(BOX) 30 Days of Night of the Living Dead: A PAPPIS challenge (WIP)

[Rob_bresnen]

I have decided to take on the PAPPIS challenge, and make a battlefield that will fit into a PAPPIS box from IKEA.

In order to make something useful, I have decided to make a small Finnish village for a 28mm skirmish/zombie game. This is because I plan to do a Force on Force campaign set in Finland later in the year, and so any terrain I make for the PAPPIS challenge will be useful for this too. It also helps that yesterday I took delivery of some custom made 'snow' flock covered boards I have had on order from Total System Scenics.

Inspiration for the game will come form 30 Days of Night, a film in which a remote and isolated community in the Arctic Circle somewhere is attacked by vampires. I am swapping vampires for Zombies, hence the tittle 'Thirty Days of Night of the Living Dead'

Planning is in the early days so far, but I think I will have a shop (S Market), a police station, 3 or 4 houses/cabins and a mobile phone mast, a few clumps of pine trees (it is Finland after all) and a few bits of scatter terrain. All figures and scatter terrain will be stored inside the buildings to maximise space in the box.

I plan to try to up my game a bit with this terrain. I have seen the standards here on LAF and there are some amazing model makers. Hopefully the competition will prove a good intensive and help me make something I can be proud of. I have never made snow covered terrain before, so it will be a new experience for me.

I think I will right my own rules, but they may well be based on FUBAR. I will also need some spawning points and snow-zombies, as well as a handful of suitably dressed Finns to be my survivors





This is a quick mock up of the board just so I could test the idea and to check that the 'footprint' and hight of the buildings would be sufficient. obviously it's not going to look like this. Also note that the palm trees are not native to this part of Finland and are just proxies for the fir trees I haven't bought yet.

Here are a few pictures of Finnish houses I found on the net I will be using as inspiration for my terrain.

If I am very careful how I build these houses some of them might also be useful for Bolt Action 1939: The Winter War, when the good guys at Warlord get round to doing the Finnish rules.









Comments and advice very welcome! 

[Dr. The Viking]

Very cool with a fellow winter landscaper in the challenge!!!

I think it looks very promising already!

[Eric the Shed]

Looks great but will it all go in the box?

[Mason]

Looking good so far, Rob.
I like the concept for this game and I have to say that those photos that you put up show that Finland is obviously a very beautiful place.
 

[Rob_bresnen]

It does doesn't it. Unfortunately I have never been, but its high on my list of 'to do' places to go.

My best mate and regular gaming buddy Leon has family in Helsinki, so I guess that is the connection for me, from a gaming point of view. I bought a load of Black Tree Designs Russians cheep in one of their very frequent sales, and thought about the Winter War 1939. When I thought about a modern Force on Force game in Finland, Leon seemed up for it too.

The Zombie idea was a natural extension of the need to build some scenery form my other games, coupled with the growing interest in 'winter' post-apoc gaming here on LAF. When I looked around I found loads of great minis to use as armed civvies.

[Rob_bresnen]

OK- some progress made on the mini supermarket for my Pappis box. I have constructed it from mounting card and clear plastic card. It's the first time I have used this technique as I usually use Foam core card. I have learned a few things which will help me with the other buildings.

This is still very much a work in progress- I need to add an interior layer of card to hide the plasticard. Obviously it also needs a roof. Then I need to paint it and winter it up a bit with snow and ice. A 'S Market' sign will finish it off along with some posters etc. .

My original intention when buying coloured mounting card was to use the colored side on the inside so I wouldn't have to paint the interior. This will reduce the risk of warping. Unfortunately I forgot in my haste to assemble my building and so I will have to add another layer of card on the inside.

I accidentally got some glue on the windows and there is no way to get it off, so I will have to cover it up with snow flock. It should look OK.

The corner joints are messy and don't join up that well. And because the card is flat there isn't really enough details to dry brush, so I will have to work harder to highlight it I might add a skim of fine plaster to the outside, covering the joins and adding a but of texture to pick up the dry brushing.

The fire escape is OK but it needs some sort of railing round it- that's a heath and safety issue in the icy Finnish weather.

I was hoping to find some shop interiors suitable for a modern supermarket by I haven't found any yet. I will keep looking. I don't want loads, but just enough to give the impression of a small supermarket- a check-out and some shelves should do it.





Comments and advice from anyone who knows more about making buildings than me (which wouldn't be hard) is most welcome.

[Relic]

Looks good

Although we don't have palm trees here in Finland

[Centaur_Seducer]

Looking awesome, Rob
I hope you plan a band a roaming finnish alcoholics

[Rob_bresnen]

I am not going to get into any cross-Baltic slanging match.  I have the highest respect for the Finns. And their Vodka.

[FramFramson]

Certainly I'm sure Finnish vodka is better than this stuff:



 

[Centaur_Seducer]

I am not going to get into any cross-Baltic slanging match.  I have the highest respect for the Finns. And their Vodka.

Don't worry, I would suggest the same thing for Sweden as well

[pocoloco]

I am glad I checked this one out 

First of all, you could use those palm trees inside of a small bath house, if you want to make such a terrain piece... remember to add floating zombies as well

Then, roving drunkards would prolly all be turned into zombies amongst the first victims of a zombie outbreak... they are already in a semi-zombie tupor on many occasions so the transformation would be quite instant, I presume As a sidenote, they should be armed with knives and lunging after those player characters that have some booze in their belongings

The S-market is looking superb already as it is, other option would be K-market or Siwa... maybe even Tarmo Lähikauppias

If you ever end up in Finland, you need to take the Pappis box and the game with you!

[Rob_bresnen]

I am glad I checked this one out 

First of all, you could use those palm trees inside of a small bath house, if you want to make such a terrain piece... remember to add floating zombies as well

Then, roving drunkards would prolly all be turned into zombies amongst the first victims of a zombie outbreak... they are already in a semi-zombie tupor on many occasions so the transformation would be quite instant, I presume As a sidenote, they should be armed with knives and lunging after those player characters that have some booze in their belongings

The S-market is looking superb already as it is, other option would be K-market or Siwa... maybe even Tarmo Lähikauppias

If you ever end up in Finland, you need to take the Pappis box and the game with you!

Thanks for the suggestions. I like the K Matket Logo better than the S Market, So I might go for that. Not sure about the gangs of marauding Zombie-Alcoholics-with-Knives though.   

Although...I do have this one that might fit the bill...


Anyway. Back to the build.

I added a layer of cladding inside to cover up my earlier mistakes, some more surface detail to the outside to make painting the outside more fun, and some interiors. The upper floor can be easily removed. In an earlier version I modeled on a stair case, but it looked naff so I will just have to imagine their is an elevator or stairs up from the ground floor.






I have also finished the fire escape.



Next stage, after a few minor details, is to use a very thin layer of fine plaster to add texture to the cladding and fill in any gaps, then start painting it. After that...bit of snow and ice, and its done.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

[Dr. The Viking]

Looking brilliant so far!

Some ventilation things for exterior detail?! A market must have a cooling device of sorts I guess.

[Mason]

That is really coming along well. Rob.
 

How about access to the roof.
It will give you another gaming area without having to build too much.
 

Fram: That was a killer, mate.