Dawn of the Lead

Work continues on my Aliens game board pieces. This post showcases one of the larger pieces on the board, a large vent with a hapless colonist who has been used for Xenomorph breeding. He still grasps a pistol, but his arm has been secured into the wall to prevent him from ending his miseries prematurely.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

The item is another case of trash bashing. It consists of a deodorant spray bottle cap, some bug screen, a gadget piece from an old Ral Partha Shadowrun mini, a few decorative beads, electrical conduit tubing and a hefty amound of silicone paste. I gave it my normal paintjob for this project. The metal parts were drybrushed first with Vallejo Oily Steel and then Vallejo Natural Steel. The Alien goo was given a drybrush first with Citadel Codex Grey and then Citadel Fortress Grey. It was then washed over with Citadel Badab Black and given a gloss varnish. The OSL from the red warning lights was simply drybrushed on with Citadel Blood Red. It gave me quite a headache, as I had to repaint it from the start once – you know, the “I’ll just add a little..ARGH! Well, I’ll fix it up with some more…ARGHHH! Just a little more then..ARRRGHG it looks horrible!” syndrome.

The colonist is a chopped up pre-painted plastic mini from the Horrorclix Aliens set. Too large to use with most 28mm miniatures, I’ve been trying to find a use for him as I have several. Here I chopped off his feet, crudely repositioned his arms (the paste handily covers the rough cuts on the shoulders), drilled a hole in his chest and then added some detailing with Procreate putty. The model has a suitably horrified expression as the original model is fittingly enough about the get attacked by a Xenomorph. I gave him Bishop-style blue-grey coveralls as they immediately remind me of Aliens. I think he turned out pretty nice, I guess all that zombie painting has helped with the dead look.

I’m very happy with how the piece turned out. The different parts fit together to form a nice whole. In my opinion, it’s the nicest yet on the board! I really liked constructing this, as it was kind of like a mini diorama. I might add an Alien egg on a separate terrain piece in front of the colonist to complement this one. Comments welcome, as always.

I’m leaving for Malaysia for two weeks tomorrow for some kung fu training, so the blog will be quiet for a while. Fear not, I’ll get back to updating once I’m back here in sweet Finland.