Won't somebody please think of the children?

I recently had a conversation with a pal regarding my recent 2nd Ed game, the board and scenery. One of the aspects we tend to forget about as wargamers is that when we build the environment for our games, we have to fill it with life. With a recreation of what's logically supposed to live (or what objects are supposed to be) in the area. I've seen hundreds of boards with a few pieces of scenery on them (why does it always have to be just gothic ruins?), always randomly scattered and making only sense as mere generic obstacles for moving or shooting. I'm fed up with those. That's was the aim of this crazy Besenval Port project, to build up a board that actually made sense. I was not building a board with some tactical interest for gaming, I was building a neighbourhood in which some action may take place in different ways.

Oh, I'm talking too much. What's this all about? What we tend to forget about when recreating any environment. One of these things are.. well, children! No matter how dirty your slums look, there are supposed to be some children kidding around! Once again, Hasslefree was the solution. Though being Warhammer 40,000 oriented, I wasn't looking for deformed children or any too Blanchesque design. That may come too in a future, but for the moment I was looking only for plain children. They may look kinda poor, sick or whatever, living in this shanty town, but I wasn't adding extra limbs, mutations or stuff.

 

Just these whippersnappers

They belong to Hasslefree medieval ranges, so I tried to make them look a little more sci-fi with very slight conversions.

Not that easy finding the balance and deciding what to add and what to leave apart

Though I was not aiming for anything too bizarre, if this was going to be WH40K, it had to look a little bit grotesque. This is a scaring, dangerous universe, after all.

 

Are you my mummy? Brrrr... shivering...

The only concession to weapons I tolerated were these two, as the sculpts already included them.

 

Are you twins or am I too drunk?

 

I replaced the regular guns they had with sci-fi guns and that was all. These were looking more like young adolescents looking for their place in a gang, so well, the guns may make some sense.

These are just a small representation, but enough for me to populate my port district, at least for the moment. So another chapter closed!

There are still more civilians to come ;), and I think I still need some street furniture (this is what I was talking above, things to make a city come to life), street lamps, signs and stuff. So this is far from finished yet!