Scenery Workshop: Landing Pad

Take a look at my latest 40k building!

Now let's get a bit of ancient history.

Many many years ago, when building terrain for Mordheim was my overriding passion and my son, wife and I spent all our time doing it, I got a hairbrained idea to build a mayor's house that way raised up on my pillars. It was going to have a balcony all round it and a thatched roof.

I built the platform and started on the house, but needless to say, the house remained unfinished. The teddy bear fur I was using for the thatch looked terrible and the hosue itself was too squat. I lost the impetous and left the project unfinished for about ten years.

Until this weekend just gone that is.

I got it down from the shelf because I'd got me an idea.

I'd been using the piece all these years in games but it never made much sense to me - there's not even a way to get up to the top. But I figured I could build onto it without damaging the original structure and bring it to life in a more realistic and useful way that I could use in games of 40k and Necropolis.

Using foamboard, I build flat upper surface to go over the platform and scored squares into it. Then using parts from an old wooden dish drainer I added a skirt that would disguise the top edge of the original platform.

I'd made a helipad years ago out of foamboard circles. I never used it and this seemed the ideal time to get it back into circulation. Raised up on a little box my wife gave me, it would look cool and the differing heights would make the piece look more interesting.

But how were characters to get to the top? A ladder would preclude taking any luggage or equipment so a lift seemed the way to go. I built one from foamboard, adding cardboard stips for a bit of sci-fi detailing and some 40k building doors top and bottom. The base of the lift is an extension to the original footprint that I kept in line to make sure it would still work in my town. Again, with a ramp going from the lift to the landing pad I felt the walkway would add another level of visual appeal.

Et voila!

It's unpainted obviously but when it's done I think it may just look quietly cool.

A Trip to the Big City!

I am cooking with gas when it comes to 40k right now.

Inspired by my recent game with my wife the other day, I decided to build a whole bunch of new buildings for my war board.

I've had quite a lot of 40k buildings for years but not enough to cover my eight foot board and have had to make do with a bunch of homemade medieval buildings that didn't allow models inside them. As this was bugging me I decided to push it a little further:

Now I can get a little single minded so one building wasn't enough for me.

I decided to do TWELVE new buildings. 

Here's the first one.

It's a temple using the old GW ruins that came with 3rd edition 40k. Now I count this as four of my twelve because although it makes a nice big building it can also be split  up into four smaller ones.

I added cake pillars to the base to make it look more like a ruined church and painted the rocks on the base to match in. The trick with the The statue and aquilla from the Honoured Imperium set add a little something but they can be removed if they bug me. 

Now this building is good but its weakness is that it's a little too striking. I wonder if it'll bug me long term having it in every game. I like my buildings to be slightly more generic where possible.

My next big four part building was this one:

Again, I built it to be split-downable, using Ork obstacles to suggest walls, especially for when they're split up into separate buildings. You'll notice the aim of the game here was to maximise the surface area of the buildings to fill the war board, rather than building tall, but smaller buildings. I'll be focusing on that next.

The main lesson I've learned with my buildings is to build them all on the same sized footprint, each one having a little edge round it to suggest a pavement. This way, the buildings fit together to form roads VERY easily in any direction but also look good standing alone.

The next part of my project was to get my bastions to look good in a town setting. They already look good in a countryside game but without a base they look wrong in a town. So I built flat foamboard bases for each one that I could add a bastion and obstacles to to make it look like it's a proper building - maybe a little guardhouse or something...?

I'm not entirely happy with how they've come together but I'm planning to add a streetlight or two which should make a big difference. I tell you what would add something, thinking now: how about a vehicle parked off-road? That would be cool.

Man, this is a long blog.

(Deep breath).

Next I produced the Shrine of the Aquila. This is a lovely big building that adds some much needed height. Height is something my town doesn't have enough of yet. To make it look interesting it has to go in all three dimensions. I'm planning to rectify that soon but in the meantime this helps.

Now I was originally planning to include this kit in the temple above but I realised it was going to get too big. Wanting to keep my buildings on the same size footprint I was forced to build it in this conventional way. I'm still pretty happy though. It is cool.

And here, finally is my third "building" that I wanted to transplant into the town: a homemade bunker that I constructed from foamboard and balsa wood. Again, it's a nice piece but looked odd in my town. Now though it fits in a lot better and can still be removed for a more rustic setting. I'll add a streetlight to this as well when I get round to it to make it look more real.

The gun on the top, by the way, is the Forge World gun emplacement thingy that no longer seems to be available.

Annoyingly, the practically free quad gun in Planetstrike is ironically better than this expensive model because it's twin-linked. This one looks a lot better though. 



Building a Diorama: Forge World Death Korps of Krieg - Before the Push

I've already written an article about my intentions when building my Before the Push Diorama, but I thought it might be interesting to look at the process I went through... with pictures.  

