Here are the pics of the Skull Cave furnished. It is a bit too crowded for gaming and I will prune it down a bit to be representative.

An overview look.

Hall of Famous People

Library

Entrance

Water well in a corridor enclave.

Crypt of previous Phantoms

Armoury. I will need to include some modern weapons racks.

Small treasure room.

What treasure room can be without a Teddy Bear!?

Large treasure room.

Costume room where all of the previous Phantom’s uniforms are kept.

Office and radio room. Somewhere I have some computer banks in 28mm to modernize and update the Phantom’s communications.

Skull Throne room. I will need to make a Skull Throne unless somebody knows where I can get one from. The one’s on Etsy are too expensive in postage to Oz.

Private quarters en-suite. I have just noticed I need to add some tiles on the floor!

Phantom’s Private Bed Chamber.

Left over furniture

These pictures are poor but there was also a lot of “spooky stuff” that came with the Haunted Manor box including:

• 1 Goliath monstrosity
• 4 Mutants
• 1 Giant mutant
• 1 Bat swarm
• 1 Werewolf
• 1 harpy (will this go with the Grand piano?)
• 1 Direwolf
• 1 Witch
• 1 Giant Raven
• 1 Cult Leader
• 1 Tentacles bursting out of ground
• 2 Different spooky trees
• 2 Frog swarms

The spooky trees will be great to use for a search for the tree of life, or the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Might be the Genesis of an idea that would make good Chapters 2 and 3 to a religious tome!

So instead of being nearly finished I have a good few months painting to go!

As I indicated in a previous post, Season of Scenery 10, I was lucky enough to pick up a whole pile of “Terrain Crate” furniture at less than wholesale price from a long term supplier and this will be used to “populate” the Phantom’s “Skull Cave” rooms.

Included are some quick pics of the goodies before I unpack and work out what I need to paint ASAP.

I will provide some pics in a later update of the unpainted furniture in place.

Now you may call me “nothin but a Hound Dog” “In the Ghetto” who is “All Shook Up” because I had my “Jailhouse Rock” , but I AINT NO ELVIS FAN.

Now “don’t” have a “suspicious mind” as the closest “a fool such as I” gets is Bubba Hotep about which I have already posted. In that “a devil in disguise” is haunting a nursing home more like “heartbreak hotel” where the residents are being “returned to sender” in the sweet “by and by”! The real “guitar man”, Elvis, gets “wild in the county” dealing with “trouble”, while “farther along” with the help of “a hard headed woman” and a resident on the “edge of reality” who thinks he is a black JFK, is trying to take down the “big boss man” .

I could go on but I won’t!

You now have to scroll through to page three of a google search on “The King” to find a reference to Elvis. How the mighty have fallen!

Say what you will, but since the beginning of his career, Elvis has had an extensive cultural impact. According to Rolling Stone, “it was Elvis who made rock ‘n’ roll the international language of pop.” The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll describes Presley as “an American music giant of the 20th century who single-handedly changed the course of music and culture in the mid-1950s”.

His recordings, dance moves, attitude, and clothing came to be seen as embodiments of rock and roll. His music was heavily influenced by African-American blues, Christian gospel, and Southern country. Some people claim that Presley created a whole new style of music: “it wasn’t black, wasn’t white, wasn’t pop or wasn’t country—it was different.” He gave teens music to grow up with and listen to, as most singers in his time created music geared for adults.

I see Elvis as more of a post apocalyptic gang leader than a superstar!

The model I was going to use for Ossie Davis the guy who thinks he is JFK in Bubba Hotep.

The King

The closing scenes of the movie show these two old geezers in a fight to the finish with Bubba Ho-Tep, but unlike the spate of superhero movies of late these two have no superhero powers, and are just two old codgers engaged in a fight with the obvious hilarious consequences.

Vale Elvis even if you are now on page three!

Grandpa jokes I know, but the rugrats love Transylvanian and think vampires are “cool”! I should show them “Fright Night” to set them straight! I have a few game sets now that feature vampires and I needed to get out of my coffin and get some painted.

I really like the “Fist Full of Lead Tales of Horror” set from Wiley Games and have set my Vampire Covens up for their rules.

There is a Master or Mistress Vampire, an Acolyte or bride vampire and up to three fledgling vampires, each with various skills. One fledgling vampire can be swapped for a group of three henchmen or three horde bases such as bats, rats or a wolf.

I have chosen a group of three Cossack Count’s guards as a henchmen choice.

Fledgling Vampire, in this case the Counts former butler!

The counts former footman is another fledgling vampire.

The Countess.

The count himself!

Zombie Dogs is a term referring to domesticated canines infected with the zombie virus through its secondary method, namely the ingestion of infected food or organisms. It should be noted that they are separate from the Cerberuses, which were created specifically as a Bio Organic Weapon (B.O.W.? Wow!), while zombie dogs are viewed and treated as unintended side-effects of the zombie virus dispersal and are thus classified as irregular mutants. Still that doesn’t explain what happened at marvel stadium last night( does it!

Dog-gone? Bulldogs’ finals hopes fade!

WESTERN BULLDOGS     3.4      5.5       9.9      11.12 (78)
FREMANTLE                     5.1      9.4      13.8     14.11 (95)

Guru Says “whenever someone supports a perennial cellar dweller one should be prepared for disappointment”!

