Miniature Battle Damage

I was reading THE RISING by James Doohan (actually ghost written by S.M.
Sterling), and came across an interesting sentence.
Our hero is approaching a battle-damaged

On Tuesday, June 23, 1998 11:12 AM, Nyrath the nearly wise
[SMTP:nyrath@clark.net] wrote:>
> This lead me to interesting thoughts about

Personally I'd be loather to main the model unless it was a very bad casting.
I'd use paint effects and maybe surface effects. Using PVA glue you could
sculpt some melty blobby patterns or use epoxy putty.

Air brushes and graphite finings are good for burnt and scorched areas. Like
the Enterprise at the end of TWOK.

If you had a lot of models you could substitute a more damaged version after
the second threshold
roll for example (you'd need a lot of minis :-).

Go for it, and scan in and post the results.

> At 06:12 AM 6/23/98 -0400, you wrote:

<snip>

> This lead me to interesting thoughts about

I have a couple of minis that were mis-cast; lots of pitting and/or
misshapen or missing bits...I've been thinking of painting them with battle
damage instead of melting them down.

:)

[snip]

> This lead me to interesting thoughts about

This method can really be a lifesaver when you have a miscast figure. A little
extra scarring to make the miscast portion look ragged and torn, then paint it
scorched, and presto, it becomes an "undocumented feature!"

> At 06:12 23/06/98 -0400, you wrote:
SNIP
> This lead me to interesting thoughts about

        I think a bit of weathering\battle damage is generally a good
thing,
but mostly shouldn't be taken to excess- a scorch mark here and there, a
bit of dustblasting on leading edges, a repaired area painted in a slightly
different shade, etc.

Of course some species, such as Iain M Banks "hearty but horrible"
Affronters, might LIKE to show off previous damage- their ships' hulls
carefully preserve the ships outermost layer, preserving the scars of battle
without compromising their strength.

Rob

> Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> This lead me to interesting thoughts about

I think you must have a great deal more money than I do! :-)

Bye for now,

The other thing also, if you've got a little extra time or money is to have a
few ships "wrecked up" where you can replace good ones with them in the heat
of battle. It becomes visually appealing. I paint a lot of 5mm troops for
Napoleanics, Ancients, and SYW and I use the extra figs as casualties. They
get a quick paint job, (lots of red) then I sprinkle them around battle sites.
Looks very cool. Plus it reminds us that there's some real (metal) dyin' down
there. <g>

One of my Mark V Ogres is missing two of the secondary batteries, so I made a
pair of substitutes out of brass tubing. Unfortunately, I could not get the
mussles of the guns anything close to correct. So, I snipped them off about
halfway down their length, used pliers to mangle the ends, and then used a
dremel tool to make craters and some awfully big bullet holes
in the hull.  It painted up pretty well--white annd red body, with the
"craters" being painted black, with black paint drybrushed on to radiate away
from the holes. A bit of silver at the very bottom of the hole, and the scars
were done. It was an easy effect, and one that I may well repeat somewhere
down the line.