Dust Tactics: Ammo Crates

Dust Tactics makes a relatively limited use of terrain. In most standard scenarios each side gets to deploy just one ammo crate in a square where no other terrain is placed. The ammo crates provides 'Soft' cover.

In theory you could use any terrain element, a tyre stack, oil drums, rocks, crates, a fallen tree, sandbags etc.

These two ammo crates come with the Dust Tactics: Revised Core Set.

Simple enough to paint, undercoat, base-coat, wash and gentle dry-brush. Decals added (leftover from an old WW2 model kit) and then a quick coat of matt varnish.

Dust Tactics: Axis Sturmpioniere

I'd decided to collect both armies, that I had a full play-set. That way, whenever any of my gaming friends were over we could simply jump right into a game.

Rather than point too much of one side in one go, I decided to keep both sides relatively even and paint an no more than 2-3 units for one side without painting some for the opposing force. It meant that pretty early on I could try out a few quick games with just a few units per side and as the project developed no one side became overtly over-powered.

These Sturmpioniere from the Dust Tactics: Core Revised Set were pretty fun to paint. Once again, I attempted to keep the colours pretty light, using some lighter base colours and much more subtle shading in the form of a watered down wash.

By doing these this way I found the limits of watering a wash and experimented with using De-Ionised water, which I'd been using for cleaning my airbrush, which seemed to help. Which got me thinking about some of the other tools that 'expert' painters use, i.e. thinning mediums.

My conclusion, I think they're onto something.

Music for Zombie Gaming - Part 7

Bear McCreary is a name that has popped up quite a bit in recently years, if you're a bit of a nerd. The American born composer and musician lives in Los Angeles California. Not only does he have an awesomely manly name, he is also responsible for the soundtracks for the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead and Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. among other things.

He also composed the theatrical film score to Step Up 3D... which is actually rather good... but less talked about, certainly by most Walking Dead fans.

Although he studied under the legendary Elmer Bernstein he has undoubtedly created his own sound which, whilst clearly versatile, shows a superb understanding of pace and timing and is quite distinctive.

Bear McCreary normally works with a limited pool of musicians, typically around 10, often using less traditional instruments, with a considerable emphasis on percussion and the deliberate inclusion of discordant counter harmonies, his themes are subtle and build into considerable crescendos.

Bear McCreary's instantly recognisable opening theme to The Walking Dead is a great example of how this works and is a perfect mood-enhancer for any Zombie Board Game, Card Game or  Zombie Miniatures game.

Dust Tactics: The Hammers

This squad of 'Hammers' for Dust Tactics were pretty easy to paint, I even managed to salvage the pre-printed insignia on their chests.

Soft plastic figures do present a bi of a challenge when it comes to de-flashing. To be fair to Fantasy Flight and to the whole Dust studios production team, the models were pretty sound in the first instance.

The Hammers

I was pleased that I was able to keep them relatively light although I still think they could have benefited from lighter base-coats. After finishing these I started exploring some slightly lighter tones to replace my standard 'olive drab variants' palette.