Far Corfe: "The Junkfood Dogs" - or a Bevvy of Beautiful Bikers

Copplestone's original Bikers

Whenever you're getting into collecting and painting minis with a near future, post apocalyptic or survival horror theme, there are some classics of those genres that you can't avoid wanting to get your hands on sooner or later. Alongside punks, mutants and the crazed followers of Elder Gods, the biker gang is one of those staples that always look good shooting it out with cops, zombies and crazies of every possible description.

Far Corfe: Underhive Nomads

The Nomads stalk through the alleyways and backstreets of the Underhive...

 

I've been picking up the random minis from GW's past on eBay that nobody else seems to want for a while now, and one of these was a ganger from House Cawdor that had been hacked about to an almost ridiculous degree by its previous owner.

I think the thing had lost both it's hands and perhaps even its legs too, but I was determined to make something out of it, and so I raided the bits box for replacement parts and ended up liking the results so much that I was soon back on eBay looking for more minis from the same range.

Far Corfe: The Great Yuzzem Giveaway

The arrival of the Yuzzem in town attracts much interest from the natives...

I've been planning a series of skirmish games in anticipation of being able to do something fun once the dangers of the Covid Pandemic have lessened to the point where it's possible to get together with friends that I haven't seen for many months now.

The system that I settled is Fistful of Lead, by Wiley Games, a very reasonably-priced and adaptable set of rules that should allow me to make use of the miniatures and terrain that I've been stacking up for the past couple of years and have a good laugh at the same time.

Far Corfe: Confrontation Elite Gang

The Elite Gang fan out to protect their employer's assets...

I don't know about anyone else, but ever since I saw the page of them that survived into the Citadel blue catalogue in the early 90s, the miniatures from the Confrontation range (the predecessor of what we now know as Necromunda) always manage to make my palms sweat.

Trash Terrain: Sci-Fi Garage/Pit Stop

Panzer Frau: "Don't worry about me needing to stop for repairs during the race - my co-pilot's already the pits!"
Awooga: "Huh...wha...wait!"

I openly admit to stealing ideas that appeal to me when I see them online or plastered all over social media, and when I saw what one of my favourite bloggers had done with a playset from the Micro Machines Action Fleet range from Star Wars Episode I, I was intrigued.

Trash Terrain: Modular Compound Walls

A local grandee, flanked by hired bodyguards, watches from the gateway of his private compound as a PDF patrol sweeps the streets in a show of force after continued rioting and civil unrest in Far Corfe.

One thing that I've been meaning to do for some time now is work on fences, barricade and walls to use with the rest of my home-made terrain, but it's just never been as exciting as the prospect of chucking everything else aside and starting up a new build inspired by the random acquisition of an interesting piece of junk.

But I saw recently that someone in the myriad and various Facebook groups that I follow had been making walls out of polystyrene foam, and his work inspired me to finally get down to it and make something in the same spirit for myself.

Trash Terrain: Sanitation Truck

An armed sanitation patrol meets with stiff resistance from local residents not keen on the idea of being forcibly cleansed.

One of my favourite elements of this hobby is the chance to root around in charity shops and other second-hand sources for something that could be converted into a vehicle or piece of terrain for the gaming table. Recently I came across a rather chunky fire truck in just such a place and snapped it up for around a quid (and stumbled across a sealed box of Dark Eldar Wyches for the same price, which was a nice bonus).

Far Corfe: Battle Report - Clash of the Younglings

Chaos ensues as the Cherry Gang decide that, if they can't have the rocket, no one can!

My kids seem to have developed a fascination for watching me work on the various hobby projects that I have on my desk at any one time, wanting to help out when they can and just see what I'm up to when they can't.

I think it's tapped into my daughter Martha's naturally creative streak, and my son Sam is fascinated by the possibilities of freakish characters rendered in miniature, the weird vehicles that go with them and the possibilities of combining the two with various plastic dinosaurs that lurk around the house.

Trash Terrain: The Block House

The Block House: Grim, weathered and off-white.

I've been following for a while and would heartily recommend Iain Wilson's excellent tutorials over at Maelstrom's Edge where he often makes use of gift boxes as the starting point for many of his buildings when making terrain.

It was from these articles that I got the inspiration to have a go at this terrain build, and I also happened to have a few pieces left over from a Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue as well, which ended up making its way into the build.

Trash Terrain: 1 Crater Cottages

1 Crater Cottages: Des Res in the Rad Wastes

I can never seem to pin down exactly where inspiration comes from and when it'll strike, but the closest I've ever come is realising that when I see a piece of packaging with an interesting shape or that would produce an equally unique shape when pressed into service as a mould, the wheels of the imagination start turning.

Far Corfe: "Who rules Bunkertown?!?" - 2018 Year End Round Up

Far Corfe - a rad-scorched wasteland, populated mainly by wastemen...

I haven't really got enough decent pictures to make a proper post for December and the end of 2018, so instead, to capture the true spirit of Far Corfe and its inhabitants, I'm throwing together a collection of odds and ends, featuring stuff that's done and hasn't been photographed very well yet and stuff that's not really finished but still manages to look interesting anyway, all in the hope of getting some attention and convincing people that there might be something worth coming back for in the New Year as well.