Guru is always prepared!

At least this lot will be useful in Zona Alpha and Post Apocalyptic games although I think some of them would be ideal playing in defence for the Western Bulldogs! They would at least have more bite!

The miniatures are 3D prints from Miniporium.

I have only just started the painting of the other two pieces of terrain today as I will be busy watching football. As Bill Shankly has often been misquoted: “Football is not life and death, it is more important than that”!

I have just put the first coat of dry brushing on both pieces.

I should get some more completed tomorrow.

Just a quick post today to show these excellent objective markers from Eureka Miniatures.

The major objective is a pile of resin skulls. Undercoated with Tamiya TS3, dry brushed with a light brown and brushed with a Nurgle Green contrast.

The pile of three skulls is a metal casting.

Although quite small the take a Dymo label on their underside.

These will feature in a lot of Post apocalyptic and Horror games.

Finally, with the exception of a few touch ups, the cavern is completed. Well almost, but more on that later.

I did not want this a piece of terrain that is only used for occasional games once a year or so. I started thinking about what other uses it could be put to:

The dictators underground bunker

Or maybe a dastardly German Vampire’s cavern of doom.

Maybe for the odd D&D dungeon crawl game, but heaven forbid I don’t want to conjure up a Mindslayer!

Of course there is always the purpose for what it was intended.

However when one thinks of a cave one always thinks of bats, well at least I do anyway.

The man with the Red Phone

So at least it has a few uses,

The finished item with everything painted and glued to the base so that it moves in one piece.

I chose to stick with the black walls with some grey dry brushing leaving the black in the recesses.

The doors painted and installed in place.

I also bought some corridor ends to both breakup the stone walls but to also uses as secret passageways.

This one in the Phantoms personal chambers is an escape route out of the cave, while the one in the Bat Cave shots allows the Bat Mobile to drive out.

The odd smudge of green paint was added to the walls to give a more authentic look.

The slight bit of colour on the floors also helps to break up the expanse of grey tiles.

Now for the “almost completed bit”. I have a large collection of 54mm Punic Wars figures and needed another box of Gallic Cavalry, so I phoned my long term supplier only to find that he is n o longer in the business. He did however have some stock left and while he was sorting things out he was telling me what he had found. He came across a box full of Terrain Crate furniture items. We haggled for a little bit and as well as my box of Gauls I ended up with fifteen boxes of 32mm furniture, dungeon items, wizards library, treasure, and manor house items including a grand piano to paint for the cavern!

Looks as if this project will be going for another month!

I will start working on Skull Cave and Skull Mountain over the weekend when time permits.

The second box of my Stargrave mercenaries arrived from War and Peace Games today. These are the last I need to have enough to start playing the game. Given I had worked so hard to get rid of my pile of unassembled plastic I put them together straight away.

The issue I had was how to get enough variety in the Alien cultures way of fighting when the only difference between the figures is a head change and what weapons you give them.

First there are the “funny faced thingies”. I have determined that they are independent and can operate in small squads of four. Each has a leader a heavy weapon and two standard weapons.

The “Bug Eyed Monsters” prefer ranged combat and have a leader, three rocket launchers and four snipers.

The “Heavy Breathers” also are flexible enough to break up into two small squads one with three heavy machine guns and the other with standard weapons. I have just noticed I have to do a head swap with a “bug eye” (rear right) that I will fix up later.

Da “puppy dogs”! These are a balanced squad with leader, rocket launcher, heavy machine gun, sniper rifle, and four with standard weapons.

Cold blooded killers. The “lizard heads” are close combat experts and have a pistol and hunting knife. That makes up the 5 groups of eight aliens of Stargrave plastic mercenaries.

I have these which I don’t know where they came from but will be useful.

These are “Loor Scouts” from CP models.

An attack bot from CP Models.

A Hammerhead from CP models.

Goloths from CP Models. The second from the left will be part of my 5 Parsecs crew.

This one also from CP models will also be part of my crew. The model just needs some green stuff filling before I undercoat it.

That will give me more than enough nasties for 5 Parsecs, although these future “BUG” offerings from Wargames Atlantic are a must purchase when available:

I had about an hour this afternoon to go crazy with some spray cans. Fortunately it was a sunny afternoon and I could get outside to work on the project.

The first thing I did was to paint the flat spots on the hills that were going to be “flocked” a green. I find that black can sometimes “bleeds through” the flocking. Painting it a colour that will match the flocking prevents this.

Remember these hills are for gaming and need to be flat and practical to stand figures on.

I then worked on the tiled cave floor. First it was sprayed with several shades of grey paint, and then VERY LIGHTLY sprayed from about 18″ with various colours to break up the grey.

It was then dry brushed with several different browns to dirty it up and then sprayed a clear semi-gloss. I find pavers and stepping stones look better with a satin or semi-gloss rather than a straight flat spray.

I then worked on the cavern walls, firstly spraying the walls black and then some various colours on top. I started with black also on top but this took away from the walls and tiles. Although bright it seems to add rather than take away from the overall finish but I would like some feedback on that.

Sprayed on the “drop sheet” outside.

Sitting on the cavern floor base.

I will paint over the top over-spray when I do the walls.

I was going to paint the walls a matt grey with highlights, but I think that will be too much like the tiles. At this stage I am intending to leave them black, with some light blue and grey highlights to lift them. What do people think?