD case tower I made, I was very pleased with how the simple cardstock paper Imperial Eagle I cut out looked on the sides. I wanted to duplicate this, so I had the idea of making a resin casts of some 40k symbols. That way, I only had to go through the effort of cutting these fiddly icons out once. I spent probably three to four hours just cutting them out of styrene sheet. Once done, I superglued them acrylic sheet and made an RTV mold of them. So far, it seems to be working out just fine!

The resin appears to be fairly flexible when it's this thin, so I don't think I'll even have any problems contouring the cast pieces to fit the curve of the sides of the towers. Here's what the pieces look like right now.

A few things I could have done better:

1. Contact cement does not adhere insulating foam! It EATS it! I keep forgetting this...
   
2. Spackle for contouring isn't really that great, because wherever it gets a ding, it shows up white. I need to try mixing up some custom filler
   
3. I used styrene tubes for my pipes. I should have just used regular rods, as the tubes tended to buckle where I heated and bent them. On this piece, it will be covered up, as I have something to lay over the pipes to make a better walkway.
   

Junior General hosts a few stock horses in his paper figure collection, which serve nicely as quick and easy horse painting guides. He has Bay, Chestnut, Black, Brown and Dun, Buckskin, Palomino, Gray, Dapple Gray, and Roan, and Pinto. Thanks to Kaiserliks.

I liked this idea for a lighted lava board. There's not much detail, but it looks like he's sandwiched painted fluorescent light panels between insulation foam, and run Christmas lights underneath to make his lava glow. Hot! A great use for those old Christmas lights you're going to have to take down soon...Merry Christmas!

Now this green stuff press mold article looks really useful. I've done simple, one-sided versions of this in the past, but this is the most developed version of it I've seen. Epoxy putty is a lot easier to work with than RTV silicone and liquid resin.

Tabletop Terrain can suck up a lot of your time, even if you don't play the games covered. There are a lot of nice terrain ideas there, and don't miss the tutorials. He uses Ultracal 30 for his Hirst molds, may have to try that.

Ultrawerke once again shows you how it's done.

MiniWarGaming is a video-heavy blog with some useful terrain tips.

I somehow managed to miss this Armorcast coolness. I have to have some, even if I only mount them temporarily...

These are the coolest Necron figures I've seen. Also, it includes some very interesting rust techniques I will have to try.

Chicago Terrain Factory has a lot of informative articles. There's some nice pictures of his Hirst Arts projects, info on resin casting, and more. I really like his tournament markers.

Gaming Terrain is a very new blog which looks like could be interesting to following. Also, I stumbled across a forum I hadn't seen before, Mini Art of War.

The best tip I've seen in a while comes from FichtenFoo. I've always been bad about leaving seams and mold lines on my figures. Metal files work well, but quickly clog with soft lead. Sanding is too clumsy to get into small areas. However, FichtenFoo's sanding sticks have been a real eye-opener here. Quick to make and disposable, they are just the thing for a lot of material removal.

Daemon Winner is tracking all Golden Demon winners. I always love to just look at the winning models. There's some really amazing, creative stuff there.

This Kevin Dalimore article on painting vehicles shows how soft edge camo should be done-- with an airbrush. That's why he's the man and I'm not!

Now these are some seriously awesome bugholes. From An Hour of Wolves & Shattered Shields.

Hlynrian is a blog from a guy who is sculpting his own armies. He seems pretty early in the process, but I really like his sculpting sites of interest post. That is a commendable objective, to sculpt and cast your own army, and I wish him lots of luck!

Over at Miniature Wargaming, there's a link to IronHands.com's list of Terrain How-To Pages. It's frustratingly inspirational-- I have all the ingredients listed except for the vision, patience and the skill. It's one thing to make terrain from scrap, but this stuff ends up looking professional. I just don't see the trash anymore, even when I know what it is! Looking through their links, I see a few sites I haven't noticed before: Parasitic Studios and NetTerrain.

I've had a lot of fun browsing IRONDOG Studios this weekend, especially the very inspirational Tater Titan.

I spent some time tracking down this informative thread on Sci-Fi buildings and wanted to record it somewhere for posterity.

Ultrawerke is a really amazing vehicle-based blog. There are lots of really great articles on weathering, scratch building and casting.

