Chicago Skirmish Wargames

Tim continued his recent terrain assault by completing a batch of wrecked cars made from plaster poured into tinfoil molds. You might have spotted these nifty pieces in our recent Neutron York 3000 battle report!

Tim took inspiration from a pair of articles on Combat Zone Chronicles and Terragenesis. Here's what you'll need to complete the project.

• Toy cars (Tim used 1/43 scale toys)
• Tinfoil
• Plaster
• Box of sand
• Paints
• Washes and/or Minwax Polyshades (commonly referred to as 'dip')

Follow these steps and you'll have a nice batch of cars for your battlefield!

1. Press tinfoil onto the cars. The mirrors cause the most problems, so be careful around them.

2. It is difficult to get the foil off and retain the shape of a car, so Tim added some creative dents here and there to make the tinfoil come off easier.

3. Put the foil in a tub of sand, so the sand supports the plaster and leaves a hollow tinfoil cup where you can pour in the liquid plaster.

4. Cast the plaster into the foil. Tim didn't use a releasing agent.

5. Remove the foil. Some sand and foil may stick to the car.

You may get a few cars that are too messed up to use as is. You can either toss them or try and carve them into a more desirable shape.

6. Glue together the individual cars to make stacks of wrecks, then base the stacked cars like you would for any other piece of scenery. Tim used wood glue.

7. Fill in the gaps between the cars with plaster, wall filler, or something like that.

8. Add sand to the bases.

9. Paint the cars. Tim decided to make them completely rusted out, so his palette included a mix of ocher, orange and rusty browns. The ground is light brown.

10. Paint bluish-gray for windows, wheel wells and other spots.

11. Paint silver for some chrome parts. Tim actually used a silver Sharpie marker for this step.

12. Drybrush. Tim used a tan color, cooled down with purple, to make the whole thing a bit less warm.

13. Brush on a coat of Minwax Polyshades Antique Walnut or Tudor. Give it at least 24 hours to dry.

14. Spray matte.

You can color or base these wrecks however you might want. Tim chose to make them look very rusty and worn, but more color variety is fine also.