This competition ran in April-May 2006 and was run by Longshanks. We also owe a word of thanks to Eazy-O for writing up this summary from the information posted on the forum.
CDs are brilliant for making small terrain pieces to break up the battlefield easily. They store pretty well and are pretty rugged to transport, so for very little effort they can really add something to your table. They obstruct lines of sight on the battlefield, making the game even more interesting, make simple objectives to aim for, and can look really good for relatively little effort.
So your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create something special that fits onto a CD - any scale, any period, anything you want
These alien polyps were made from the top part of fizzy drinks bottles. Click here for more information.
I made these wrecked cars for use with 28mm modern combat. After spending some time looking for 1:48 scale cars (about 3" long) made of plastic that I could add battle damage to I finally found a package of four of these little guys for a dollar. The figures are Dogs of War skirmish (Delta Force and US Special Forces). I also made a pile of trash.
The black car is a victim of an explosion, it's supposed to resemble a Subaru WRX, I think. It was heated under a handle frame and then tortured and distorted with a pair of pliers. The wheels were torn apart with pliers and glued to the base along with some other scrap plastic.
The white car is a victim of gunfire. It's a Honda Civic type thing. It didn't have taillights modeled so I had to go and paint them on. It's a silver paint with a transparent red (thinned with Future acrylic floor wax) on top. More Hondas should have bullets hit them.
Neither car came with transparent windows. The window glass was made from scrap packaging and then carved up with an x-acto knife to make the cracks. The tiny shards of glass are transparent glitter.
The pile of trash has a core of styrofoam covered with shreds of paper. The first layer is shreddings from a shredder. For the outer layer I took photos of newspaper, shrunk them and filled up a page in Freehand. After I printed it, I made a xerox copy on both sides (since electrostatic ink is not water-soluble). The paper was cut into squares, soaked in a glue-water mixture, then spread over the piece.
These missile silos and command bunker are made from foamcore and have been written up as an article in our archives. Please click here for more information.
A steam powered machine would need to replenish the water in its boiler after an extended time in the field. That's what my piece is for. Or it could be a giant still for those Ogryn.
The core of the project, or "water tank", is the bottom half of a contact lens saline bottle. This was hot glued to the CD. A pumping arm was built from two lengths of drinking straw and two plastic card pieces cut to size. The grommets at the bottom of the pump pistons are donut-shaped beads.
The roof is made from the top, tapered portion of the bottle. The nozzle was cut off and an old hatch from a GW Rhino was glued into place. The vertical pipes are simply drinking straws. Rivets were punched out of thin plastic with a leather punch and glued into place with super glue. These were used on the mounting plates for the instrument cluster and fueling regulator, as well as on the pump mechanism. Valve handles on the top hatch, vertical pipes and fueling nozzle are nylon snaps for women's clothing.
A bead of hot glue was run down the seams on the top and sides of the tank to simulate a weld. This was also done around where the vertical pipes attach to the tank.
The piece was primed black with spray paint.
The tanks, regulator, pipes and pump were painted with this technique from Brush Thralls: http://www.brushthralls.com/SpongedMetal/. The only difference is I sponged on a light layer of GW Boltgun Metal as the last step.
Pump pistons were painted GW Boltgun Metal, all valve handles were painted red, and the ladder was done in wood colors. I didn't paint the CD before laying down the sand, so you could see the reflective surface even after priming. To remedy this I inked the entire base in brown. The base was then drybrushed a dark brown to a medium brown.
Small lengths of twine were cut and untwisted. They were glued along the edges of the tank with white glue. The ground cover is the standard mix. The bush is a bit of green lichen with course turf glued on.
The idea of this piece is to mark where your Mole emerges on the table, a bit like springing an ambush with hidden forces.
It�s made out of bits from light fittings, power-filed to an angle. The drill is sculpted from miliput. I've used some lumps of polystyrene, carved with the power-file, to represent the ground being upthrust as the Mole breaks through.
The earthy bits have had dark brown applied followed by sand and watered down PVA. The rest of the base was painted green and sprinkled with fine sand followed by more PVA and more drybrushing. The trees were cut from aquarium plants, planted at angles, and highlighted with yellow. I used a steel colour on the Mole so I didn't need to undercoat it. Spray would have eaten the polystyrene. I added details before painting.
This piece is a part of my larger on going project � a Warhammer Fantasy Battle gaming board. I didn�t like the CD limitation but gave it a try to add some more detailing to the table.
The well was constructed with balsa, Sculpey, toy parts and based on a CD.
The bricks were made individualy from sculpey. The working gears came from a butchered happy meal toy and raise a bucket that was originally a keg from a set of GW archers. The top was a simple build of balsa and finished with a cherry stain.
The tall grass is painted coconut husk. For the bushes I used lichen as a core, soaked it water/glue mix, then filled every nook and cranny with flock. I also coated it with water and glue in the process. This makes them really durable but takes a lot of time.
My biggest issue was how to accurately represent a pile of coins in such a small scale. Slicing a sprue into disks means you have a pile of coins the size of frisbees, so I was thinking just a heavily textured pile instead, with gems, weapons, etc. jutting out of it.
To begin the horde and skeleton, I started with making a mass of aluminum foil. Then I covered the mass in Sculpey, giving a rough shape to the coin pile. I made the dragon's skeleton by using a few bits from the Hirst Art's Dragon's Tooth mold.
Then I went ahead and added the bones, using a different color Sculpey so I can tell the difference. I also pushed in a miniature to use it as a statue.
For information about the floor surface, see our article on Paved Floors.
