Urban Terrain: Municipal building progress.

So, things have been rather busy at work as of late.
Last minute schedule and timetable adjustments, staff going off sick, coming back, stress levels at everything are high as we deal with the public at large. So hobby time this past week or so has practically disappeared.

That's why I haven't posted any 30 minutes for 30 days recently more on that soon!

Today, I got a day off from work and the world, so cracked on with some hobby to relax.

When we last left the Municipal Building (as that's what I am making it), I'd gotten the base bevelled and the foundation applied.

Progress has been rapid.

I started with thinking that the build was missing something, looking at some old world war 2 photographs on Google I was struck by how often a chimney would be left standing surrounded by rubble. This phenomenon was very common in Stalingrad, must be how the Russians build their houses.

So armed with some hasty measurements:

 A sheet of foam board and 15 minutes or so, I had this:

Another 15 minutes or so with some rapid drying PVA and things were progressing, a few snippets of an old plastic straw also produced chimney pots:

It was then placed in a test position on the build:

You may think it's a little tall, but look around at houses and building near you. They are often a lot taller then we actually think, andd most wargaming buildings are just shells placed to represent a building. With this project I figured why not actually try to make stuff to scale, especially height as that is one of the main things I found lacking in the terrain collections at Element Games and Warhammer World.

Whilst that was off drying, I got to thinking about the front garden area.

I wanted to include a fenced off area, generally make this one of the more well looked after parts of the city before the war came.

I had picked up some MDF laser cut fencing and with some cutting and sanding:

 To see how it looked together I threw a few Ventrillian Nobles on:

These steps were mainly done over on Saturday evening when I got home from work.

Leaving the chimney to set overnight, today, being bright and sunny, I moved outside to work.

First thing was to get the chimney a coat of the textured PVA, sand and black emulsion mix, then glued down and foam formers added around it:

I hadn't glued down the fence on the front, as I needed to keep the building frontage removable until the next steps are complete.

In order to build up the ground forms and not have it just look like polystyrene foam, I bought some of the modelling compound from Geek Gaming, time to figure out how it worked, Luke makes it look so easy...but that's his business so he has to.

 Armed with this and some water, how difficult could it be?

Turns out not that difficult*, and as he says in as lot of his videos, you just slap it on, and have about 20 minutes to work with.

As I was out in the sun, it was more like 15 but working in small area's at a time it was really easy to create the landforms I wanted:

Now remember, all this will be covered with rubble, sand and gravel soon.

That's the next job, even though it says on the packaging that it is ready in about an hour, it does say it can be damp for up to 24 hours, so I'm going to leave the build overnight to cure properly before moving on.

I am aiming to create a few flatter area's with the next stage where miniatures can perch when fighting within the building.

Once this stage is completed I can can glue the building in place proper and start landscaping the front, including ac blown in the fence on on of the corners (I messed up when cutting the fence to size).

And a few "action shots" for scale:

 Burna Boyz lead the way in for the Evil Sunz Klan.

View through the front door, there will be a stone path leading up to it.

A Ventrillian fireteam, with Sentinel support patrol the ruins.

Lastly:

"Private Jenkins, No grenades inside the building...get back here you stupid boy!"

(I could have called him Private Pike, but these guys aren't that much of a blundering set of fools).

Before I leave the cityscape, as this build is progressing, thoughts inevitably turned to the next one.

Browsing eBay I found this kit:

Something different, what about a Canal?

Running across the width of the board, it would give a piece of blocking terrain which would hinder movement but not range or LoS, something not often seen on a table (or I haven't seen it anyway).

I went searching through my cityfight book for a particular image, the Imperial city of Tsaragrad:

Complete with canal...mine would be a slightly raised one with the canal water level on the same as the board, but I have 12% of a plan to deal with it.

Well, this was a huge post, hopefully I should be able to post updates more regularly.

Until next time...

*I am not affiliated with Geek Gaming or sponsored to include this in this post, I just like to share awareness of products I find good and useful.

 - Lewis

Urban Terrain, building commenced.

Along with the Samurai challenge I am taking part in, I have managed to get some time to work on the terrain pieces.

When last I left this topic, I had just been doodling in my notebook and planning things out.

Well no more, my guesstimate bases sizes were way under sized, so the bases have expanded.

The main house is now about 20"*18" overall, this will allow me to build up some rubble around it.

This somewhat gives you a size of it.
The grey area in the middle is some insulation underlay which happened to have a textured side which looked like floorboards. Like you can see I have been adding to the building itself (why do I do these things to myself?).

A couple of views showing the main elements before anything else added, excuse my out of scale hand in the photo's.
I also took the time to hit the buildings with as mixture of black emulsion paint, PVA and sand in order to add some texture to the smooth MDF pieces, I'll add this to all the different buildings I eventually make for this build.

Next I started to add former to the interior, these will for the base for the modelling compound to go on and make the rubble piles:

Insulation polystyrene carved up and glued down. Remember there is a layer of stuff over this, these pieces just mean I am not using more compound then necessary.

Finally I covered the lot in a mixture of black emulsion paint and PVA to add strength and seal the polystyrene.

I've since finished detailing the building to where I won't be able to get at it later, and it's ready to be glued down in place allowing me to start adding the outer formers, fencing, tree stumps, etc.

It's a thing, definitely progress, more to come.

Until next time...


 - Lewis

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