Wreckwalls

Before I dive into this, I want to say a few words about Krylon Ruddy Brown Primer. I hate it! Oh sure, it's a nice, rich color and when it goes on, it goes on smooth, coats well, and has a lot in its favor. When it goes on. But here's the thing: Between the Sniperwrecks, the Terrain Board, the Terrain Rounds, and the Wreckwalls, I'm using a lot of this primer. A lot. A can and half already, and still more to go. But I've had to buy five cans. You know why? Because 3 of those 5 cans did not work. Two of them simply wouldn't spray. At all. Nothing, nada, zilch, zip. The third can sprayed fine for a test spray, and then as soon as I pointed it at the model it belched forth a short stream of chunky paint the same consistency as snot then refused to work any further. I'm sorry Krylon, but when your product has a greater than 50% epic fail rate, you suck. You hear me Krylon? YOU SUCK.

Anyhoo, the Wreckwalls are finished. As I mentioned in the Terrain Rounds post, I also covered 36"x2" of basswood (available in any hobby/hardware store) with the Kel-Seal mix. Specifically it was four strips of basswood, each 2" wide. One is 18" long, the other three are 6" each. These became bases for the Wreckwalls.


Constructing the Wreckwalls isn't really any different than making the Sniperwrecks. Exactly the same ingredients. Less involved if anything, since you don't have to cut off any bits from the Hot Wheels. It's like the difference between an omelet and scrambled eggs. Same ingredients, much easier to put together. Just smash them up a bit and they're good to go. Caving in the roof is the best plan, since this give the car the flattened look of a processed wreck and give it almost a brick like shape, easy for building walls. Just lay them out as you want them, then get out hot glue gun and go to town. As you can see, I went for a three car high stack. Two cars are all you really need to block LOS, but I wanted the walls to tower over the miniatures. And again, the scale problems inherent in using Hot Wheels are greatly mitigated by the monochromatic paint job and excessive bashing.

My cars are up on blocks. I must be a redneck.

Once they are assembled, spray coat them with the Ruddy Brown primer (or you could learn from my misadventures and try a different brand), then a heavy coat of the Antique Walnut polyurethane stain. I didn't have any mineral spirits when I made the Sniperwrecks, so I ruined my staining brush (now it's my staining block). I forgot to pick up a new brush, and tried to use a foam brush to apply the stain. BAD IDEA. It went on far too heavy, got poor flow, and pooled all over the base. Do a better job than I did, do it right. Mine came out too heavy and I'm a bit unhappy with them.

Still, once they dried and were drybrushed, they look nice and more than good enough for terrain pieces. As you can see below they aren't a perfect match for the Sniperwrecks, being just a bit darker. I also tossed together a random pile of cars and some other junk for variety. And clearly I need to give the tire pile a bit of the magic dip, because that's an awfully shiny pile of brand new tires for a junkyard.

Click for much, much larger image.