My idea here was to model the corner section of a ruined building. I wanted to maximize the small area that a CD provides as a base and attempted to give the illusion that it's a much bigger piece than it actually is. This is why I made it relatively tall. I cut out the door and window areas and inserted appropriate frames from the old Mordheim boxed set. I then assembled my two walls and painted slightly watered down glue over the foam areas to protect them from the undercoat spray. I added battle damage and chunks of the walls that have fallen. A second floor was made of balsa, foamcore (for bracing) and sprue fragments. I made it for Warhammer 40k. I just tend to make my 40k buildings with a touch of anachronism. I'm a sucker for contrast; having wood mixed with concrete mixes things up a little.
I printed out some templates, cut them out and used them as a pattern for a folding template. I then cut out two of each dumpster on thin cereal box card. The dumpsters were folded and glued.
While these were drying, I built a few pallets. These seemed like the perfect addition to a dumpster scene. I took some 1/8" square balsa/bass wood and cut off 1" lengths for the pallet skids. I laid out 5 wooden coffee stir sticks in an approximate pallet fashion. I then applied the glue to the pallet skid and laid it down coffee stir sticks. When the glue dried, I cut off the extra stir stick on each end, and had some pallets.
The CD I'm using has been built up a little. Half of the CD is covered in 1/4" foamcore, which I've added a small grate/drain, and kind of ramp up to the dumpster area. Garbage bags are made of Sculpey, rolled into rough ball shapes, then pressed together. They are simple representations. I couldn't figure out how to do the twisted-tie top. Twisting the sculpey didn't work as I had planned.
Construction barrels are made of 1/2" wooden dowel, cut about 3/4" long. Then a small notch was also cut out.
Details of how these trees were made have been written up for our archive. Please click here for more information.
I chose a slanted branch for the support so that the terrain piece would have a dynamic look to it. I used "craft sticks" which look like popsicle sticks. To get a rough finish to the wood, I "cut" the sticks with a pair of pliers. Each stick yields three planks for the walls. The floor is wood from a small crate of clementine oranges. I cut it to size (based on the dimensions of the craft sticks), and cut a hole in the floor for access from below. The steps are also "cut" from craft sticks using pliers. I wanted to add a little extra weight, and wanted durability, so instead of using wall spackle, I used paper towels dipped in PVA wood glue. I put some on the model, some on a small piece of towelling, and pressed into place. More PVA was added on top. The effect is similar to papier mache, but stronger.
I ended up finishing this in a rush, so not all the details I had in my head actually made it into the model, but I'm still happy with how it looks. It will be a playable piece on the table. I used cardboard for the road passing across the CD and the sides of the road as well. A rough guard shack was made out of various sheets of corrugated cardboard. I used a stick from a pre-packaged corn-dog to build the gate. The next step was to texture the base with a mixture of PVA glue, spackle, and sand. I attached the crossbar with a nail so it would have some movement. The guard shack got a base coat of black spray paint and I put in some clear plastic for the windows. A single "concrete" tank trap completed this stage. Then the base was ready for its coats of brown and black and then details. I used greys and aluminum on the guard shack and a rust wash. The ground got browns, greens and some red and yellow splashes for color.
I've seen cork used to create convincing cliff faces for larger scale modelling and wondered if I could use it to for 6mm scale.
I bought a roll of cork from a railway modelling shop and experimented by tearing out progressively smaller pieces. To get the fissured effect I used a pair of modelling pliers with a fine point and tore the gaps out. I don't think that it would be possible to tear it as well by hand. The pieces were stuck together using brown mastic. I then smoothed mastic to create the slopes on the reverse of the hill. The mastic was then painted with a PVA/water mix and covered with very fine sand before painting the whole model with GW Snake Bite Leather and gradually drybrushing lighter tones.
I glued down a few bushes (left over clumps from a Woodland Scenics tree kit), washed over a few more areas with a PVA/water mix, and glued down a pale green flock. For the final finishing touch I added two Timecast trees.
Although it's one of the simplest models I've ever made, it's one that I really like - it seems to be convincing for the scale.
The power generator thingy was created for my Combat Zone/Babylon's Burning games. It is intended as a small nuclear power generator for a factory or small settlement.
I trimmed a block of polysterene and added a plastic softmints package/pod to make the nuclear reactor and based it on a CD. It was then coated in watered PVA glue with sand for texture. Pipework from bendy straws, solid copper cable and plumbers' solder was added to represent the various cooling pipes and 3 pieces of cable for the power output cables.
I used some plastic end-plates from an old electrical rack, capacitors and other bits, to add a slight technical look to the piece. The valve wheels are old pop fasteners on wire. The coil was looted from an old radio while the power turbine casing was an old Kinder egg.
Base and concrete were coated a few times with textured masonary paint. The base had sand glued to it and the trench got some dried tea leaves to give it a coarser texture.
The whole thing was sprayed with matt black car primer and then lightly over sprayed with grey car primer. The pipes and power turbine casing where dry brushed with Citadel Tin Bitz and had some orange added to make them look a bit rusty. The electrical panels got a coat of Bleached Bone. All the concrete got lighter shades of grey and Bleached Bone dry brushing.
I added some transfers to the piece and some labels printed off on my computer. The control panel is from a toy.
The base got a coat of Bestial Brown with a Bleached Bone drybrush, followed by a dark brown wash. Some static grass and weeds where added to it to finish it off.
The piece is of course based on a CD and was created from one half of an 11cm diameter polystyrene ball. It was textured with bark chips and sand before being painted with washes of earth colours. Most of the earth was then covered with a mixture of green flock and (recently used) rooibos tea leaves.