TAB Studio has some nice miniature painting tutorial videos available.

Shifting Lands has a number inspirational creations, as well as tips on model making and Hirst-style casting.

The Terrain Thralls website offers a number of really well-detailed terrain tips and project write ups. I saw a number of easy tips I wanted to try out right away.

This article was mentioned in the below thread. I had seen it before, but I noticed tonight that the local Office Max has small milk crates, just under a foot square, for about $3 each. That might be useful for smaller buildings or small scales.

TMP has a good thread on cheap Sci-Fi terrain. I just ran by Wal-Mart and grab a few of these baskets. Like I don't have enough trash laying around waiting to be turned into terrain... If you like this, check out the Mos Abra pictures.

Hachimantaro has a good method for basing slottabase figures on washers.

Miniature Scenery has a number of useful painting techniques and effects. It's mostly geared towards building and terrain, but a few may be useful for figures.

The Concept Art forums have some pretty inspirational stuff, including some well-illustrated large scale sculpting tutorials.

Or at least interesting stuff. In the US, Great Stuff is an expanding insulating foam sealant. You can get a can for about $5. I've been wanting to try it out for a while, and finally got some and made some test pieces.

I decided to make a little hut. I made the door out of plumber's epoxy and plasticard, and just set it in the side of a pile of Great Stuff. The Great Stuff expands, so I had to prop it up to keep it reasonably straight. My son asked me if I was making a brain! As I was painting the dark browns, I thought it looked like a diarrhoetic moose had defiled my gaming room. Still, when finished, it certainly does have some sort of appeal as a Sci-Fi hut of some sort, maybe like Yoda's in TESB. The other pile will be painted up as some sort of Sci-Fi ground plant. I want to make some quick foamcore corridors and line with this as bug holes or alien tunnel systems.

Now, here is one of the coolest looking terrain layouts I have seen, a Star Wars "lava" layout. And I don't even like Star Wars!!

Lyonstudio Miniatures has a collection of sculpting articles. I'm getting that itch again...

There very inspirational pictures were part of an eBay auction a couple of years ago. A buddy turned out to have saved them, with the name of Mos Abra. It is a very creative and well assembled "Mos Eisley"-style Tatooine town done almost completely out of styrofoam packaging material.

Please note that I do not own the copyright on these pictures, and will remove them at the owner's request.

Matakishi's Tea House is hosting How to Sculpt by Jason Miller.

An article on using filter washes on your miniatures and models.

GW-style slottabase base weights from Impact Miniatures. I've mucked around with various things over the years, even including split shot-style lead fishing weights interleaved through the base and coated in epoxy. On plastics that have the tab, I typically cut away the tab with gate cutters when I'm done painting the model and glue a washer underneath.

I've got to get some of this.

Dansk Figurspilsforenings Hjemmeside has some AWI flags in their Downloads section (it's in English...or at least that portion is).

Historical Miniatures Gaming: The World's Greatest Hobby is a nice site, which includes several terrain and modelling tips.

I found a very interesting article on scratch-building Sci-Fi models. It's geared towards larger models, but most techniques would work fine at smaller scales. The site also has some interesting photoshop tutorials, such as this "dirty metal and rounded courners" tutorial which would be useful for paper models.

I decided to put my new discoveries to the test tonight by matching a color that I liked, Testor's Model Master Olive Drab, but a paint texture that I hate, being very thin. In doing so, I stumbled into the Third Dimension of paint mixing.

I painted up a swab of MM OD and scanned it across the chart I made up last night (which is now almost filled out). I was a little surprised not to find a match. The closest color seemed to be 1 black:1 yellow:1 orange, but this was clearly too dark. Moving into the sections with more yellow and/or orange did not move closer to MM OD. I began to think about why.

I mentioned I had bought a color wheel. One side shows mixtures of colors, while the other side shows tints, tones and shades of colors. It doesn't define what these are or how to arrive at them. Now, I had looked these up, and the definitions were pretty straight forward. A tint of a color is the color with white mixed in, tone with grey, and shade with black. I didn't think adding black was going to get me much, so I made another little chart for varying amounts of white.

I still didn't quite hit MM OD exactly, there may still be more to the story, but 10 black:10 yellow:10 orange:5 white is pretty darn close.