My original concept of the commissar giving last instructions to his men had been intended to be delivered from a low stage but my mind quickly jumped to doing something in a trench. But how to do that without forcing the viewer to look down on the tops of the heads of the miniatures???

I decided to go with a cross-section of a trench and hope to God that viewers knew what it was supposed to be.

I needed a base, which caused me a lot of trouble as I couldn't find one of the fancy display bases you see in Golden Demon anywhere! In the end I found a handy cake stand which fit the bill perfectly.

I made the wall of the trench using a block of cheese insulation foam which I cut to match the edge of the cake stand. At this point I laid out the men to see how it would look (very important).

Now it looked far too rigid obviously so I cut away at the foam to blend it down into a more natural trench-top. I wanted to have a look-out post so he needed a shelf to stand on high enough to give him a view.

To give an impression of depth I thought it would be nice to have a bunker entrance. I built the entrance from balsa wood then hollowed out deep enough so that, painted black, it would look like it went somewhere.

 To give the earthy texture, I add %£&"^ loads of multi-purpose filler mixed with gravel and PVA glue. I stuck razor wire in so that it went under the surface of the mud.

 Then dried it under a table lamp with Wilma keeping watch.

At this stage I worked towards making it a bit more "trenchy." The walls were made from fabric that I planned to paint with metallic colours. I cut them into small enough sections to make them look like sheets of metal. I had the "mud" overlap the tops of the barriers.

Now how to suggest the opposite wall of the trench without it actually being there...?

I went with piling up some barrels. It isn't perfect. But seeing the models clearly was a higher priority than perfectly representing a trench.

 And after adding a little rat amongst the barrels that was about it. It was time for painting!

 The mud was done in greys and browns and I also added some water effect for puddles. I did the metals in boltgun metal with the now unavailable Flesh Wash for rust.

Finally came the trickiness. I'd painted the Death Korps of Krieg separately with Adeptus Battle Grey, black wash, then up through the greys with bestial brown webbing, inked dark then highlighted up.

My friend Joao gave me some tough love, telling me my previous Death Korps weren't as well painted as I thought they were (bastard). But he was right and I went the extra mile on these guys.

The trickiness was positioning all the men so they were realistically listening to the commissar or getting on with making preparations. This took a while and I had to flatten a couple of spots on the ground to give some of them a good support where before there had been potholes. I used sand and glue for this.

Last of all I added a stub gun to the look-out position to look like it is off its stand, ready to be clipped into position.



It seemed rather criminal to me to "waste" expensive Forge World Death Korps models on a diorama and for a while I toyed with placing them on it on bases.. or maybe dismantling it after the competition.

Now I'm glad that never happened. this is probably the best piece I've ever done. My Tyrannosaurus Rex and Alpha Level Psykers, Goliath and Golgotha come close but I think they probably lose.

Comments and feedback will be gratefully received.

Please.

On the Painting Table: Honoured Imperium

Last year I lost my job and in a difficult financial and troubling time my good friend Joao stepped up to bat to prove he was a good buddy. And he bought me the Honoured Imperium boxed set to cheer me up.

Well I guess things happen and you don't always get round to things one way or another; but one day you do and this particular blog is a big thank you to my good friend.

These two scenery pieces are pretty cool. I remember seeing the Aquilla (below) before it came out in a White Dwarf or somewhere and thinking it was just plain amazing!

It's nice to add an extra bit of coolness to the gaming table and hopefully these will do that.

The statue was actually painted the same colour-scheme as my Imperial Guard Chalice Tridents: Graveyard Earth, Kommando Khaki and then Bleached Bone. It's a more benign way of doing cream-coloured stone than my old method: Bestial Brown followed by Bleached Brown: the goal with anything like that being a slow progression of similar colours rather than a big jump from one to another.

The Aquilla is the usual range of greys from Astronomicon to Fortress via Codex.

Notice the yellow tinge though. That's the wonderful Bubonic Brown - perfect for that touch of weathering.

They were a long time coming but I'm glad they're here.

Thanks buddy.

Re-examining the Brood Nest

Apologies, I must have gotten confused when I was writing my previous blog about my Tyranid Brood Nest.

It turns out it was less scenery piece and more cat vomit.

And here is the culprit:

Haydon!  

It’s actually what I found on my War Table when I got home from work yesterday. I think he was just trying to get involved with my various projects.

The funniest thing was that if you look at the “Brood Nest” there’s a fish shaped cat biscuit nestled in the front of it!

I must say, my friend Mike was sceptical. He described it as looking like “a pile of glue and s#!+, it doesn’t look like anything.”

I do actually have a few home made Brood Nests. I must remember to post some pictures.

Heh heh.

On the Painting Table: Tyranid Brood Nest

And here is my latest scenery project: A Tyranid Brood Nest.

This is the first one of a series of linked projects that will populate the table when the gribbly ones have descended for feasting.

I decided to go for quite an elongated shape for my first one and constructed it from a mixture of gravel, sand and PVA glue.

This has had its base coat but I’ll be adding highlights later on.