Far Corfe: Bully Boy - Abhuman Mercenary Muscle

Bully Boy - dislikes include jokes about bullshit, horns and massive choppers...

I keep meaning to put more effort into photographing my output, but it's so much easier to sit down and paint or model terrain that I have a massive backlog of stuff that's never seen the light of day online and in this blog.

Guess who's back.

Bully Boy here's a prime example of that - a plastic Warhammer Quest Minotaur that I got it into my head would make a great subject for a conversion after seeing similar efforts made with Trolls, as well as the old and rather obscure Rogue Trader Minotaurs that were released back when 40K was basically WHFB with guns stuck on.

Far Corfe: Tinribs Clau - Freelance Heavy & All-Round Hardcase

Tinribs Clau - willing to do very nasty things at a very reasonable price.

I'm still fairly new to the ever expanding world of small, independent and often one-man-band sculptors that are out there on the internet, and they seem to run the gamut from bloody awful right up to sheer brilliance, and James Sheriff of Brass Monkey Games certainly falls into the latter category in my humble opinion.

Far Corfe: Widdershins's Corpse Junkies - Improved Mugshots

Messing with Widdeshins's crew or chewing on a brick - both good ways to lose some teeth...

I've dropped a couple of posts with bad shots of Widdershins's Corpse Junkies in the past, but I actually managed to snap some half-decent ones last night, including some of the newer gang members recently completed and added to the crew as well, and so I decided to do another post to catch up on how the gang's developing.

Far Corfe: Howling Eddie - Gun for Hire, Hair for Hire

Howling Eddie: he's got a big chopper...

Just a quick one today, something to tide me over until I have a more expansive post to make and better pictures to share. But until then, here's Howling Eddie, a minor conversion based on the Orlock gang leader from the original edition of Necromunda.

I was loathe to sell off all of the Orlocks that had been languishing in storage for so long, and so a number of them have already seen conversions of this kind, basically head-swaps and small cosmetic additions in order to free them of the now rather generic look of the old-school gang.

Trash Terrain: Papier Mache Bunkers & Buildings

Ever diligent, the doorstaff at The Bunker nightclub frisk the clientele to ensure that they're carrying enough weapons and ammo before granting them entry...

In my never-ending quest to make terrain for next to nothing, I stumbled across a post from back in 2015 on the rather nice blog of a chap called Roebeast that was a step-by-step guide to using plastic packaging of various kinds as moulds for papier mache buildings.

The look of the thing felt right for Far Corfe and the process didn't seem too daunting, so I decided that I'd have a go and try to make a bunker using the same method. I ordered myself some Art Mache, which is basically powdered paper with glue already added, and set to following Roebeast's instructions.

Far Corfe: EXTERMINATE!!! - Charity Shop Daleks

Gangers of the Widdershin's Corpse Junkies crew are given the unique opportunity to view each others skeletons moments before death...

I get a lot more pleasure from rummaging around in charity shops for things to add to my gaming collection than I think I ever possibly could if I had vast amounts of cash and spent some of it on buying the latest thing that GW have crapped out. I suppose it's a combination of loving seeing something brought back from the brink and knowing that if it doesn't quite come off, I haven't wasted good money on a white elephant.

Recently I was sheltering from the rain in just such a place on a freezing day, and happened upon a small pack of what looked like plastic Daleks, just about the right size to work with 28mm scale minis. They were only priced at a quid, so they seemed just too good of a find to ignore.

Far Corfe: Guy Ubiquitous a.k.a "The Fat Biker"

Guy Ubiquitous - for the record, has never been approached to host a cookery program of any kind...

While I love the gangs of Necromunda and the flavour of 40K in general, one of the things its always been lacking in is the ability to fill in the gaps between the massed armies of the 41st Millenium and the cut-throat clans of the Underhive.

The original Rogue Trader featured smaller and more ragtag forces, often little more than glorified entourages and barely organised rabbles, where the background and characters were as important as what they were actually fighting over.

Trash Terrain: Egg-Box Shipping Containers

Gangers ambush a Dalek patrol deep in the Underhive, obviously not knowing what the hell they're getting into...

As I may have mentioned before, I have literally zero money available to spend of terrain for gaming, and so my first recourse is always to dig around in the recycling bin for ideas, and recently I noticed that the large plastic boxes that hold around sixteen eggs or so are rather nicely futuristic in appearance.

Experimentally I stuck one together, primed it and then used some very basic techniques to paint up a sort of prototype, thinking of a sci-fi themed shipping container, and I was so pleased with the results that I pimped it around some FB groups, asking if people would be interested in a tutorial.

They were and so here it is.

Far Corfe: Muller's Lonely Comms Tower

Various weirdos and undesirables gather for a blurry photo in front of Muller's Tower

I don't have any experience with the making of wargaming terrain (as this blog post will no doubt demonstrate), and I also have almost zero money to allocate to the area as well, meaning that I can't just buy fancy buildings from GW or any of the other manufacturers out there.

But that wasn't going to stop me, and in the spirit of Rogue Trader, Blue Peter and the tutorial videos that I always end up watching on YouTube, I decided that the recycling bin was the best place to start my quest for terrain.