Trash Terrain: Hostile Environment Hab-Pods

A tense mercenary band scopes out an abandoned scientific outpost...

I'm always seeing really nice stuff that other people are building on their blogs and social media posts, often out of the most unlikely and ingenious things that they find lying around the place. And to be honest, it makes me jealous and gives me the kind of itchy palms that can only be relived by doing the same thing myself.

This means that whenever I'm out and about, I'm always on the look out for a potential new project or something that might look good stuck onto something else. An while in Wilkinson's recently, I came across some cheap plastic dishes that were being sold to be used as a drawer tidy, and as they were pretty cheap, I grabbed four of them.

Gathering the basic materials

I'd seen a hamster home turned into a hazardous environment pod kind of thing by the ever-talented Iain Wilson over at Maelstrom's Edge, and I just so happened to have treated myself to some of their wonderful Terrain Sprues not long after. And so I decided to use these to do something similar, rather than just using salvaged bits and pieces like the tight-arsed bugger I normally am.

Just by adding a couple of elements to the basic shells, I could already see where this build was going, and I was inspired to press straight on with this first pod, as well as making some more with other details and taking the idea in slightly different directions.

Most of the pods I was sure could get away without being based, as they're very sturdy and are supposed to look like they've been plonked down in the middle of the setting, rather than being left there over a long period of time to have stuff build up around them. I also put one of the pods on legs and added a base to it, just for the sake of having something a little different in there too.

I base-coated them in black and then gave the pods a heavy zenithal highlight in first grey and then white, wanting the look to be something like industrial grade plastic or a similar synthetic material. After that I picked out the details in Vallejo Black Grey, dry-brushed the same with a light grey and washed the entire lot with a mixture of black and burnt umber craft paints watered down with some washing-up liquid mixed in as a flow-agent.

I think that the end result is quite impressive, especially based on the cheapness of the basic materials used and the speed with which I was able to get these pods completed. They'd probably work in most environmental settings too, be it arctic, dessert, jungle or event he vacuum of the lunar landscape.

So there you have it, a nice little build that's completed and ready for the gaming table in no time at all and looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself.

As always, let me know what you think, either here or on social media.