The Little House on the Prairie

Well actually “Medium house in the desert” would be more accurate but that just didn’t sound quite as good.

Its been a long time since I’ve painted any decent amount of 15mm sci-fi models. The majority of what I have done in the past was for Tony’s magnum opus “Blood, Guts ‘n’ Gore in Space” a rather scary 25 years ago. Since I fancied painting something fun and different I decided to knock up a test piece for a small desert town.

So, meet Charles the small blue alien and his house. Charles is a freelance accountant (aliens have to pay taxes as well) living on a remote part of Yenpalo 6.

My aim with the model was to utilise as many items from our ranges as possible since that made my life easier compared with scrabbling around in my spares box.

The centrepiece of the model, the house itself is the Medium House. As we don’t yet make any wall sections I carefully cast just the wall from the Villa to surround the “garden”. The canopy over the front door is the ramp from the Athena VTOL supported by bits cut from the Colony Base connector frames. On the roof of the house is a TV / broadband receiver made from the sensor on the rear of the Komodo tank turret.

To the left of the front door is a fuel cell unit made from a rocket pod from the Warlock support tank. Next to the back door is a geothermal heating and cooling system made from the front of a Grömitz class Missile Frigate.

Charles himself is one our Alien civilians. His transport is a Raeside pick-up that he aquired at a bargain price after the XP-38 came out. Helping with daily work is a utility droid (which is the only model I wasn’t able to source from our own catalogue but was just too good to leave out).

Filling in the odd gaps are items from the vehicle stowage set, a couple of fuel drums from the Soviet Bizon tank and a small cargo pod. I also added a couple of cylindrical containers from a yet to be released accessory set.

The base is a simple piece of MDF covered with sand and small stones. Paints were from Games Workshop, Wargames Foundry and Army Painter. The final touch was a few suitably un-healthy looking tufts of Army Painter grass.

And a comment from Tony – “Now if you could just replicate that 10-12 times to make an entire desert village… :-)”