This also looks like a nice way to mix up highlight colors.

I use mostly Delta Ceramcoat paints. I like most of them and they are definitely cheap. The big downsides for me are that some, like yellows and oranges, are often translucent and they lack modern military colors like olive and khaki.

I decided to get around this by mixing my own olives and khakis. I was going to purchase black, yellow and orange from higher-quality artist paints. Before doing so, at $6 each, I looked through the Delta Ceramcoats and saw that they now do an opaque yellow and a semi-opaque tangerine! At 87 cents each, you just can't beat it, so I snatched some up (along with other primary colors) and took them home. I know some more advanced painters like translucent colors, but they are very annoying to me. I want to paint the color I want to paint and only do it one time. I think the results work well enough that any more effort or money spent would get only a small gain in quality.

I was surprised to read recently that olive is a mixture of black and yellow. I bought a color wheel and fooled around with it, noting that khakis look like black with yellow-orange. So, using my new DC paints, I made a little color chart showing one drop of black with varying numbers of yellow and orange drops. The colors aren't quite right in the photograph, but pretty close, and you can get an idea about how the colors mix.

The olives mostly run across the top, with more yellow than orange. The center of the chart, with more orange, contain the khaki colors. the bottom of the chart, with much more orange than yellow, is mostly browns.

This Creafigs post shows one guy's formula for mixing various GW paint colors from the GW primary colors. I don't use GW paints (although I may get the primaries just to try this), but I thought it might be useful. This looks like a good, basic guide to mixing paints.

I'm always envious of those who can create their own models, and FT Scratch Building shows how to make excellent GZG/Full Thrust starships very cheaply.

CMON has some nice articles on painting various skin tones.

Antenociti's Workshop has a nice article, the Art of Flor(a), on making nice looking plants and ground cover.

Some interesting ideas on smoke markers from Games Workshop. You can see how I did mine some time ago here.

I ran across some really cheap wooden barrels that I think make great modern/sci-fi plastic barrels.

They're really shaped more like traditional barrels, but as rounded as they are, I think they do better as modern or Sci-Fi. This will give my Hirst starship something to haul! They took about 30 minutes to paint up, just a basecoat and a lighter drybrush.

Paper Tiger Armanents has a number of useful, inexpensive paper models. They've got a LAV, which isn't a common model, plus, interestingly for me, some M113 models. My 20mm Israelis can't find a Zelda which scales well with them, at worst, I could scale one of these up as I print it out. They're all M113 A2 and later, although I could live with that if they looked okay. Hattip: MW.

Germy's World has produced some free, nice looking paper dungeon tiles. A very inexpensive and adequate alternative to the very expensive resin dungeons, thanks Germy!

I've mentioned Junior General before, but he really has a nice selection of paper figures.

tinyempire has pictures of an interesting 6mm modern city project.

Terragenesis has a nice article on realistic building technique for a Fort Duquesne display.

Snapdragon Studio has some very interesting resin terrain items. I especially like the Future World hasty barricades.

The Dallas Thursday Night Irregulars have a write up of their very impressive modular terrain system.

MiniMods has a great article on making rivers out of craft foam.

Paul Ward has some interesting ideas on making buildings from cork-- both Boxer Rebellion and city high rises.

Small Obsessions is a nice miniatures site with lots of information on conversions and some on photography. I love his painting area.

Tiny Tin Men has a series of articles on miniature photography: Part 1: Lighting, Part 2: Camera Settings, and Part 3: Post Processing. There is also the MiniPaintingPhotography Yahoo Group.

Stones Edges produces fantasy and science fiction paper corridor systems.

World Works Games has a new space line of paper models, Space Works: First Light.

Battlefront, creators of Flames of War, has some very inspiring 15mm WW2 dioramas on their site.

Scale Plastic Hobby Model Helicopter Kits contains a number of listings of helicopter kits in various scales, primarily 1/72 or 20mm.

France and the Low Countries 1940 has info on a very nice balsa wood terrain system he developed.

Israeli-Weapons looks like a really nice resource for...Israeli Weapons of all sorts, from small arms to tanks.

I stumbled across this Warhammer 40,000 Creature Feature. Some very interesting modeling.

Uniforms thru the ages has a nice selection of color uniform plates from the SYW through WW2.

