From Curt: Cartel Gangsters and their Housetrailer Holdout (85 Points)

Happy New Year Everybody!

As we turn over to 2020 this will also wrap up my time shepherding the Holiday Season submissions. I'll be passing us over to our brave Weekly Minions, with the esteemed camel-driver DaveD taking the helm for New Year Day. 

I thought I'd close out with a final submission before I hand over the keys to Dave. 

This is a book-end entry to my SAS post from last week. Here we have a nasty band of cartel members, in the midst of a shoot-out next to their seedy caravan hideout.

Similar to my previous post, these figures are all from Spectre Miniatures. I find them to be  very characterful sculpts and a lot of fun to paint. 

As with most of my skirmishy collection, I sawed off the original metal bases on all the figures and replaced them with acrylic bases supplied by my good friend Byron over at Northern Lights Terrain (as we all know, Byron's both a participant and a long-time Challenge sponsor, bless him). It's a bit of a pain to do, but I like the effect of being able to see the table surface though the bases.

The caravan/housetrailer is from Sarissa Precision. I really like their kits as they are seemingly specifically designed for muppets like me. I managed to put this thing together in under 30 minutes AND without completely screwing it up. Bonus.

I wanted to this to be a really dodgy place, definitely not an AirBnB Superhost location, so I went pretty hard on the weathering. For the siding I wanted an effect of faded, peeling paint which I attempted to convey with various shades of simple craft paints. It's pretty rough, but I think it works at arms length.

I kept the interior fairly basic. As opposed to the exterior these guys must be minimalist neat freaks...

I wanted the skylights to be just as nasty as the exterior so I smeared superglue on the surface and misted it with water to get a frosted, scaled effect. I then drybrushed them both light khaki to convey they being filthy and cracked.

Now for a little tabletop scatter. These trash piles, cardboard boxes and stacks of concrete bricks are also from Spectre. 

I find the piled trash bags to be especially neat additions to the terrain collection. 

The largest pile of bags is cast flat along the rear so it can be placed flush along a building. I think they all help give the tabletop that lived-in, urban-decay look.

The Ford F-150 Raptor was a very late addition and has a little story behind it. It was Sarah's birthday this past Monday and a few days prior I was at a ladies gift shop picking something out for her. After I made my purchase I spied in the children's section a group of diecast vehicles. This truck caught my eye and I plunked down for it thinking that, with a little weathering, it will serve nicely as a ride for my cartel boss. 

This group should net me 60 points for the 12 figures, 20 for the caravan and tabletop scatter and another 5 for the weathering on the truck, giving it a grand total of 85.

Thanks for checking in. Now, I put on my pith helmet and head back to Challenge Island.