Tagged: toys
Terrain Triptych, Part 3: Elevated Train Station
Elevated train stations are a common sight here in Chicago, so I’m extra happy to add this terrain piece to my collection. As with the other items in the Terrain Triptych series, this one started life as a toy playset. The original toy is a Fisher Price Geo-Trax Train Station. It’s an outstanding example of ... Read more
Terrain Triptych, Part 2: Power Station and I-Beams
I’m back with the latest installment in my “Terrain Triptych” series, where I kitbash urban terrain using toys found at resale shops. Click here to read the first post, about a multi-level construction site. Here I’ll show you how I took this Hot Wheels car launcher and transformed it into a power station. Though ... Read more
Terrain Triptych, Part 1: Building Under Construction
In a previous post, I showed work-in-progress pictures of a number of larger terrain pieces. For my “Terrain Triptych” series, I’ll be revisiting three of these projects, as well as some additional bits. The miniatures used for scale throughout these reviews are Urban War Gladiators, Void Junker Buggy and a 1/56-scale Mad Cat mech from ... Read more
Toy-Bashing Urban Terrain
Recently I started work on three projects, comprising a sort of a how-to for using toys and other junk to make industrial terrain. If you geek out over DIY projects and detailed how-to guides, then this is for you. If not, well… just flip through the pictures. Project 1 – Hot Wheels Launcher Power Station, ... Read more
Barbed Wire from Plastic Army Men Playsets
I picked up barbed wire stands a couple months ago at a game store auction. They’re from a plastic army men kit similar to what you might find in the toy section of your typical drugstore. They were half-finished, with two pieces glued to 16 large tongue depressors, with sand on the base. I’d been ... Read more
Sci-fi Industrial Buildings from Old Plastic Toys
Last weekend I finally got around to painting a couple of industrial terrain pieces that I had built some time ago. You can see the finished product above, along with an old 25mm chaos knight for scale. The top of his axe is about the same height as a Games Workshop Space Marine on a ... Read more
The Mechs of Mech Attack!
Here’s a brief look at the mech models that we used in our Mech Attack game at Little Wars last weekend. They’re from a variety of model lines (and even a few toy makers). The infantry figure in the pictures is a 28mm Junkers Legionnaire, included for scale purposes. Some of the perspectives in the ... Read more
Quick and Easy 28mm Warehouses from Ertl Building Kits
It was four days before our annual zombie extravaganza that I came across a bag of Ertl farm building parts at my local resale shop. I got home started assembling them, ending up with two nearly complete buildings. Great — but I needed more for our zombie game. The wider of the two appeared to ... Read more
Song of Bricks and LEGO
Last weekend I had the chance to play a few games of Song of Blades and Heroes with 3 fellow members of the Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club. Being that we were all fans of LEGO, we of course used LEGO for the terrain and units. Chris, Adam and I met at the home of ... Read more
Post-Apocalyptic Cars and Motorcycles
Though Chicago Skirmish Wargames is preparing for our summer Song of Blades and Heroes campaign, I would like to dedicate two last blog entries to post-apocalyptic gaming, which has occupied a good deal of our time and energy over the last six months. In this post I’ll review a few recent finds that the penny-pinching ... Read more