The Evolution of Napoleonic Uniforms is a very nice site, which includes a lot more information than just uniforms.

Y's Paper Modelworkshop has a number of 1/72 scale paper tank models available.

An American Revolution uniform guide, another nice link from Miniature Wargaming.

The Wargaming Bonanza has some really beautiful Baccus 6mm GA brigade pics.

To go with my Sorscha conversion, I'm building some damaged and field repaired Khador Juggernaut warjacks for Warmachine.

I finished my Sorscha conversion. I don't think it turned out that badly at all.

I'm trying to do more sculpting and conversions, so I made a new gallery to place pictures of what I'm working on. Currently in there is a Warmachine Sorscha whose hat I removed, and a Mr. Ghastly I'm converting into a Superman style pose.

Ebbles Miniatures has a variety of 1/60 sci-fi vehicles, Germ's World is making some new 15mm vehicles, and Aliens Papercraft is making Aliens-theme paper models, including a small scale APC and a 1:1 scale pulse rifle.

Spencer Keen has a nice site, lots of pictures of well-painted miniatures and a painting guide.

I picked up two of the Corgi/History Channel 1:50 die-cast World War II tanks. Here are some pictures of them next to Battle Honors 28mm figures:

Ryan Skow has some great looking Miniature Medieval Terrain, including a nice section on Thatched Roof Construction I plan to crib for my Vietnam hootches. Hattip: Miniature Wargaming.

Dream Pod 9 has some nice 15mm paper buildings for Normandy.

Paper Worlds has a number a great paper resources, from counters to and folding minis to full 3-D paper models. It also has discussions and tutorials.

Starship Modeler is an interesting site, and includes this nice article on scratchbuilding among other things.

SuperTrees from Scenic Express looks interesting.

I recently made some domed habitats for 6mm Sci-Fi Dirtside II games.

Pictors Studio has an interesting product for sale, laser cut foam core buildings.

I added an animals and dinosaur gallery to showcase some of the things I have been putting together lately.

I've been wanting to make one of those diorama bases to fit wargaming miniatures on for display for some time, and just made one. Read on for how easy it was:

The final product:

This was dead easy to do. I bought the base finished for 99 cents at a local crafts store. It colud have used some sanding, but I didn't even mess with that. I stained it with Royal Walnut MinWax Polyshades, which I had on-hand for Miracle Dipping figures. After it dried, I placed washers the size of the figure bases where I wanted them, and flocked around it just like I do my figure bases. I added some aquarium foliage to taste. Viola!! Very easy for a nice effect.

I came up with a fairly easy way to make some interesting trees. Check out the gallery here.

Check out this very quick and easy 28mm river steamer I made for wargaming...

The body is two pieces of balsa wood. It was a 4" wide board, and I rounded off the stern and pointed the bow. The upper piece has the inner portion cut out, thus making a decent enough boat shape when glued on the lower hull.. The top is bass wood, and wood dowels were cut to hold it up. I coated the whole hull with wood glue to help it stay together-- the balsa wood is very fragile, but the boat is actually fairly strong and I haven't had any problems after using it a couple of times.

I've wanted one of these for a while, yet all the time it was only $10 and 20 minutes away. I seem to get more done when I stop worrying about how to do something right and just jump in and do it.

Bronze Age Miniatures has a number of very nice blanks for sculpting your own 28mm wargaming figures.

Nappy15 has the final articles from his series on speed painting 15mm Napoleonics.

MiniSculptor.com looks like a great resources for those interested in sculpting and casting wargaming miniatures.

Nappy15, a 15mm Napoleonic Wargaming site, is running an interesting series on speed painting 15mm Irregular Minitaures British.

Perfect for those Victorian Sci-Fi games, click below to see my dinosaurs mounted with howdahs. Click on the images for better pictures:

The howdah platforms are 1/8" modelling plywood. I wood glued craft sticks underneath, cutting the profile of the dinos back into them to help them to sit. To hold them in place, I screwed small "eye" screws undearneath, and ran a rubber band under the dino.

Hattip to the Colonial Angle for the sandbag tip.

Hodgenet has some nice stuff, including 6mm Napoleonics and info on Photographing Miniatures.

Gildas Facit has pictures of his 2mm 1:1 Napoleonics! I absolutely love it!

