Libuscha Prime Buildings Part 1 (Terrain)

The Libuscha setting has been taking shape in the collective Berman hive mind for almost a year.  It's kind of cool how the more we play in this make-believe setting, the more real the setting becomes - maybe there's some sort of positive feedback mechanism at work?   Whatever, I'm not complaining, as it's a hell of a lot of fun to be playing with the kids and also having an opportunity to exercise that creative side of my brain that has been apparently hibernating for a few years.



More recently, thanks to a lucky dumpster strike during my commute home, I found a whole lot of hard/strong plastic industrial packing spacers (for lack of a better term).  They are about 4 inches/10cms to a side and interlock with one another.   As is evident from the picture to the right, they're just the right scale for 28mm miniatures and with a deft application of some power tools, glue and reinforcing card or plastic, they form a basic square with a floor inside and an interesting relief design on the exterior.

Did I mention they can interlock? Not only can they interlock, but if they are balanced/placed correctly they also provide 'windows'.  With 40+ of these little gems at hand, the lads and I began experimenting with layouts etc....

With a better appreciation as to what the blocks might do, I started knocking them together - there was A LOT of experimentation using different glues (super, hot, pva, plastic cement etc) and reinforcing materials (card, plasticard, plastic etc) and eventually I arrived at some combinations that struck the right balance between (apparent) durability, low-cost and ease of preparation and assembly.  So, over the course of a couple of weekends, Dad's Shed Workshop when into production mode...

We have been very happy with the results.  In addition to standard squares (using 4 spacers) I also tried my hand at some more complex shapes.  With the shapes built, I then played around using various methods to paint them - in addition to old fashion paint brushes, I tried spray cans and my airbrush.  The airbrush was especially effective and I had a go at both couple of basic stencils (cut by hand - no prizes for picking  up the references) and a light through the window-style effect.

After firing up a quick 200 point game of Rogue Planet, we were certain we were on a winner 😉

Having crept past the Nova Corp Marines, Disco Steve let lose into his primary objective - a squad of Terminators!

Sing it "Everybody in the House of Love, One Love, One God..."

So what now?  Well, the first batch of "buildings" is now effectively table-top ready 'done' and I'm now starting to put my mind as to what I'll do with the rest... yes "rest" as in I've almost got the same number of spacers again, ready and waiting to be slapped together to make for a @#^#$% HUGE amount of terrain - my dreams of a megacity one bloc war-type table is feeling increasingly achievable 😄

That image on the left is basically half of the spacers at work - I'd like to see if I can do something similar and try a 2000AD Bloc War maybe using Rogue Planet or similar.  With a few pipes, gangways, cooling towers, landing platforms and the like, I reckon there's a huge amount of fun to be had.