Terrain- Concrete Barriers 1

I do love a good apocalypse destroyed city. I admit it.

Between the derelict buildings, rusted cars and empty streets, it just screams apocalypse for me. So when I started planning a table of terrain for me to play Zombie on, it was natural that I would chose to replicate a city. The Walking Dead has been a great source for this- its view of the sprawling desolation that is Atlanta in Season One, as well as in the most recent season has been awesome to get my mind thinking on just what I want to have as part of the table.

While my plans might be big, for my first set of terrain I started small, with five of these:

These are Jersey Barriers, from Wikipedia they are "A Jersey barrier or Jersey wall is a modular concrete or plastic barrier employed to separate lanes of traffic. It is designed to minimize vehicle damage in cases of incidental contact while still preventing the crossover case of a head-on collision. Jersey barriers are also used to reroute traffic and protect pedestrians during highway construction, as well as temporary and semi-permanent protections against landborne attack such as suicide vehicle bombs.".

The models come from Secret Weapon Miniatures. I have only got the destroyed set so far, I definitely intend to pick up a set or two of the (relatively) undamaged ones, to make some form of abandoned army defensive positions on my ruined city streets.

Painting them was pretty simple. First, give them a soak then a scrub in warm soapy water. Resin needs releasing agents so that it doesn't stick to the mould, which leaves an oily residue that paint won't stick to. I'm sure most of you know this already, but if you forget to do it, it will ruin your lovely resin models!

Next step, give it an undercoat of black spray paint.

Then, I painted the whole model with Vallejo Medium Sea Grey, but you are welcome to choose whatever grey you want. I went with a lighter one, because it looked sortof like the real one I showed earlier.

To give the barrier some depth, and to show off the damaged parts, I gave it a liberal coating of Games Workshop's Nuln Oil. Once leaving that to dry, I then drybrushed the barriers again with Medium Sea Grey.

And that is enough to complete the barrier. Nice and simple, and will look effective on the tabletop.

I however have been reading the excellent DMZ comics again recently, which has some wonderful imagery of NYC as the middle of a new Civil War. One of the standout things which I love about the artwork in that comic is the amount of graffiti over everything- which made me think I wanted the same for my Jersey Barriers. So off to Google I went, my thanks to those Graffiti Artists who's work I shamelessly copied- they are far more creative at their craft than I could ever dream of being, so it made more sense for me to copy their work!

This is how my 5 barriers ended up.....

I used a couple of coats of the bright colour, to make sure that the colours were really bright. I then made a mix of Vallejo Hull Red and German Grey, and gave a light dry brush over the damaged areas, and some other parts of the barrier to give the impression that the Zed Apocalypse has not been kind to these poor concrete barriers.

Anyway, back to painting the next survivor!

Chris