"HowTo" sculpt an Ork the Stefan B. Niehues way is a very interesting gallery of a figure sculpt in progress.

Matt Spoon's Fields of Fires gallery has some nice pictures, including a lot of Vietnam references and his 10mm stuff.

Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars - HISTOREX contains a lot of color pictures from Historix painting guides, mostly French.

Nap Nuts has many color pictures and information on napoleonic uniforms. Update: Histoire et Figurines also has a lot of information, although no uniform pictures that I saw.

Mal. Wright has posted several pictures of his wonderful terrain in the gallery. More of his terrain can be seen in my pictures of Eric Burgess's Historicon 2002 WW2 Pacific game.

I bought a can of polyurethane spray to use on my miniatures. My thought was that if, as I believe, the miracle dip process provided more protection, perhaps the same could be achieved on non-dipped figures by using spray urethane. I bought gloss, and plan to cover with my usual Dullcote to control the sheen. Has anybody tried this before? I'll follow up with a report after I try it. Update: Quick answer: Yes.

Model Railroading with the Weathering Doctor has info on weathering your models and products you can use.

The Mid America Wargamers Club have a very nice gallery of a Charlie Company game in action. There are lots of high-quality pictures of pretty custom Vietnam terrain, plus the Britannia 20mm Firebase.

I put up a gallery showing plans and a step-by-step process I'm using to make some Vietnam hootches. It's not done yet, so keep an eye on it. It is almost totally the original idea of Alan Sheward, whose superb Vietnam Terrain can be view in the Charlie Company Yahoo Group (subscription required).

The Warfactory has great scenery tips as well as nice galleries.

Griffen Miniatures has an upcoming line of 28mm Greys which look very interesting.

Baccus 6mm has included a nice How to Paint 6mm Figures section on their site.

Prow Building describes the process of building Battlefleet Gothic ship prows from sheet styrene. The whole Workshop section looks quite interesting.

Air & Space Magazine has a Fiddler's Green 1:60 scale WACO CG4-A Glider paper model for download.

I've never seen one before, so here is a step-by-step guide to how I made some burning smoke markers (for knocked out tanks, artillery strikes, etc...)

Earthflora.com has a number of things that might look good as terrain on a table, especially their grass mats.

SHQ Miniatures has a number of good painting guides on their website. All are from WW2 except for Vietnam US infantry.

More on my Superhero skyscrapers.

Here you can see the original tower completed. The second roof, a multi-level layout, is under construction. Play would span across both roofs simultaneously, with anybody falling (or being knocked off) being removed from the game. I'm planning some small accessories such as skylights, some sort of rooftop access obsticle, maybe some A/C units and conduits or a catwalk between the two buildings (all removeable so they can be utilized as a weapon or thrown). I might make the upper level of the split-level a helicopter pad. Oh, and a construction crane, gotta have a construction crane that can swing around and knock heroes off.

My latest creation! Skyscraper roofs for my superheros to battle over.

The building is pretty standard foamcore construction on the rooftop. It measures about 20" by 30". I had heard that Fleckstone destroyed foamcore, so I tested a piece out before doing the whole thing, and it worked out fine. One note of caution, though, is that the Fleckstone does not appear to include actual paint, only the texture. I had some pencil markings for the windows I expected the Fleckstone to cover that it really didn't. In the future, I'll probably give it a once over with white before the Fleckstone.

Also note the keen Superhero flying stands. They're pretty straightforward, click on the image for more info.

Next up after finishing this rooftop: to build a second (probably two-story) skyscraper roof for the heroes to battle across!

Update: Duct Tape as masks on the foamcore was a bad idea, it's way too sticky and tears the foamcore when I pull it off. I knew it probably was a bad idea when I did it, but it was what I had at hand. Since they'll be painted black, I don't think it will be a big deal, but will get some real masking tape before starting the next one.

http://www.splav.ru/ has a number of pictures of modern Russian uniforms. They apparently supply the Russian military.

Gary Chalk has a new website up, The Little Grenadier.

Spanner & Yank looks like a nice site, and has several modern painting guides in their Gaming Tips section (note that the link is currently broken on their site, and I have provided the correct link here).

Ben and Jerry of all people have supplied several cardboard buildings, including an old-fashioned ice cream parlor!

