Tuesday 14 July 2020

Sci-fi "Tech Crate"

I bought a set of Sci-fi "Tech Crates" a couple of years ago at the local Diceni games show.  Although designed for 28mm gaming, I thought they looked like they'd be good for 15mm as electrical equipment housing, generators/batteries, vehicle engine packs etc.  This one is just a test piece to see how it looks and I'm very pleased how it turned out.


Over a Wilko grey primer base coat the casing has been painted Vallejo reflective green and the metal parts GW chainmail over a black base coat.  A 50/50 wash of Vallejo black ink and Future floor polish toned down the metal to a dull sheen.


This was also a chance to try out some "chipping" techniques, something I haven't done much before.  Vallejo Russian uniform green was used to show where the darker top colour had scuffed/flaked away around the edges of the casing.  This was followed by some cheap Inscribe acrylic craft paint burnt umber for an aged, rusty colour.  Smaller specks of Inscribe burnt sienna were used to represent fresher, brighter rust.  An HB pencil was rubbed along some of the exposed edges where the rust has been rubbed back to the bare metal.

Lots of switches! Especially good for making
it look like 15mm equipment housing.

It still didn't look quite right so a rummage through my decal folder produced a variety of extra details, some WWII vehicle markings, a couple of yellow panels which I think came from a M1 Abrams kit and the circle and triangles which are from QRF.  These are all waterslide transfers and were affixed with Vallejo decal medium.  Chipping was re-applied where required to blend the decals in.  Next time I'll add the decals before weathering rather than as an afterthought!


All in all, This has come out very well, it's the ideal size for a piece of scatter terrain and could even be a useful game objective for something like Rogue Stars or Black Ops:
  • It's small enough that one team could be trying to steal it
  • Perhaps they have to get to it to sabotage power to the enemy base
  • Maybe they need to turn it on to reactivate the base force-field before the local wildlife tries to eat them!

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