Urban Terrain, Planning permission

Well planning is officially underway for the first building of the cityscape.

The idea is to make the pieces more of actual terrain buildings then the shells we often see on tables, hence the notes about rafters and rubble.

This attached photo is of the liberation of St. Lo during the Normandy campaign to give a sort of idea where this will be going.

Although the MDF ruin is pictured with 40k models, the main aim is to make things generic enough to be used in Bolt Action, WW3, near future sci-fi and 40k.

One thing I have discovered though, is that my guesstimate of a 12" width for this first piece's base was too narrow for me to get the piles of rubble alongside the walls...

Good job I haven't started cutting yet!

The second building has also been sketched.

Because every city needs a shady bar, just this one has been blown to bits!
Again I think my 10" base guesstimate will be a bit conservative.

Next time, building will commence!


 - Lewis

Urban Terrain, the beginning

A bit ago I visited my friend over in Stockport and we had a great Apocalypse game at Element Games where we learned a few things about the game and about the gaming center.

Chief amongst those lessons was that people will always stop by and start talking whilst you are trying to play your game and this inevitably slows play as you end up talking and stuff instead of concentrating on your game.

In our conversation on the way home when I dropped him off, we were discussing his house and the fact that he has a spare double bedroom just being filled with junk, a lightbulb lit up, a dubious plan was hatched and set in motion.

He had found out some older wargaming pieces which he didn't want anymore and had tried unsuccessfully at the Warboot (Element Games version of a Carboot sale) to shift, so I offered to try on eBay for him.

The proviso was that I didn't send him the cash, but used it to build up a terrain collection and we would turn his spare room into a gaming room with table, bookshelves, display shelves, etc.

With several of the items now sold, orders have been placed and started to turn up, just in time as I had just watched this YouTube video by LukesAPS.

First was for a set of MDF ruined city buildings.

There are varying amounts of 1, 2, 3 and 4 floor buildings here, all with floors and windowsills.

I've added some detailing parts from my own terrain supplies:

Textured brick plasticard, this is made for model railways, but I am going to use it here as a way of adding interest with parts of brick showing through plaster on a couple of the buildings.

Normal Crafting Card, will be used to create raised structural beams on the outside of a couple of the buildings to prevent the “flat MDF look”.

 

Likewise a cheap tub of baking powder, this will become the outer texture of the buildings, it's not as coarse as plaster or filler, and will look better I think when painted, again to add variation to the buildings.

 

 

I ordered a pack of these Notice Boards which should look nicely on either a lampost scatter piece or on the corners of the buildings. Likewise these packs of hatches and grills will serve the same-ish functions.

 

And these are a set of 3D printed crushed barrels I picked up to throw around the pieces and add some interest to them.

Toy cars are always a godsend, and this 1:48 scale JCB digger made by Teamsterz is a nice piece to use, I'll try to get some building site stuff to go with it as a scatter piece. More of use in modern, near future sci-fi though?

I also have several of the cars made by the same company available to use as well.

 

Lastly this is a strip from one of the old blinds that I had in the conservatory of my house which we replaced. I kept this as the texture and pattern on it was interesting, could be useful.

Never throw anything out...

Lastly, I dug through my “Old GW Books” box and dragged out the old Cityfight book, as I remembered that this had a good section on how to build scenery for 40k, techniques which can be used for lots of differing buildings as one of the aims with this project is to not make it too 40k focused, as we have both expressed interest in Bolt Action WW2 gaming recently as well.

 

A selection of the pages from the Cityfight book shows what I meant:

 

I haven't started building yet, just in the planning stage, but this is shaping up to be a fun project already.

Let the creation commence!

Until next time...

- Lewis

Post-Holiday update

Well a busy few weeks after my last update with the Stormcast as we've been away on holiday for a few days to get away from everything.

I managed to pack a little wagaming kit to take with for when we were back at the cottage relaxing at night.

Just a cheap £4 make up/cosmetic travel bag which had movable sections inside and room for everything.
Paints, Brushes, Glue, Files, Clippers, Knife, Water Pot, some paper towel hidden in the zip pocket and most importantly some Miniatures wrapped in bubble wrap for the journey.

I took a couple of Stormcast Eternals, a Chaos Knight, a Primaris Marine and the Flamer Ecclisiarchy Woman from Blackstone Fortress (her name escpaes me).

Out of everything, I managed to get the flamer woman completed and a black basecoat and highlights down on the Primaris.

I tried to push some painting skills with this model, as I deliberately kept to a muted, monochrome colour scheme in order to make the gold and flames stand out.
The flames were painted following along with a Warhammer TV tutorial on Youtube, and i'm really pleased with how they turned out for a first attempt.
One of my friends said that I should have thinned the paints more to make a glaze like paint, so i'll try that next time.

Aside from the little painting done, I did pick up a trilogy of Sci-Fi novels and spent a bit of time starting to read the first one.

So far they've been enjoyable, good old fashioned Space Opera stuff.
Varying alien races which get along (to a degree), this is set after the war, so there are worries about Marines in peacetime, and diplomatic relations between the races which were allied and stuff.
Good inspiration for a sci-fi skirmish game if you ask me.

 Anyway, things will begin to return to normal soon, as I have a couple of large projects lined up.

 Until next time...


 - Lewis

Workbench Wednesday, Completed models

Hello,

After a turbulent week or so I have managed to (mostly) crank out some more Stormcast Eternals to get a few things shifted from the workbench.

Namely, I concentrated on this unit of five Sequitors:

I know they aren't the original ones I posted in my workbench post earlier in January, but they are complete (mostly).

I needed a small project I could work on for half hour or so at a time, and these models were close enough to being finished that they fit the bill perfectly in that I could see progress and keep motivation up whilst painting.

Tonight, before posting this, I have also taken a little time to rework a few things on some completed models I already had for this army.
Namely a couple of heroes on foot and the original unit of Liberators I finished something like two or three years ago now.

The entire force so far:

Including the Dracoth mounted hero which was my first completed model of 2020.

The Liberators:

 And the Lord Castellant and Neave Blacktalon, Knight-Zephyros:

 My usual bronze and red colour scheme for them. 

The stormhost I imagine is operating and based on the Plane of Beasts, Ghur. 

So very subdued armour compared to GW's GOLD coloured Hammers of Sigmar, I do need to decide on a name for my stormhost actually...

Well, I wanted to post these and get them cleared off the desk and into the display cabinet for now.

Thoughts about some sort of Path-To-Glory style campaign played over Discord with friends in other cities have been swirling recently, along with tables for followers growing the armies (as I plan to mix forces together) and other random events and such, but that's a post for a different day.

Until next time...

 - Lewis