Bob MacKenzie has been updating his nice modern micro armor site, including some interesting conversions and photos from a Sino Indian game (look under the "What's New" link for the most recent updates).

Midwest Products has a useful product out that I just saw, clapboard siding. Perfect for you Old West buildings, it comes in various spacings and even has a notched bottom to seamlessly stack sheets for multistorp buildings.

Olive-Drab Military Information Resources has some nice photographs of modern vehicles.

Pvt. Pyle's Camouflage Reference Page is a good resource, especially with a large collection of African patterns.

Mid-Atlantic Gamers has some interesting info, including a modern dam terrain project.

Since last Saturday, I have finished painting, basing and sealing 206 15mm Battle Honors ACW infantry. Here's how:

1. First, my wife and children went out of town. ;-) You may not be able to do this, but the other tips really do help!

2. Miracle Dip: I estimate that this technique more than doubles my painting speed! I painted 9 figures at a time with the colors lined up and ready to go. I only painted basic colors, and let the Miracle Dip do a nice shading job (I have a theory that shading doesn't need to be perfect. Absence of shading is so unnatural that it really stands out to our brain, but the presence of shading even if it's not where it should be looks correct to our brain).

3. Using paint as glue: I have usually textured my bases, painted several shades of paint, and then flocked it. This took almost as long as painting the figure in some cases! For these, I kept two small cups of two slightly different colors of flock. I painted the bases a dark green, then while the paint was still wet, dipped about half the base in each color flock. Viola! To add a little variety, I put a small drop of Elmer's (PVA) glue in a spot or two, and dropped a small rock (Woodland Scenics' ballast) onto the drop. By slightly pushing the rock down in the glue, it expanded naturally around it, and then I dipped the spot with the rock back in the flock, getting a nicely flocked contoured around the rock.

4. Assembly Line Painting: I'm not the type of guy who can paint the shoes on 100 figures before moving on to the next body part! However, I do find it helpful to paint on several at a time. I Elmer's glue 9 figures to a craft stick (tongue depressor). Once dry, I prime them and stick them on top of a paint bottle I'm not using. This makes a nifty handle, and keeps several where I can paint them easily. When painting the Union troops, which were very uniform in color, I painted two sticks together, alternating between the two.

5. Painting Irregulars: I painted the CSA troops very irregularly, which always takes longer. I painted 9 at a time, and among that 9, tended to keep fairly regular. I would pick an odd color paint and paint several pants, shirts, and hats in that color. However, on the next 9, I wouldn't use that color at all. Thus, each group being painted wasn't that irregular, but the army overall was.

6. Go slow: Believe it or not, I actually got more done by painting slowly. I iron manned my first four sticks of CSA in about four hours, and by the time I was done, I was burned out and actually shaking a bit, even the next day. After that, I took things more leisurely. I always stopped and rested a bit between sticks, a natural break point. This allowed me to maintain my interest, my physical shape and my sanity.

MARPAT MCCUU has some good pictures of the Marine Corps new MARPAT camo pattern.

Even though the guy at The Gizmologist's Lair doesn't appear to be a wargamer, he has some very interesting projects, such as a hot wire foam cutter and a working 1/5 scale Sherman.

Ztum-Setum is a nice modern Africa site, featuring many pictures of 15mm figures and vehicles.

Litko Aerosystems makes some very nice laser cut 3mm wooden wargaming bases. These were used is the Piquet game in my Cold Wars gallery.

The Hot Wire Foam Factory makes a number of interesting hot wire tools for fashioning styrofoam terrain.

Germ's World has posted more of his 25mm Paper Buildings.

SpaceStation42.com has a number of links to paper model plans. Also check out the card modelling FAQ at cardfaq.org.

The Assault Group has a guide to painting modern Afghans.

Germ's World has some nice Sci-Fi micro armor paper buildings free for download, as well as 3-D dungeon and space station corridors and the start of some 25mm modern paper buildings.

Here are some step-by-step photographs of me painting some figures using the Miracle Dip process:

The top row is the initial, plain-jane paint job. The second row is after applying the MinWax Tudor stain and letting it dry. The third row is the final miniature including a covering of Dullcote.

