Making Mountains

It's always a bit of a compromise when you're making mountains for wargaming. On the one hand you want them to look like the real McCoy, but on the other they need to be suitable for placing figures. This means having somewhat unnaturally flat levels. Mountains enhance the scenery of your wargaming table. You can make your own mountains out of a wide variety of materials, but in this tutorial I will be using foam board which offers flexibility and low cost. 

First Mountain

1. The first step is to cut your bases to the desired size either using MDF or hardboard in my case I used hardboard and cut it to 6 inch by 6 inch once you have cut your bases to the desired size you then want to proceed to rasp the edges to give it a smoother appearance.

2. The next step is to cut and shape your foam board. 

3. Once you have cut your foam board to the desired shape you then need to glue it to your hardboard using PVA glue, you will need to leave this for 24 hours. 

4. The next step is to texture your base. I have done tutorial on basing.

5. The next step is to paint your diorama you of course can use any colours you wish but I use Humbrol No. 110 Natural Wood as the base colour and then dry brush with Humbrol No. 103 Cream, for the mountain I used Humbrol No. 67 Tank Grey and then dry brushed this with Humbrol No. 64 Light Grey.

6. The next step is to varnish your diorama I use Ronseal Diamond Hard Varnish, matt clear once this is dry you can then add any trees to the diorama that you wish, and I always finish off by using Noch Summer Meadow Grass. 

Second Mountain

As you can see in the picture I have added a cave opening, to make the cave entrance, I simply cut a chunk of foam board out and textured the sides to make it look as natural as possible.

Tools

Pencil

Tape measure

Wood saw

Rasp

Paintbrushes

Craft knife

Scissors 

Ruler 

Glue gun

Materials

Hardboard

Polycell Textured Ceilings Course Effect

Ronseal Diamond Hard Varnish, matt clear

Noch Summer Meadow Grass

PVA Glue

Foam Board

Humbrol Colours

Humbrol No. 110 Natural Wood

Humbrol No. 103 Cream

Humbrol No. 67 Tank Grey

Humbrol No. 64 Light Grey

10mm Aliens Project

My 10mm Aliens Project will be based around Alien films which I have always been a fan of.

Colonial Marines.
Aliens.
Making Hadley's Hope.
Painting Colonial Marines.
Painting Aliens.
Aliens Rules.
Aliens Battle Reports & Scenarios.
My Aliens Book Library.
Useful Aliens Links.

American Aliens Project Pictures.

Aliens Art.

The rules I will be using are Aliens Rules.

The core of the army will be built using Pendraken Miniatures with a sprinkling of other manufacturers

Alien (1979)

On its way back to Earth, the U.S. commercial spaceship USCSS Nostromo is diverted to a desolate planetoids by a cryptic signal from a derelict alien spacecraft. While exploring the alien ship, one of the Nostromo's crewmen discovers the remains of the ship's pilot and also a large chamber that contains thousands of egg like objects. One of the eggs releases a creature that attaches itself to his face and renders him unconscious. The others break quarantine to bring him back aboard the ship. The parasite dies and the crewman wakes up, seemingly fine. Soon afterwards, an alien organism bursts from his chest and grows extremely rapidly into a terrifying eight foot tall creature that starts killing off the crew.

Aliens (1986)

After 57 years in hyper sleep, the sole survivor of the USCSS Nostromo, Ellen Ripley, awakens aboard a medical space station orbiting Earth. Her story of the Alien terror she encountered is disbelieved and she learns that the planetoids from the first film now designated as LV-426 or Acheron is now home to a terraforming colony. When contact with the colony is lost, Ripley, against her better judgement and to regain her pilot's license, hesitantly accompanies a squad of high tech Elite Colonial Marines aboard the spaceship Sulaco to investigate. Once there, they discover the colonists have been wiped out after finding the derelict alien ship  and its deadly cargo from the first film.

Alien 3 (1992)

Due to a fire aboard the USS Sulaco, an escape pod carrying the survivors of the second film is automatically jettisoned. It crash lands on the refinery prison planet Fiorina  Fury 161, but Ripley is the only one to survive the crash. Unbeknown to her, an Alien Face hugger was also aboard the ship. Before long, a full sized Alien is then loose in the prison, killing the inmates and staff. Ripley also discovers there is an Alien queen growing inside her, and must not only kill the rampaging Alien but also herself in order to save humanity.

Alien Resurrection (1997)

Two hundred years after the events of the previous film, several clones of Ellen Ripley including the alien queen she was carrying are produced. The Alien queen is surgically removed from her body as the United Systems Military hopes to breed Aliens to study on the spaceship USM Auriga, using human hosts kidnapped and delivered to them by a group of mercenaries on board a transport star ship called the Betty. The Aliens escape their enclosures, while Ripley 8 a clone mixed with Alien DNA and the mercenaries attempt to escape and destroy the Auriga before it reaches Earth.

Prometheus (2012)

Some thirty years before the events of Alien, scientists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway discover a star map among the remnants of several ancient Earth cultures. Seeking the origins of humanity, they journey aboard the spaceship Prometheus and arrive on the distant planet LV-223 in the Zeta2 Reticuli system, the same region of space in which the planetoids LV-426 from Alien is found. There they discover the remains of an advanced civilisation the same race as the dead pilot from the derelict ship in Alien, who were developing biological weapons which could have driven the human race extinct.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Eleven years after the events of Prometheus, the colony ship USCSS Covenant, carrying thousands of colonists and hundreds of human embryos in cryostasis, makes its way towards the planet Origae-6. The crew intercepts a transmission sent from Shaw, which they decide to trace to an apparently habitable Engineer home world referred to as Planet 4, devoid of all non-floral life. When several crew members are infected by the mutagen and give birth to a new breed of Alien, the Neomorphs, the android David 8 rescues them. His motivations to produce Aliens and destroy human life are made apparent, however, and with the birth of yet another new breed of Alien the survivors, now led by Daniels, are forced to flee from the world. After disposing of the Alien chasing them, the crew members return to the Covenant and are put back into cryosleep by someone they believe to be their shipboard synthetic, Walter. Only when Daniels is put in her cryopod does she realise that Walter has been replaced by the identical David. With the crew, colonists and embryos at his mercy, David contacts Weyland-Yutani back on Earth, stating that while the majority of the crew was killed in the neutrino blast, they would be continuing on towards Origae-6.

