Terrain - Wrecked Car Scatter

Ideas always crop up in amongst other projects, be it an idea for a cool unique unit to convert, a back story to explore or in this case, some scatter terrain...

The other half crafts decorative photo frames, often with vinyls on the glass for whatever the period in question is (Easter, Christmas, teacher, pet, etc) and so we make somewhat regular visits to Poundland where they often sell picture frames at 2 for £1.

I always detour to the toy aisle to see if there is anything useful to me and came across this car the other day;

Perfect scale, just about, for some scatter terrain once the awful wheels are removed, it almost looks like a Range Rover*, pictured here with a miniature for scale.

So, upon arriving home, ideas came about and gears churned into motion, a moment's work with a screwdriver had the car into it's component pieces;

And with the wheels removed, it becomes even better for scale;

Off to my terrain supply drawer in my hobby area, and a suitable base was finagled from a piece of scrap 3mm MDF, positioning finalised, a resin oil barrel and crate were added, to give the impression that people still used this vehicle husk as something (a meeting/trading point, i don't know).
The rocks are from a tub one of my friends picked me up from Ikea, this was meant to represent chunks of buildings which had collapsed around the vehicle, in the midst of all of this, a hammer was used to judicious effect and the car was battered to within an inch of it's life;

After texturing the rest of the base with my usual dried builders sand, the piece was primed and then hit up with base colours:

• Baneblade Brown, for my usual basing scheme.
• Abaddon Black, for the bumper surround.
• Kantor Blue, for the main shell of the car, a choice by the other half I might add.
• Mechanicus Standard Grey, for the concrete blocks.
• Leadbelcher, for the obvious metals.
• Lothern Forest, for the oil drum and crate.

Anything which was metal also got a drybrush of Leadbelcher, then a Wash of Agrax Earthshade.

After going on Youtube and finding this tutorial by Behind Enemy Lines Wargaming, and having some weathering pigments available, I decided to have a bash at adding a really rusted, extremely weathered effect;

• Humbrol Rust Pigment.
• Humbrol Iron Oxide Pigment.
• Humbrol Smoke Pigment (for the burnt out interior).
• Humbrol Matte Cote, instead of the matte varnish he used in the video,

This is where we ended up, the picture doesn't show it, but you can still see the blue paint showing through the layers of rust on the outside of the vehicle in places.

I should add, that until this point, I had kept the car in two separate assemblies so that I could paint the interior, as you can see it, I focused my attentions on making this seem burnt out and liberally added Nuln Oil washes, as well layers of Humbol Smoke Pigment mixture to the interior.

Last steps were taken and the entire piece was drybrushed first with Baneblade Brown and secondly, more lightly, with Ushabti Bone, which is my usual combination for the top of bases and to represent dust flying and gathering on surfaces.

Here is the finished piece:

I say it is finished, but I want to add a few "Arid Grass Tufts" I picked up from eBay, but they haven't arrived yet.

Overall I am really pleased with how this little project turned out, not bad for a £1 whim on a toy car, some supplies I already had and a couple of evenings work.
I have enough basing MDF left over to make 3 or 4 more bases, so I'll probably pick a few of the saloon version of the car that they make and produce a few more of these, they are versatile in use as it could be used in anything from modern day combat, to zombie or post apocalyptic games, even 40k really.

*Although why anyone would spend £80,000+ on a Range Rover is beyond me...

 Until next time...


 - Lewis