Small | Large	Small | Large	Small | Large	Small | Large
Small | Large	Small | Large	Small | Large	Small | Large
Small | Large	Small | Large	Small | Large

Here's a few more samples of my dipped figures:

In the two pictures on the left (Heller plastic Marines), the four figures on the left are dipped with Royal Walnut and the four on the right with Tudor. This was done as a test. Both work well, but the Walnut left a brownish cast to the colors while the Tudor simply darkened them (to my eyes, anyway). On the right are some Egyptian PT-76s, unfinished. The straight Tudor darkend the colors on the microarmor too much for me. I'll probably use some thinned Tudor on the next batch.

By the way, if you look closely at the leftmost picture, the third Marine from the left (standing, firing to the right) actually has a fair bit of his left leg that was missed when I applied the dip, so you can get a bit of before and after with that.

Small | Large

Small | Large

Small | Large

A few more figures painted with the Miracle Dip technique:

From L to R:

• Frei Korps/QRF/LKM 15mm Predators, base colored and stained.

• Ral Partha 25mm Bone Giant as a 6mm HotT Undead God. The silver areas are actually unpainted.

• West Wind Piranha Men of the Amazon. Painted green with a quick tan underbelly, detailing claws, teeth and eyes.









Small | Large

Small | Large

Small | Large

Posted by Andy at 10:43 PM

Take a look at some figures I've done recently using the Miracle Dip. The black, glossy aliens weren't dipped, but the other figures well all just base colored and dipped, and I think they look very good.

Small | Large	Small | Large	Small | Large
Small | Large	Small | Large	Small | Large
Irregular Elf Spearmen Small | Large	Irregular Elf Chariots Small | Large	Irregular Elf Wizard, Hero Small | Large
Irregular Elf Archers Small | Large	Irregular Undead Archers Small | Large

Bob MacKenzie has included Russian light tanks and carts, limbers and cavalry to his nice site.

The Ministère de la Défense Opérations Afrique page has some very nice photographs of French troops in Ivory Coast.

Small Obsessions has some extremely nicely painted miniatures.

Bryan's VSF Painting 15mms has some pictures of the dramatic results of the Miracle Dip.

Bob MacKenzie is at it again with a guide to French micro armor tanks, and general tips on painting micro armor.

IanH has some good ideas on hex terrain.

Bob MacKenzie had added German and American tanks, plus some modern armor penetration values.

Wingnut International publishes a very interesting book, Secrets of Expert
Mold Making and Resin Casting.

The Polymerics Kneadatite page has links to several pages with tips on using the various Polymerics epoxy putties (green stuff, brown stuff, etc...)

The Fanaticus DBA Resource Page has a nice article on miniature dipping.

Agis Neugebauer is an excellent painter, and has a lot of picutres up at the Agis Page of miniature painting and gaming.

Tim's Modelling Studio has some really great Tyranid/Aliens conversions.

Elvenwork has some tips on selecting and using polymer clays like fimo and sculpey.

Crocodile Games has posted photos of greens of their upcoming releases.

Germ's World is an interesting place to visit, especially for the 10mm dungeon project he is working on.

Hirst Arts has a great Tips & Tricks page. Largely geared toward their excellent molds, it still will inspire your imagination even if you don't use them.

Mountain Modelcraft has a step-by-step guide to building and casting with latex rubber molds.

Terrain Dave has some pictures of excellent terrain, including the very nice Balin's Tomb and Warmaster terrain and castle.

I've taken some quick pictures of my Devil Dog Design pack 2007 US Airborne Standard Fireteam.

I went back and made a few changes to my color scheme. I used a slightly lighter brown in the 3 color desert disruptive pattern, and mixed a new "green" color. I also used a brighter green on the body armor to try to make it stand out a bit more like it does in photographs, plus made sure it was mostly the green color in the pattern. I redid the 82nd patch after getting correct colors-- tan patch with brown oval, and apparantly tan or yellow "AA." I went with a straw yellow, which is how it appears to me in pictures. I'll take a better picture later when I have time to set up proper lighting.

Small | Large

Small | Large

Small | Large

Small | Large

The Iron Archives has tips on using porcelain buildings in wargaming terrain.

The Putney Garage Wargamers have an interesting site, especially their info on making hex terrain.

Slapping Paint has a number of interesting painting and modelling tips.

The Colonial Angle has a Work Bench with some nice Colonial terrain projects, including the impressive Suakin Redoubt.