Aliens Battle Reports & Scenarios

Aliens Battle Reports & Scenarios

1.1 The Reactor Room

1.2 The Drop Ship

1.3 Marine Assault

2.1 The Hunt For The Queen

2.3 The Med Lab

3.1 Operations And The Air Ducts

Part One: Operations

Part Two: Air Ducts

3.2 The Rescue Of Newt

3.3 Ripley Vs. The Queen

Useful Aliens Links

Here is a list of useful Aliens Links,  if you know of any other links which you think should be included then by all means use the comment form below.

Aliens Rules by Leading Edge Games.

My Aliens Book Library.

Pendraken Miniatures do some really nice Colonial Marines which are more than suitable.

Left picture. SF1x Old style marines, in battle armour

Right picture. SF2x Old style marines, without battle armour

Left picture. SF14x Old style marines with heavy weapons

Right picture. SF15x Colonists in space suits 

Left picture. SF16x Colonists in space suits, with heavy weapons

Right picture. SF20x Civilian men

SF21x Civilian women

Left picture. SFH7 Armoured Personnel Carrier 

Right picture. SFH8 Walker 

Left picture. SFH9 Dreadnought gun platform  

Right picture. SFH10 Male civilians

SFH11 Female civilians and children

Pendraken Miniatures do some really nice Aliens which are more than suitable.

Left picture. SFC1 Medium creature, type 1
Right picture. SFC2 Medium creature, type 2

Left picture. SFC3 Medium creature, type 3
Right picture. SFC4 Medium warrior creature

Left picture. SFC5 Small creature (10) (8mm height)
Right picture. SFC6 Queen creature (3) (20mm height)

Left picture. SFC7 Egg cluster and 5 eggs
Right picture. SFC8 Face huggers

SFC9 Face hugger victims

My Aliens Book Library

My Aliens book library for wargaming consists of the following titles this is not an exhaustive library is just some of my favourites on the subject.

The Complete Alien Omnibus: "Alien", "Aliens", "Alien 3"

An omnibus edition of Alan Dean Foster's Alien science-fiction trilogy.

As the spaceship Nostromo glided through the silent reaches of the galaxy, the ships scanners detected a garbled distress call form a remote and long dead planet. But all the technology on board could not protect the ship's crew from the living nightmare they found there. It was a terror that stalked Ripley, the only survivor of Nostromo, and came to haunt her again and again...

Read the horrors of ALIEN and you won't believe that Ripley returned, with a team of death-dealing Marines, right back into the jaws of a threat too monstrous to contemplate. After the slaughter that was ALIENS, Ripley finds herself on a prison planet worse than anyone's imagined hell. But the nightmare of ALIEN 3 was only just beginning...

Aliens - Colonial Marines Technical Manual

The Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual is your official guide to the equipment and organisation of the United States Colonial Marine Corps as featured in the hit film Aliens. Packed with never-before-published diagrams, technical schematics and plans, the manual takes a detailed look at the guns, vehicles and ships of the USCMC, and the men and women who use them.

Alien: Illustrated Screenplay: Complete Illustrated Screenplay

Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket. W.H. Auden We live, as we dream - alone. Joseph Conrad So begins the screenplay of one of the greatest movies of all time: Alien. For the first time the complete script of Ridley Scott's legendary film Alien has been cleared for publication. The package includes the complete script, including scenes filmed but not released into the theatres, and hitherto unseen stills from the films and a fascinating introduction by Ridley Scott.

The Book of Alien

The Book of Alien is the definitive companion to the classic movie, taking you right behind the scenes of the production, including interviews with legendary designer HR Giger and director Ridley Scott. Lavishly illustrated with scores of stunning stills and pieces of production art unpublished elsewhere, the book graphically demonstrates just why the movie won an Oscar for its visual effects.

Painting Aliens

Here is my guide for painting Aliens using Vallejo acrylic colors. I have also done a painting guide for Colonial Marines.

Aliens

Aliens Vallejo Colours

Vallejo 965 Prussian Blue
Vallejo 899 Dark Prussian Blue
Vallejo 950 Black

Painting Colonial Marines

Here is my guide for painting Colonial Marines using Vallejo acrylic colors. I have also done a painting guide for Aliens.

Colonial Marines

Colonial Marines Vallejo Colours

Vallejo 830 German Fieldgrey WWII  (helmet)
Vallejo 830 German Fieldgrey WWII (jacket)
Vallejo 950 Black (webbing)
Vallejo 955 Flat Flesh (hands faces)
Vallejo 875 Beige Brown (camouflage)
Vallejo 837 Sand (camouflage)
Vallejo 950 Black (gun ect)
Vallejo 836 London Grey (trousers)

Vallejo 830 German Fieldgrey WWII (trousers)

Colonial Marines Vehicles

Colonial Marines Vehicles Vallejo Colours

Vallejo 979 German Camo. Dark Green
Vallejo 950 Black (webbing)