Model Railway Scales has more information about railroad scales than you ever wanted to know.

The Hirst Arts Design Derby has some very inspirational winners.

You can find a program to print out square and hex graph paper here. The Metro East Gaming Association has a page on an interesting technique for creating hex grids.

Mr. Tin's Miniature Painting Workshop has a new home.

IanH's Wargame Pages has an excellent idea for 6mm buildings, using actual photographs to create the exterior.

A DIY (owned by my employer) show tonight on model railroads had the tip of using dried caspia for trees. The Major General also has some info on dried caspia.

recon110 put up several good modern micro armor pictures in the Yahoo 6mm Miniatures photo album. You may need to be a group member to view them.

Roly's Wargames Cabinet includes a lot of really nice photographs of Napoleonic and Seven Years War troops.

Check out Zulu Culture and Traditions: the Umuzi (Kraal) for photos and details of Zulu kraal layout.

The Operation: Enduring Freedom Gallery had to move to a new location due to the high amount of bandwidth being used. You can find it at its new location, http://www2.aixgaming.com/opend/.

If you're looking for current pictures of the world's soldiers in Afghanistan, visit the Operationn Enduring Freedom Photo Gallery.

Check out Stikfas, a new lego-like action figure from Singapore.

I'm not a big Games Workshop fan, but they do have great terrain tips up at their Warhammer Skirmish Hobby Projects page.

Can deanoware paint 100 28mm figures in 10 hours? Watch and find out.

Further updates and lots of detailed pictuces of the Mechwarrior/Battletech table I linked to recently.

The Basement has a great variety of 20mm figures and vehicles painted up and photographed.

The War Factory has a great number of terrain tips and wonderfully photographed terrain and figures.

ScaleTree.com has a number of interesting large scale trees and tree material. A little pricey at regular prices, they're currently running a 30% off sale that makes them more appealing.

Here is a terrain board commisioned by WizKids to play Battletech on.

Paper model buildings always seemed like a good idea to me, since (especially on a computer) you can resize them to whatever scale you want. Here are a few links to sites with designs for paper model buildings:

• Iceberg paper model links: Lots of links, including general references and instructions
• Paperware: some nice Warhammer/Medieval cottages and a nice castle.
• Foldup paper models: D&D fantasy/medieval style buildings.
• Fiddler's Green: A commercial site with very inexpensive, nice models, plus a few free models to check out.

The Necromundicon has a number of good terrain building tips. While geared towards Sci-Fi terrain, the "How-To" section has a good number of general ideas towards construction techniques. Of course, the mother of all terrain sites is TerraGenesis.

The guys at Panzer War have an informative overview of how they make terrain boards.

If you're looking to paint modern US vehicles, make sure you know your MERDC Camouflage Patterns.

The Curator of Navy Ship Models at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division has an excellent article about research on lead corrosion, a.k.a. lead rot.

If you can't find a picture of this pack, I just finished painting mine and put up a quick shot below.

Check out the Gothic Horror figures from West Wind Productions. I hadn't paid much attention to these figures, but I saw them painted at Historicon and was thoroughly impressed. Many of them would fit into non-fantasy play as well. I bought the brand new German Archaelogists pack for Darkest Africa play. The Superfigs super hero miniatures are also quite nice.

Check out the news for July 17th on Baccus 6mm. A guy in England is building 6mm English Civil War figures at 1:1 figure scale.

I've added my pictures from Historicon to my gallery.

I updated my photo gallery to include new Colonial pictures of HLBS Shutztruppe, Wargames Foundry Masai, and 15mm Zulu War figures, plus some Russian armor in Afghanistan.

I've added Lebanon '82 IDF and PLO and some Colonial figures to my miniatures gallery.

Great Models has a weekly newsletter which recently has had tips on photographing miniatures and using computer editing tools.

I saw Nova's Medieval Siege show last night. This was very interesting. An American and a Frenchman led in the construction of two different medieval trebuchets and launched them against a replica castle wall. The resulting damage from a single hit was quite impressive, with both designs punching holes through five feet of solid stone and mortar wall with a single blow. Definitely watch this if you get a chance.

Looking for different types of camouflage to paint your miniatures? Check out World Camouflage for pictures of many different types.